In this round, not one, but two ads for Alley Cat, some very boring text-only ads from Cardiff Skateboard Shop, and Dolphin Skateboards, plastic skateboards from Alpine Sports, and the creepy, faceless skateboarder of the South London Skateboard Centre.

I added six more vintage skateboard advertisements to the Skateboard Scene magazine gallery. This time we’ve got sterling silver necklaces, some mystery boards from Reflex Action, more mystery boards from American Oak Company, Californian skateboards from Scarbourne, plastic GT Coyotes, and Britain’s answer to the American Kryptonic, the Ulon Speedwheel.

I added four more vintage skateboard advertisements to the Skateboard Scene magazine gallery. Included are some Ace-Flyer Chuck Taylor knock offs, Alta Sports skateboards with a “fantastic set of safety equipment,” the Great British Skateboard from Beadle, and a subscription plug for Skateboard Scene magazine, “the radical read for radical riders.” Enjoy.

I just added a couple ads to the Vintage Skateboard Mag Ad Gallery. These come from a magazine you’ve likely never heard of titled Skateboard Scene. It’a UK publication, and as such comes with lots of UK-centric companies and products. I love old skateboard ads from the 70’s, and finding this mag made me feel like a kid again. Not necessarily because of the age of the publication, but more because it was filled with all kinds of product I had never seen before. There wasn’t a copyright date anywhere in the magazine, but thanks to VintageSkateboardMagazines.Com I can say it was published in Winter of 1977. This magazine is doubly wacky. It comes with all the usual wackiness of the 70’s and adds the UK skateboarding industry outside perspective. Check out the first two ads in the gallery. Large scan of the cover after the jump.

What do you call a kid who can skate like that? You call that kid a Cracker Jack. I totally forgot about this jingle until I watched the commercial, and it all came back to me. I never saw this particular Cracker Jack commercial, but I remember others with the same song. This series of commercials aired around 1978. Assuming the kid skating is the same one they use in the closeup, someone ought to be able to identify him. – Thanks to Wes for the tip.

Adam Crofts sent me a beat up copy of the Keane Brothers debut album from 1977 because it had skateboard on the cover. I listened to it, hoping that the song Keep On Rollin’ was skateboard related, but it wasn’t. The album is a truly awful mix of 70’s disco, soul, rock, country and bubblegum. It’s a freaking awesome train wreck. I noticed the producer also had the last name Keane, so I figured this was a showbiz father trying to get rich off his kids, and that this was probably the last time anyone ever heard of the Keane Brothers, if anyone ever heard of them at all. Of course I was wrong. The Keane Brothers had one of those variety shows that were all over the 70’s like flies on shitty music, and they appeared on the Tonight Show and the Mike Douglas Show. On top of that, the opening sequence of their variety show prominently features the Keane brothers on skateboards.

About this time last year I put up a 70’s era advert for a skateboard made by the Hooker Headers company at the behest of the Salba’s father who was working there at the time. Mark Bernard of Detroit actually ordered one of these boards via the mail-order add in Hot Rod magazine. (If you look at the order form, they ask for the weight of the rider.) After recently finding my original post, he sent in some pictures of the very same board which is still in his possession. He bought it in 1976 as a 14 year old at a cost of $80.

It’s Joe Strummer hanging out in an unidentified West London skatepark (UPDATE: It’s Meanwhile Gardens) during an interview that took place some time between 1988 and 1991. Footage from the same interview also appears in the 2007 Joe Strummer documentary The Future is Unwritten, which I haven’t actually seen yet, but maybe it lists the source in the credits. This particular digitization is pretty rough. If anyone finds clearer footage and can identify the source please let me know.

I don’t know much about 70’s era R.A.C.O. skateboards other than they loved to use imagery on their products, even their metal boards had some kind of photo sublimation. The collection of fiberglass boards shown here features assorted beverage logos for Schlitz, Budweiser, Olympia, Pepsi, and 7-Up. It’s almost as if R.A.C.O. was the NHS of the 70’s in terms of branded boards. We should be glad that truck hole patterns were standardized. Imagine how much of a pin in the ass it would have been to drill for trucks with a triangular pattern.

Check out this April, 1978 footage of Prince Charles hanging out with skateboard kids in Kentish Town, London and eventually taking a ride. It aired on a program called Nationwide. This particular episode was about a program called Inter-Action, which was some sort of inner city youth outreach. The episode is available on the BBC web site, but appears to be incapacitated at this time. I’m not sure if it’s only viewable inside the UK or not, but I was able to watch it a few months ago in the USA. Fortunately, there are a coupe of liberated clips available for embedding here. Charles voice and demeanor with the kids is excellent. He almost sounds like he’s ready to pick a fight. When he gets on the board he mentions that he hadn’t done in such a long time, which means he likely skated at some point in the late 60’s as a wee lad.