I’ve bought a lot of skateboard magazines over the years. As I’ve mentioned before; these magazines provided an escape from the rural area that I started skating in — they connected me with so many other likewise people and opened my mind to a lot of culture I might have never seen.
Luckily I still have a few left; although they’re in far from perfect shape as they’d been snipped apart for various scrapbook type projects while in high school
While cleaning up our apartment; I decided to take some photos of the ones I have left. One thing lead to another and I ended up with 100+ photos of about 15 mag’s from 1989-1991.
While flipping through, I was amazed to how some of the photos and spreads were still 100% burned into my memory. Here’s just a couple which really affected me;
These 3 sequences of Ed Templeton skating in California pretty much setup 2 years of me trying to perfect these 3 tricks; resulting in bruised shins (trying impossibles), broken boards (trying impossibles) and plenty of whip-outs (trying backside slides). I eventually got good at all three.
This short profile of Barry Walsh was one of the first times a friends of ours was featured in an international magazine. He eventually got much more coverage and his own pro-model. First guy I saw do a McTwist after trying to learn it for month’s.
This sequence of Matt Hensley (who is now in the band Flogging Molly) doing a Fakie One Footed 360 Ollie was evolutionary at the time. Matt’s style and ridiculous board control was a major influence.
This shot of Hosoi (on the left) symbolizes the end of the flash/rockstar vert skaters of the late 80’s to me. Things started getting a lot less “cali” after this; the East coast started coming up and street skaters started taking over in style and coverage.
This shot of Mikey Reyes is incredible. It screams how we all pictured San Francisco and how we wanted to skate.
To this day Natas’s skating amazes me. He is the most influential street skater of all time.
The changing of the guard started with this ad. Plan B went on to shake up the industry and amaze many.
This sequence of Matt Hensely doing backside ollie to backside nose blunt slide to revert took me a whole year to learn and I could never get it this good.
In 1991 this sequence of Kris Marcovich looked like sheer suicide and was just beyond anything that I wanted to try.
One of the first shots (both shots on these pages) in Transworld of a spot I had skated at many times. “The Ghost” was a curb in Ottawa that was legendary. Funny how a curb can be legendary.
This shot of Mer is amazing. We loved this place. I spent so much time here (SK8 Parc II) I’m sure I was standing just out of frame when this was taken. (they misspelled his name – Murphy instead of Mer)
Fish Lips was one of Canada’s first major skateboard companies from the East coast — Skull Skates was the first major from the West coast as far as I know. Perry’s intro letter to the world. I ended up riding a bunch of Fish Lips boards as they were flowed to me.
Another sequence of Ed Templeton that is burned into my brain. Learned this trick fast and did it everywhere on everything. Long sleeve striped shirts and kaki’s became all the rage.
Santa Cruz’s addition to skating at the time was the transition between rails and no rails. The “everslick” was a board covered in a thin layer of bonded PTEX. It wore off quickly on the nose and tail — far from “everslick” but it worked.
This shot of Ed nosegriding a rail lead to me trying this a couple times. It was beyond belief at the time; and almost impossible. I never really got grinding rails down and it had some heavy consequences on messing this up.
9 responses to “Skateboarding Magazines from 1989-1991”
man oh man those are some gems. the mickey reyes one is awesome. Marcel and I skated the china banks when we went to SF. They were a lot gnarlier than I imagined and trying to ride over the bench was harder than I thought.
Do you have any with an ad for San Diego Trucking Supply? It would be from that period ’91 and when I got sponsored by them.
I can’t believe I chucked all of my mags.
I went skating yesterday. Disappointed to see that they put up barriers at Iona banks. I’m sore today. Ran into Alex Gavin as well. He said we should go ride the pipe sometime. I couldn’t even ride the pipe that well when I was skating at my highest level. If I went today I’d be fucked.
Great stuff.
figured you’d love these !!
I’ll check through for SD trucking supply.
Was considering going skating today — but I have a surf trip next weekend so it mighta been a bad idea.
Dude – My parents brought over 4 crates full of old mags around christmas.
I have 3 yrs of BMX plus – one has Gonz’s first ever interview.
I have Thrasher from 86 – 92 just about every edition. I must have that Barry thing too.
Oh – and it is WAY funny how a curb could be SOOOOOOO important.
the first time Andrea and I went to SF in the early 90s, I spent 80% of our time visiting all the spots from all the vids. I can’t imaging how lame she must have thought I was – spend 3hrs on a bus to go stand in front of a embankment – just to skate it for 10 mins.
Sick montage Steve. I think it’s time a pay a visit to my parents attic to reclaim some much needed memories.
@Rick: I did the skate tourist thing a couple years back in LA – hoping fences to sneak into highschools to see the famous spots !!
@Eric: You should — it’s really funny how well you’ll remember certain bits when you see them.
I was in transworld magazine sometime beween 1988 – 1992 doing a roast beef on a half pipe. Tod Swank was the photogragher. My buddy Matt Javernick was also in the same issue. We built a huge half pipe in Loveland, CO and eventually became sponsored skateboarders. We even did a demo for the Wright life with Tony Hawk, Kevin Staab, Joe Johnson in Ft. Collins, CO. I didn’t save anything from my skateboarding career and I’m searching for the transworld magazine I was in. Can you help?
DJ Juergensen
Hi David, I don’t remember the photo. Maybe you could contact Transworld directly — couldn’t hurt ?! cheers Steve
HAy Rick the BMX PLUS got april 1990 the one with mike domingez on the cover…..Email me back…..
I remember most of these pics especially templeton back in the day skated h.b.h.s. it was dope and ED was there a few times he never talked to anyone but who cared we were skating with ED and it was only a 3 hour drive to do it ah those were kool times.Thanks for posting these peace………COSEONER