I really enjoyed having a booth at Cal Sk8’s skate swap. I brought too much stuff and wasn’t quite prepared for the space. I was there for about 10 hours, which included about 3 hours total in setup and tear down. My booth was not a huge moneymaker after all expenses were paid, but it was still worth it for the total experience. I met some cool people and saw a lot of old friends. I only have one regret, and that’s the fact that I sold both sets of my 70’s era Sidewinder Wheels.

The year is maybe 1976 and I am just getting into skateboarding because my dad bought my mom a yellow plastic Roller Derby skateboard at the Sears Catalog Store. If your town wasn’t big enough to have a full-fledged Sears, you got a small shop with a handful of tables of merchandise and a counter where you could place orders from the catalog and it would be delivered. My small town happened to be Midland Michigan, a mere 20 minutes or so away from Bay City Michigan, the town that was nearest to where the dart landed on the map on the band named The Bay City Rollers. I was a huge fan of Rock and Roll Love Letter, and of course Saturday Night. Cut to 2009 when Neil covers a Bay City Roller skateboard in Ebay Watch, proclaiming I must be kicking myself for not winning that, and he was correct. I did some digging and kept my eyes peeled for this board, but I didn’t see one again until 2025. UPDATE: Added a picture of the band actually rolling as well as a second color way!

It turns out that The Turf isn’t the only legendary 70’s skatepark being dug up. There’s another park in Glasgow, Scotland known as Kelvin Wheelies (more on that name later) that is scheduled to be unearthed. The BBC reports that Scotland’s first skatepark is going to be dug up by archaeologist, to what end? Even they aren’t sure.

A non-skateboarding friend sent me a link to an online auction for the Ital Board, and I couldn’t find out anything about it on the interwebs, except for another auction of a slightly different version. It looks late 70’s to me, although possibly from the early 80’s.

There was a brief time in skateboarding when it was considered the height of hipness to have a full, color coordinated safety gear set. These days you can still buy a full set of decorative safety gear, but it’s’ all for little kids. These pics come courtesy of Butch Olivier who picked up this near-mint gear a swap sale. California Free Former – Made in Canada! I guess Canada Free Former doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I just wrapped up adding 61 ads from volume 5, number 7 of Skateboarder magazine from February of 1979. There are some good ones in there. A few that caught my eye were for Turning Point, Haut Lamaflex (Lama-flex?), Hobie (skate shoes), Powerflex, Independent (w Henry Hester), and Caster with Wally Innouye. Also of interest, there are four winter-related ads in this issue, two for runners that attach to your skateboard, like the Snow Skate, one for ice wheels (wheels, not blades) and one early Burton ad shot here in the Pacific Northwest at ole Mt Hood. Check it the Vintage Skatemag Advert gallery for Skateboarder v5 #7. The total is up to 1,151 ads as of today.

It’s rare to find an Archie Comics Group story with skateboarding that doesn’t focus on Archie, Jughead, or poor Mr Weatherby. Laugh comics #309, published in December of 1976, has a story with a character named Li’l Jinx titled “The Board Game.” The comics seems to be aimed mostly at teens, but they have a small stable of characters made up of little kids as well.

My first skateboard was a yellow plastic rRoller Derby banana board bought from a Sears catalog outlet in Midland, Michigan. I was in grade school in the 70’s, and soon after, all my neighborhood friends had skateboards, including Gene & Gary Wang, who lived across the street, as well as a kid names Allan Lockwood (I think?) For a while my driveway had intricate slalom courses drawn in chalk, complete with tank installations and pill boxes, firing at us of course. What can I say, I was a prepubescent male. When the driveway became too confining, we developed a sort of Rollerball-lite game that involved pairing up into teams made up of one kid on a bicycle towing another kid on a skateboard behind some jumprope tied to the back seat of the bike. The objective was to circle the block, trying to make the other team wipe out. It was great fun until I sent a skateboard flying at Alan, who got his glove caught on the back of his tow bike and wad dragged on his rear end for 20 feet before he came loose. He had a giant friction burn on the side of his ass and…

Reggie and Me #111 came out in January of 1979 and has not one, but two skateboard storylines, although one is a short half pager. I might actually be finally starting to appreciate the Archie Comics group… I thought I was vaccinated but I guess not. There’s just so much skateboarding through the years in their titles. No other publisher has given skateboarding that much love, despite how it’s usually the same storyline. I’m surprised Reggie had his own title, he’s sort of the antagonist whenever he does make an appearance. Nobody likes Reggie.

Any time I go in to a resale or vintage store I make a beeline for the magazines and grab anything from 1965-1966 as well as the random publications from late 70’s. The very first thing I picked up at Vintage on Third in McMinnville was copy of Hot Rod Show World 1978. Despite no obvious association, something about it was calling to me. Sure enough, there was a two page spread on skateboarding, as well as a ton of hot rods and predictably, hot rod women.