“Made tough and comfy for nocturnal activities. A size guage or color or feel to compliment any occasion: Being a smart ass to a Dennys waitress at 4.am. Impressing your friends by sticking your left ear to a mega watt thumping Cerwin Vega. A neuron firing sugar rush from ten too many raspberry blowpops. Getting frisked by some over zealous renta cop. Winding down watching endless cartoons. Made in Los Angeles CA and available virtually knowhere.”

‘Clobber’ = not a good name for a clothing company in the age of Google, but probably fine in 1992, a couple of years before such considerations became vital when choosing a name.

More than this I cannot say. I have no recollection of who was distributing this in the UK. Can anyone add to the history, please?

Steve Martin did “The Jerk”
Eddie Murphy was “Delirious”
Richard Pryor didn’t know “Which Way Was Up”
but these orginal pranksters can’t come close to the new King of Comedy…

The Franz

Ronald “Franz” Knigge, touring in your home town soon…

This is a great example of a New Deal advert from a golden age. It took me a while to work out which company was running the advert. Which amuses me now, when I consider that I ended up working for them for eight years. But that was in the future when this advertisement appeared.

Move along now. There’s nothing more to be said here.

Let’s move on.

Coming up in this issue we’ll also see another legend, the Plan B video and also a few more infamous elements such as the experiments with early video-frame-grab technology and the free cover-mount R.a.D keyring. Including those three things in one sentence is some kind of joke. One of them was a world-changer, and it certainly wasn’t the keyring. Or the frame-grabs.

The cover lines for this issue:

• Curtis McCann on the Underworld
• New cyber style
• Tekno tv issue
• Fresh high speed sequences – frame by frame action
• Plan B Video review – best yet
• Holiday movies – North Wales, Scarborough
• Milton Keynes & Leigh on Sea comps
• Free lucky keyring

The strap line (not sure if this was the first appearance) was ‘Brain Food for Street Thugs’. But there’s also “Rebel Against Drudgery”, so this aspect of the cover was probably still evolving under the earnest guidance of Gavin Hills.

I’m glad that we’re finally able to go through one of the ‘larger-than-A4′ issues from the last period of the magazine. I really liked that era. The skating was pushing the limits in all manner of directions at that time and Curtis McCann was one of the defining skaters of the age.

On a simpler note the three other decks featured here are from Rob Roskopp, Claus Grabke and Jeff Grosso.

Those last two are skaters who both had a direct impact on Rad Magazine at various points.

Claus Grabke’s multi-talented and prolific approach included photography, writing and music so he contributed to the European skate scene and the magazine in a very direct way.

Grosso’s influence was less specific, but he was one of those fascinating people who influenced the magazine through his words as well as his skating. He struck chords which resonated strongly with the spirit of the time.

I’ve just noticed one point of interest here:

Mapled Blank Deck with Concave, Blue Stained and Varnished 30″ x 10″ £14.95

Blanks in 1988? That would have been a very early example of a phenomenon which I normally think of as coming along later.

Or have I got that wrong?

Motobilt and Rannalli trucks, Schmitt Stix Chainsaw and Chris Miller decks, Dog Town Micke Alba deck, a Swatch pouch and a Stussy No 4 T shirt. But my favourite thing here is the custom skate badge from Ian Walker in Doncaster.

Meanwhile for everyone interested in vintage skateboard decks, look at these beauties from the days when shapes were different. Very different in the case of the Schmitt chainsaw! Interesting to note that 33″ was considered a longboard at the time.

It may seem unfair to place so much emphasis on the Anarchic Adjustment advert here when there are also ads from Glasgow stalwarts, Clan and Mach in Edinburgh, but I saw Nick last month for the first time in a decade. So this is very topical.

In the early days of R.a.D there were two of us sharing a single desk in the corner of someone else’s office. Nick defined the future of R.a.D just as much as I did. And he’s still at it: as his blog puts it: “Somewhere Something Incredible is Waiting to be Known.”

slithering back in whenever and wherever he wished. He used the whole of the ramp with no holds barred: carving Bone-air, jamming Saran type things, snapping aggro Inverts on the other side then back for a tech¬nical lip manoeuvre on the other wall. Even if he hadn’t thrown in all the variations, watching him butcher the ramp with his carves would have been enough for me. Mental! Ever since his days of channel jumping at Meanwhile Greg Guillotte has been a gnarly risk-taker, and his performance at Chingford was no exception. Pure energy.

AGROUP
The A group was decidedly under-staffed. It consisted of Graham Marfleet, Greg Guillotte and Jason Ellis. Mike Canning, Scot Carol, Lee Reynolds and company were all absent. This didn’t affect the intensity of the action but only the length of time it lasted. Graham Marfleet is really pushing the limits these days and making some waves: he’s been around for ever but now people are starting to take notice. Lips, air contortion and street are where he is strong. Graham’s runs centred around airs from the high section to the low section — gnarly variations like X-down One Footer, Double Can-cans, One-hand One-footers and tweako Look-backs. The Lip was in there also: he did one Front-wheel Hop-drop where his foot flailed but he regained control and made it. Crowd elated, rider stoked: Marfleet tore — he stays on.

Greg Guillotte had the over-vert section wired: airs 8 feet out, swinging double variations like No-footers to Turn-downs, BIG Inverts, One-handed Turn-downs — and he was SMOOTH. He has the best compressing and carving lines and he gave the lip mammoth amounts of abuse with stuff like low to high Chain-ring Rock’n'Rolls to Air in, low to high No-foot Jumps on to the platform and Disasters two feet out. Greg’s completely at home on the lip, jumping out C Group riders with a lot of bail-age going on. But there were also killer variations like double Can-can to Rocket in there around and above the lip. Zak was attempting twists out of the low section which was a real stoke.

The atmosphere was laid back, as it always is at that ramp. Everything was very mellow: the sun was saying hello and a knowledgeable, sizeable crowd was kicking back. There was a good healthy attitude on the platforms too. Everyone was en¬couraged to enter by Tim Ruck, event organiser and rider: his painless organisation and ex-ecution of the event made the whole thing come together.

Jason Ellis had been doing some dorkey stuff early in the day, but during his run dorking was the last thing he was doing. He was serious! Ellis has just got the raddest style. Everything works for him: he’s smooth, fast, aggressive, fluid, tweaked and high. He’s a pleasure to watch. He throws his GT all over the place, landing everything smoothly just below the coping ready for his pump and his next air. Jason’s variations included Back-cans, No-foot X-ups, Hand-can Can-cans, blistering Griz Airs, unholy Inverts, Clicked Turn-downs, Double Can-cans, Candy-bars, and Invert One-footers. He was shredding. He also did his patented front peg Drop-ins but his airs were his strength. With his uniform on Jason Ellis looks tike an over aggressive Josh White; he’s definitely one of the best vert riders we have.

As the jam drew to a close I was pleased to note that there were few major slams. Greg had a harsh 540° but got up unhurt. He won, maybe because Ellis was very tired on his tast run. The fatigue factor was impor¬tant on this occasion: with so few A Group riders the gap between runs was very short.

T Shirts and cheques were handed out as prizes and the crowd drifted over to the pad-dling pool for the customary jam circle. Phil Dolan per-formed. The talk was of the jam and of plans for the next day — riding plans that is.