My skateboarding history…

 

I had a little green plastic skateboard since as long back as I can remember.

I loved playing with it. It was one of my best toys.

It finally died after I tried to open up the wheel, to make its loose pack bearings un-seize, and bearing sprinkled all over the basement floor.

When I was around 10, I got a wooden skateboard with soft yellow wheels from Toys R Us. The soft wheels were so much faster than the hard green urethane wheels on the green board. It felt so good to cruise down my local hills. I lived on the highest area in Lexington, MA, where in every direction from home meant riding down a hill. The real goal in my mind was riding down every hill in our area. We stood up, sat down, catamaraned, and crashed so hard. It seems very pure when I think back on it now. Always a simple and direct thrill and accomplishment.

my wood board got stolen by some kid. I was mad at the world.

I went without a skateboard for a year or two. 

One day, while in Boston with my father and brother, we went by Beacon Hill Skate. they were still on Charles Street then. I couldn't believe the skateboards that they had. real professional equipment. I was so incredibly excited. my parents wouldn't buy me a skateboard but said that if I bought it myself it was alright. I worked painting, scraping wallpaper, and cleaning for the next 3 weeks to get the money for my first 'real' skateboard. it was a Sure-grip "High Voltage".

That was August of 1984. from that moment on, I rode the living shit out of that thing. Boy, did I suck. but I loved it so much. At that moment in time on the east coast it was beyond the uncoolest thing in the world for a 14 year old to do. I was the biggest looser in town, but I was having so much fun.

I went to the library and read every book that they had on skateboarding. I had to go to Harvard Square or one of the skateshops in the city just to get a magazine on skating. Around that time, rollerskating was in the throughs of its last death blow. Beacon Hill Skate and Charles River Skate were the two main shops in the Boston area. they had until then been mainly rollerskate shops. around 1985 or 1986 things really started to change. they called it the 3rd wave. skateboarding had gotten real big at first in the 1960's, then it died, then again in the late 1970's, then it died again. in the mid eightys it was getting big again (it slumped again in the early ninties but has grown ever since). on the east coast it was still a very unpopular thing to do.

I will ad to this later when i have time. 

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