All hail the return of Saturday Starrs, as well you should. Scott Starr is the ultimate skateboard film historian. He covers the surfing world too, but that’s not for me to judge. Here’s another piece of history that would most likely had been lost to the ages were it not for Scott’s diligence. It’s the opening sequence from a 1977 East Coast skateboarding and surfing film titled Hard Waves, Soft Wheels. Scott’s YouTube channels keep getting shut down, and so a lot of the embedded videos stop working. I’ve gone back and re-populated the ones that he’s uploaded again, in case you are in the mood. It’s like the third or fourth time that I’ve had to do this. We’ll see how long it lasts again. Awesome period piece music in this sequence.

UPDATE: I had the wrong video embedded, but it’s fixed now. If you are jonesing for that Captain Kangaroo appearance, it’s over here.

Saturday Starrs are back! After he got the boot from YouTube due to the heavy hand of Dick Clark, Scott Starr is back again. I went through his backlog and only one of the previous seven videos has made it back, but we’re forging ahead anyway. The video is not spectacular in and of itself except that it is in fact the godfather of all skate videos. Skateboarding in the Eighties is a promo vid that Stacy Peralta made and sent out to some skate shops. The response was so overwhelming that he decided to make what would become the first Bones Brigade Video Show. Now, some 25 years later, he’s directing commercials for Burger King and Amp Energy Drink. It’s about eight minutes long and features the skateboarding talents of Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Mike McGill and Tony Hawk. The soundtrack is kind of funny. It’s half new wave (Ultravox) and half prog rock.

UPDATE: Well that was fast. The video has been pulled already, we have to assume by request of Powell, or even Ultravox? That would be funny. Maybe Midge Ure secretly reads Skate and Annoy.

“… and hitting the concrete, with the new skateboarding.” This looks like a brief out take from one of those independent surf films. It’s pretty short (and dark if you are watching on a Windows machine) that is typical for the era. Nice jazz guitar soundtrack. Someone should make an updated version of this with the ladies, but in the same campy style.

This edition of Saturday Starrs features Skateboarders from Hell which is a spoof of one of those old biker exploitation movies, although stylistically this is half 1950’s and half early 70’s. I can’t actually tell when this was made. The fashion on some the extras could be late 70’s or early 80’s. It looks like it was shot on 8mm film, but the titles look like really clean digital work. Maybe they were added years later, or maybe it was shot on old stock. I feel like I should know who some of the “actors” are. It’s kind of hard to tell via YouTube, and it’s further complicated by the presence of an advert for Tail Devils tacked on the end. Hopefully Scott Starr will shed some light on Skateboarders from Hell.

This week’s installment of Saturday Starrs is a 1977 Today Show piece on the new and booming skatepark industry. The report was filed by Irving R. Levine, and is about as dry sounding as it gets. It’s funny to hear about the owners of Skatopia expecting to take in twice the cost of building the park ($300k) in the first year. It mentions the first skatepark in the world being built in Florida, but it doesn’t say what the name is. The guy who built it Charles Cromie, says a skatepark operator can expect to recoup a $175K investment and own the land in 18 months. Levine said 50 skateparks were built in the first year, and at the time there were 100 more planned or in construction. What he doesn’t mention is that 125 will be gone in two years. It’s full of excellent terminology like “radical” and “water surfing.”

For now it’s an industry going full speed ahead, and not at all worried that it might be headed (wait for it..) for a financial tumble.

Good stuff.

This edition of Saturday Starrs is a 1978 California Free Former demo at something called Cal Jam II which was one of those outdoor mega concerts that purportedly had an attendance of 350,000 people. The skaters are legends Ty Page, Laura Thornhill and Brian Beardsley. Can someone be considered a legend if they aren’t well known? I’m certainly not up on all the 70’s pros, but who the heck is Brian Beardsley? (UPDATE: OK, Brian Beardsley) Right. There’s freestyle, highjump and halfpipe footage from one of the plexiglass Firestone Ramps. At least one of those Firestone ramps was still being carted across country for demos as late as 1988 or so.

Another installment of Saturday Starrs brings us a newsreel style skateboarding promotional film from 1965, featuring the the Hobie team. I’d like to know who commissioned this film. Newsreel stye films have certainly gone out of vogue. This has to be at the tail end of the genre. When did they start? Some time in the 20’s? I can’t imagine this kind of film today. In any case, The Hobie team is cruising through the tourist attraction in Florida called Cypress Gardens, which was literally at the time just a big garden. At some point in time they added water skiing shows as an attraction too. The visual quality of this film is beautiful. The colors are vibrant, right down to the goofy floppy. Why is the Hobie team all of 12 years old? They must have been hot off the set of Skater Dater. What a strange time in skateboarding.

I forgot to mark where I found this, so my apologies to the person who originally scanned this, but it wasn’t this site. This is not quite as wacky as the more recent bike and skateboard hybrids, but it does appear to be the first one. It’s the Wham-O Wheelie Bar. If they made one of these now, they have to call it the “Wham-O Manual Bar!” See the full ad and watch an old TV commercial after the jump.

For the second installment of Saturday Starrs, I bring you this short clip of the 1979 Rose Parade in Pasadena California. The City of Lakewood had a float with one of the clear plexiglass ramps on it, and of course, someone was skating on it too. From the archives of Scott Starr.

Scott Starr has the most amazing collection of skateboarding films, commercials and other media from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. I’ve been watching his stuff online for a few years now. I’ve got a collection of media footage from the late 90’s on, but it’s all crap compared to what he has, the Smithsonian of skateboard history in moving pictures. I’m more like a giant ball of twine at a road side attraction. I grab my material off the TV. He finds or buys old films and has them restored. I’m going to start featuring one of his videos on Saturdays. His library is amazing, although with some of it I can’t believe he hasn’t gotten booted from YouTube yet. He used to have a web site but it doesn’t seem to be up lately. Skateboarding is just a part of it, he collects surf and snow footage as well. It’s got to be harder and harder to find nowadays with all the film stock that is probably deteriorating. So cheers to you Scott, I’m glad someone has preserved this stuff. Your are truly doing (the Concrete) God’s work.

This first installment is actually one that is a little atypical of his collection. It appears to be a short film made in 1977. There are no credits or any other information, but you should enjoy Valley Punks VS the Surfer.