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.

The chances of me knowing who Chris Pulman is were pretty slim, him being a professional skateboard from the UK in 90’s… and I honestly had no idea that he was an am for Foundation and an ex-pro for Heroin, Independent and Vans. After watching a half an hour of footage (broken up into 3 segments) I can’t say that I wasted any time. “That Guy” is part of a series on skateboarders in the UK from Pixels TV. Looks like it was made with some help from Independent. Chris Pulman as a first choice seems a pretty good one, even if you don’t remember him. Watch ’em all after the jump, plus the bonus footage “Pigeon” from 1999, a video of the Southsea skate scene filmed in and around Portsmouth and London.

Original vintage no skateboarding poster on sale at Antikbar. Published by the British Railways Board in 1978, it will set you back £325.00 or about $560. Pretty cool, but not that’s a steep price. There must be a British Railways Board collector’s scene.

The shot in the top frame of a newly completed skatepark in the UK looked pretty clean and made me want to find out more about the spot. In the course of looking it up I saw that the builder Four One Four Skateparks, are using the CNC process to cut transitions and horizontal some supports, especially on bowl corners. It’s interesting that they use a stepped completely horizontal approach in those bowl corners. Notice that where the surface meets the back braces are not perpendicular. Instead they rest on two adjacent corners. I’m not sure if that makes in difference in the longevity of the bowl, but it’s got to make the design and assembly process a hell of a lot faster. I’ve always held wooden bowl builders in high esteem, and this approach means any monkey could assemble it. It’s a case of nostalgia vs. progress, but I can’t imagine there are that many ramp builders out there with access to big enough CNC machinery. Some of the shots on the site make it look like the surface isn’t included in the CNC process though, so there’s still room for John Henry on the ramp building floor. This park is part of “building 2” at Adrenaline Alley in Corby, England.