This is a trip back to the late 60's when the first boards I ever tried to ride, belonged to my neighbors uncle. There were two. One had clay wheels the other steel. I don't recall the brands. We would take them out from time to time and see who could stay on and go the furthest before we were thrown off. Those wheels locked up in every crack, every rock that was in its path. Needless to say they didn't turn very well. I probably still have scarring. But it was fun and challenging to glide in a side stance. Some years later when urethane wheels came on the scene it seemed to be the craze and it resparked interest in me and my buds. This was around the time the whole Cal thing was going down. We started buying the wheels,ball bearings and the graphite powder. Trucks had that special nut that always loosened up, thus losing your bb's. Made our own blanks. We were digging it. The skate board scene moved fast during that time and slot was reinvented in such a short time. But my first complete board purchase was a G&S Fiber-flex. I choose it because I liked the way it felt under my feet, skating the short, squared-off transitions of the drainage ditches we found along the highway. The Logan Earth Ski followed shortly thereafter when I started half pipes and bowls. Now it's anything that I can beg or borrow to steal a glide.
Dude I totally remember the Logan Earth Ski. And *loved* my FibreFlex. Best street carving and downhill board made.
My first skateboard was a Andrew Reynolds that i traded to some older Spanish kid (he totally stole it. Not a good guy) for some pokemon cards. But truth be told, i was never a skater. I was pretty into inlining and BMX though. As a kid all i did was build ramps and inline and BMX. Got petty good at inlining. Later in life i finally got into skating. But I bomb hills and slide. Like this stuff..... https://youtu.be/I8DEFv2aJIw I got a longer board with big sticky wheels for straight bombing. A sector 9. My slide board is a lush from the uk with hard wheels obviously. Got a big snakey hill near me. You hit a good 30 or 40 mph going down it. That's my spot. Got a concrete park a bit further away that i sometimes hit up too
Homemade wood shaped board- cadillac skate wheels THEN it was on [video=youtube;Ft7eduE3zBQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft7eduE3zBQ[/video]
My first board was an aluminum deck (blue w/red urethane wheels) ordered from the back pages of skateboarder mag in the mid 1970s. Older sister had ceramic and metal wheel boards.. nasty. The wheels had cheap / early model seal bearings that would occasionally seize up when bombing hills. Ouch. I later upgrade the wheels and bearings as they became available locally. Early 80s I treated myself to a P&P Steve Caballero (Sims wheels, indy trucks). Still have it (I've posted pix before in anot her sk8board tread). Now I'm pretty much Carver Tknox, cross training only... old bones ya know.
Sound like you and I were born in the same era DonQ. I had the clay wheels that stopped and skidded on every rock you hit too. If you did a powerslide on them you got a flat spot that never went away. I was a competitive skater in the 70's as a kid. I actually placed first in the state of FL one year but the competitions were very different back then. We did slalom, freestyle and bowl riding in tampa and earthin surfin skate park in South Pasadena. I had Bahne, fiberflex (street and Henry Hester slalom), logan earth skis, all kinds of boards since I was sponsored by Suncoast Surf Shop back in the day. On another note I did a post years back where I built a skateboard out of an old wooden water ski. It came out awesome. Not sure how to pull up old posts but maybe I can find a pic of that thing somewhere.
I put this one together back in about 1988. The Madrid Longboard. Great for cruising the streets and bombing hills. This was before Sector 9 started making long skateboards. Still take it for a spin from time to time.
Man, I forgot about Cadillac Wheels. Those were the tits back in the day. How many of y'all remember the short-lived kneeboard skateboards? 4 trucks and 8 wheels. They were around for maybe 2 or 3 years.
after a variflex i got i vision mark gator rowgowski then he murderd his girlfriend and i have no idea what happened to that board
I don't remember but it was like what all the other old farts on here are saying. First one had steel wheels then my cousin made me one with clay wheels. Then I had one like Tlok's orange one. Then I had a Bahne, Alva, etc. Then I skipped a generation because I was too [email protected] up on drugs to skate or surf. I just road around on my Harley terrorizing the general populace. Then I went to Prison. Then I became normal and started a family. Now I just bomb hills when I'm in PA on my longboart.
lol I remember when I was a kid skating,my style was street skating u kno doing tricks,grinding,etc.one day this ol black dude,straight up gangster lol probably twice my age at the time,came up to me talking about skating and I'm like man u don't skate lol. so we're talkin and I give him my board,and this dude pops a nollie and spins for like 50 seconds,like 20 900s whatever that is,an 18000 lol.hes like aw man that's how we skated back in the day,i guess twirling around on them boards lol,seeing all these old 70s style boards made me think of it,i know that was the style back then,spinning in circles and stuff
I gotta story like that. That hill i mentioned before... I'm bombing it and alluding and all that. When on my way back to the top this old black guy is taking his garbage to the curb. He stops me. I'm thinking he's going to get on my case for making noise and flying down the road. Nope. Instead he started tripping out on the slides i was doing and was saying he used to do similar stuff back in the day, and asked if he could try. Now this guy lives far up the hill, so I'm a little nervous he's flung to bust his ass hard. Instead he bombs the hill and started doing HUUUGE power slides. Funny because that whole neighborhood is rich stuck up white people who would call the cops. This was just a random older black guy who could power slide for days
Reminds me, back in 83, when some random guy (white) off the sidewalk asked to borrow my board and he did the first ollie i had ever seen...technically, it was a frontside ollie 180 and he did a frontside boneless, too (only rodney mullen was doing stuff that advanced then). We were blown away, to say the least. At the time, i had a Zorlac deck with indepenents and B-52 wheels. That era boards were my fav becuase they were so wide and stable for street...it was like riding on a magic carpet/grinding machine.
