This edition of Australian pro skateboarders and companies I did not know existed is brought to you by Ken Macleod, who posted a picture of a Ken Gibbons pro model. I tried to find something about it/him (Ken) and that led me to the photography of Chris Stroh, whose portfolio is primarily surfing, but also includes some 80’s era skateboarding. That’s Ken in the photo above, in the bowl at a place called “Five Dock,” circa 1986. Unfortunately, Ken was the victim of a hit-and-run and died in 2006. I scraped the web for more bits and pieces on Ken and Bonzer and managed to find a few items.

I’m a couple weeks remiss in posting about the death of Otis ‘O’ Barthoulameu. Anyone who read skate mags in the 80’s will remember that “O – Photo” byline. Encinitas Magazine has a remembrance of O that spans several spreads and start on page 24.

It’s hard to believe that the parties involved in making the infamous Stroker trucks went on to build Independent, a brand that by any metric inspired loyalty above and beyond anything else in the skateboard industry. Check out some painful over-engineering after the jump.

The 60’s, when a “Skateboard kit” need only contain a set of trucks and wheels because the quality of the wood you rode on really wasn’t a factor in performance or fun. You had to assemble the trucks yourself, but they did throw in a skate wrench. Funny that they mentions the trucks twice (Two steel plates with hangers!) but neglect to mention the wheels.

– Thanks to Mark Bader for the pics.

This is a good one. Lyons Maid is an brand of ice cream that started in 1925 and was retired in 1998, only to be revived a decade later. During their heyday in the 70’s they used to have all kinds of collectable cards and wrappers, including the Junior Champs Supercards seen here. These are easy to find for sale at anywhere from about $10-$70 for this particular card, or $20 for the complete set of 10 differnt cards, so go figure. The interesting thing is that almost every listing dates these to 1983, which seems unlikely given the content of Tony Alva’s card, and the inclusion of Pele in the set (retired in 1977) as well as some other athletes who were also at their peak around 1976-77. One possible explanation is that these might be reissues of a Tonibel series from 1979, in which case, wow… super lazy. By 1983 the “Yellow Betty” was no longer brand new and was called just a plain old frontside air. Makes you wonder if Tony was actually interviewed about this, and if so was he pulling their leg or was it actually briefly called the Yellow Betty, or was it a prank by someone in the art department?

Friend of the site and undervalued hero of the skateboarding and surfboarding historical community, Scott Starr passed away some time this month. Scott put a tremendous amount of effort and his own money into collecting and preserving old skateboarding and surfing films, which included having them professionally digitized when his finances permitted. His numerous accounts on Youtube wouldn’t last long due to obscure, questionable or pointless copyright claims. The only thing that seemed to matter to him was preserving these films and TV appearances, some of them dating back to the 60’s. I used to email him fairly regularly about things I’d seen or heard about, and he was a willing fountain of knowledge. I also bought a handful of 60’s era comic books from him that featured skateboarding content, you can find many of these on S&A. Scott had some health and anxiety issues he battled with, keeping him out of the public eye and probably contributing to that fact that he is not more widely known to later generations of skateboarders. I consider him an important person in the lexicon skateboarding in popular culture. I don’t know that there is anyone else out there doing the kind of work he was, and I hope that his library is received with the proper amount of respect that it deserves. A Scott Starr memorial collection in the Smithsonian perhaps… There is a celebration of his life happening this Friday, including the appropriate paddle out.

Impulse buys, some are good, but this one? VERY NICE!!! I bought his Soviet era skateboard from a seller in the Ukraine. Sure, I paid more in shipping than I did for the actual item but I couldn’t pass this up. That’s Leonid Brezhnev in the upper left, he was the leader in the USSR from 1977-1982, which is the period I’m guessing this skateboard was produced. ( Seller could only add 80’s ) It’s cast aluminum! I LIKE! The text translates to “Rolling.”

Apparently in the world of skateboarding there are these things called magazines, and in particular, the longest running skateboard magazine called “Thrasher” is still a thing. Why on earth would Skate and Annoy link to Thrasher? We like to help out the little guys. Yuk, yuk, yuk… You should definitely check out the Kevin Thatcher interview from the January print issue that just went online. Hey kids, Kevin was a name once synonymous with Thrasher. It seemed inconceivable that there would ever be a Thrasher magazine without him, but to hear him tell it, it was definitely a group effort. Learn about the gory, glory days of mechanical paste ups before everything became Wild Riders of Keyboards…

Photo: Self described Pro-for-5-minutes Kevin Thatcher in the Winchester halfpipe in 1978, by Gary Medeiros as seen at Tunnel Skateboards.

Oh man, I’m old. This is how and when I first started skating. Hanging around with a crew of grade school kids cursing around on plastic boards with loose bearings. Good times. Nobody worried about whether they were doing a trick correctly or if they had bad style. Besides, how much style does a tic-tack take? I found these 70’s photos in some clickbait article. The mentioned that the photographer Anthony Catalano had passed, but they didn’t link to the original source so I’m not going to bother to credit them. There are a ton of photos taken in Brooklyn in the mid to late 70’s, and only a few of them feature skateboarders but they are a great glimpse into the past.

Just a run of the mill 60’s era steel wheeled skateboard that probably wouldn’t be shown here were it not for the fact that it’s still in the original packaging. Moen & Patton was a toy company primarily known for it’s roller-skates, but they made other toys as well. I’ve seen mention of their toy golf clubs as early as 1948. It looks like the used the Road Surfer as a descriptor in place of the word skateboard. Road Surfer appears on other Moen & Patton boards as well, and they eventually got around to screen printing a logo on top.

– Thanks to David Maes for the tip.