Last night I came across some old pictures of my young glorious days of skateboarding at the Skatepark of Houston. I spent so many summers there skating from morning until the late night. What a great skatepark it was as it had just about everything you needed. My favorite was the "ninja ramp". I also loved watching the local pros shred. Just wondering if there were any old school skaters out there who were also locals at the skatepark.
Bah. I was skating before there were skateparks. We had to go to abandoned apt complexes with homeless people, and skate in the drained pools. AND WE LIKED IT!
Don't get me wrong, I skated pools and downtown Houston before the renovation. It was tough dodging the cops and mentally ill people! For some ramp and vert skating the Skatepark of Houston was the place!
Does anyone remember ACTIONNOW magazine? 1978, I had an orange plastic skateboard with purple wheels. Damn, I'm old!
Has anyone watched "Dogtown and Z boys" yet? A good documentary and the rise of skateboarding in the 70's early 80's before the whole Bones brigade thing became big.
I've got some pictures from a mid-80's contest on the metal ramp somewhere ~ i'll try to dig them up.
heh...I had one of those! Broke that sucker too... The one that I loved most of all was the one that was made of a sort of translucent material....it was smoky grey in color...but the material was a weird sort of plastic/plexiglass looking stuff. ahhh, the memories....many many instances of roadrash from hanging onto the back of a friend's bike and gathering speed to hit homemade jump ramps....skateparks? what the hello was those....we didnt have no steeeenking skateparks....scrap plywood with nails hanging out of it is what we built our ramps with...
You must be talking about the annual "Shut up and Skate" contest on what must have been on the huge red 12' Kahuna ramp is what I believe it was called. They eventually tore that down and built the 11' X 40' Hurricane ramp. I would love to see those photo's. I have some from the early 90's contest. I just have to get ahold of a scanner.
That movie was great. I've been ampped up to check out "Riding Giants" all summer. But for some insane reason, it hasn't come out in LA, which is only the geedee film capital of the world.
I am an old-school former skater. We were able to get up to the Skatepark of Houston (why did everyone call it Cedar Hill?) about once every 3 months because it was so far north. I remember every summer we would be building a new half-pipe in someones backyard. Most of the wood would be taken from some dump somewhere and then we would all have to kick in some bucks for the final layer of plywood. I never really got into vert, but my brother was a pretty good vert skater and he got to where he could do eye level backside airs and some nice inverts. The funny thing is that about 10 years later, he got back into skating here in Austin. There was a decent vert ramp up in Georgetown and he was able to get his inverts back, but the airs aren't as high anymore. I bought a skateboard and I hit the skatepark a few times recently. I was surprised by how much had come back after all these years. The falls just hurt more now. The funny thing is that it seemed forever back in the day to save up enough money for a skateboard and now it's just go in the store and plop down about 120 bucks and you're good to go. Someone broke into my truck and stole my skateboard so I'm not doing it anymore. Did anyone ever used to ride the Landsdale pool in southwest Houston back in the 80s?
Last board I had a was a Zorlac double cut. One of the first shaped like a peanut. Had a nasty looking dude with long pointy teeth kind of woven together... That along with the Tony Hawk meets Flock of Seagulls short in the back way to f***ing long bangs in the front haircut.
I skated a mini ramp a couple of years ago and was surprised at how I was able to do some tricks after the long lay off. You are right..getting up after a slam is not as easy as it used to be. I definitely don't miss walking around school scabbed up from grinding my skin across the concrete! I almost bought a skateboard from Vans a little while ago but I just can't get with the skinny boards. They are practically the old freestyle boards that are used for street and ramp. I think my favorite board had to be the H-Street Danny Way with my Planet Earth Chris Miller board second.
Did you guys ever get simple obstacles like parking blocks or pvc pipes and be able to have a great time for hours and hours pulling off simple ground maneuvers? Man I miss those days.
