In a surprising move, Concrete Wave has made a version of it’s photography retrospective book, “The Legacy of Warren Bolster” available as a free download on Silverfish Longboarding. Warren Bolster was a pioneering skate and surf photographer. The Concrete Wave Edition book had some production and layout issues that mostly disappear as a PDF. Of course, viewing them onscreen is not close to the tactile experience you get when flipping through a heavy book in your hands, but it’s free, and you can’t beat that. I’m not sure what the contractual ramifications were for releasing the book electronically for free. You may want to get it while you can. It’s a curious move to be sure, but one I can appreciate, and you should too. Check out this Steve Cathey photo from 1975. Look at his foot placement and body language. No matter what your age/discipline, you have to be able to respect that. Still available online is an interesting video interview with Warren shot shortly before the publication of his book.

Also available are the last two issues of Concrete Wave Magazine, which is nice, but they really should take a page out of Thrasher’s book and release the very first issues as a PDF. While I’m telling people what to do, Thrasher really should keep releasing more old issues as PDF’s. Someone start that petition to get the first 10 years of Thrasher online. I might even be tempted to pay a reasonable fee for that if they were done right.

Update: There are some great photos and words in this book. Definitely worth the download. They are hoping it will spark interest in print version.

So I finally figured out who uses the A4 paper size. Lot’s of people in the UK, I’m sure, but hey, I never actually realized that until I went to scan in this issue of Sad Mag. The scans were all cut off, so I went back and noticed the pages fit nicely inside the “A4” markings on the scanner. Sad Mag is a zine from Shepshed, Leicestershire England. At least that’s where I think it is from. The mailing address is hard to read and I still don’t understand how the english system of addresses breaks down. This zine is actually a skateboarding and BMX zine! Who knew? I guess the scene over there was not segregated as much as it was/is here. They had Read and Destroy, which was a glossy skate/BMX mag that was actually respectable, especially as the BMX coverage dwindled. I guess we had Homeboy magazine here in the states too.

What’s with the guy on the cover? “Is he havin’ a laugh?“

Making the Solid Surf UK post reminded me that I was sitting on some shots of a skateball installation at Solid Surf in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Tim Ebaugh sent me the scans from his friend, photographer AL Porterfield. Check ’em out after the jump. Tim has a site called Vintage Florida Skateboard as well as helping out with Grind For Life and Florida Skater. We also linked to his Bowl Rider’s Cup coverage.

A reader’s comment on an earlier earlier post led me to check out a site on the history of a skatepark named Solid Surf in Southport England. at first I thought it was just the one (very long) page consisting of some personal recollections and photos as well as a lot of vintage magazine advertisements and feature articles. Worth a post by itself, but the single page was the precursor to a larger site that is still a work in progress. The skatepark was part of an amusement park facility. You can see rollercoasters in the back of some of the photos. It had a long history of ups and downs, finally being completely replaced by a go kart track in 1999. There are some pictures from the early 80′ where the park looks like a ghost town. Check it out.

[Source: Solboy from SNA comments]

Scott Starr has amassed an impressive amount of historical surfing and skateboarding films. Unlike some of us (me) who just press a record button, he has transferred film stock to video. And unlike some of us (me), he hasn’t gotten kicked off of YouTube. He used to have a web site but the domain has been expired for some time. He’s got some great artifacts though, and is more or less the classy version of what I do here with more recent commercials. The watermark is a little intrusive, but I suppose it has to be, or jerks like me would be paoching his footage constantly. Check out this 1978 video for skate safety, which features a truly bitchin’ corny soundtrack especially made for the film, and a few shots that look like NAMBLA material or out takes from a Larry Clark film. Watch Skate Safe.

[Source: The Vans Blog]

How was February where you live? Here in Chicago it sucked ass. It has been the worst winter for snow that I can remember, and February was the worst month yet. We’ve had
About 60” of snow so far this winter: the average is 40”, making it in the top 5 worst winters in 80 years. And when it gets done dumping snow on us, then the temperature plummets to zero, making it icy and just miserable. Basically what I’m saying is, if you’ve gotten any skating in this winter you’re lucky. Lots of us haven’t.

By the way, even though I write this column every month, I want to thank Kilwag for getting it up on Skate and Annoy. I don’t know what all is involved in the back end, but he does a great job on the site and I appreciate all he does or this column. Thanks.

Let’s get to it.

Published in 1988, Limozine #3 comes to us from the Boston area. There are two mailing addresses, one in East Boston and one in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was put out by the three man team of Jamie Cumming, Sebastian Nichols and Matt Cumming, as listed in the masthead. It’s a fat 24 half letter sized pages. The photos are legible but the toner saturation (Sheesh – listen to this a-hole) is really low. My physical copy is really faint. It actually looks a lot better after being scanned and manipulated slightly. The layout consists of mostly large photos with typewritten captions. Very nice actually. Simple and clean. I featured a Limozine related link back in November of last year. SnA is thanked on the liner notes and I still have the letter I got from the Limozine staff, unsigned so I don’t know who I was corresponding with. I probably got the address from a zine listing in Contort.

Featured Skaters (In order of appearance) Dan Estabrook, Dexter, Pete Verdoe, Bill, Jamie Ferguson, Sebastian Nichols, Bill Bennet, Andy Smith, Chris Robinson’s friend, Aaron. Unanmed locals.

Spots: Devotion Banks, Upland, Cambridge pool, Z.T. ramp

Honorable Mentions: Thanked on the contents: Skate and Annoy, Skate & Mate, Rip the Lip, Andre, fisheyes, Pro Designed.

Check out Limozine #3

UPDATE: Comments closed here, but you can comment directly in this gallery now.

Welcome to the second half of the Sonny Robertson photo archives. That’s Dan Wilkes on left and Jeff Phillips on the right, both at a spot called Flux, somewhere in Texas, sometime in the 80’s. Will there be a third – uh, err, half? I suppose that depends on how stoked Sonny is to dig through is archives. There’s more Wilkes and Phillps at Flux as well as a shot of Mike Crum at the Clown ramp after the jump.

Skatepunk.net has some cool old skateboarding photos too. Morris Wainright sent me the farm ramp picture and a search turned up the site.

Found this funny shot of Alva on Rocket’s MySpace. He’s an old dude in Cornwall, England and has a bunch of old ads and skate photos posted. Are you skill skating?

its when tony come over to england to tour some of the local parks the year i think was 1978. he skated ROM @ KNEBWORTH PARKS this is him meeting some of the local skater dudes of the time if my history serves me well dude’ ill look into some more for you dude k….its all kriptonics and bengy boards back then…i had road rider 4s and a santa cruz 5 ply wide ply deck with ACS 500 trucks………it used to rip dude