Most of my friends are younger than I. When I told them that my first skateboard had clay wheels, they look at me like 'Ar? ’ I tell them, ‘No, really. They were made of clay!’ I’m not sure some of them believe me.
I was so happy when urethane wheels (and Cadillac trucks!) came out. We had these seeds that fell on the sidewalk from the trees, and to hit one was an easy way to a fat lip on the clay wheels. You still had to watch out for them, but the urethane wheels handled them better. And they were quiet! My first 'board was made of wood. Ah, nothing like the sound of virtual cement rolling on cement and resonating through a half-inch of wood! It was a lot better on the urethane wheels, and better still when I traded my canvas Boy Scout tent to a neighbour for an aluminum Hobie board.
I didn’t have a skateboard and my first two wheel bike was a single speed with no brakes. The pedals moved as long as the bike moved. I took my life into my own hands on every downhill. I still break into a cold sweat just thinking about it.
Ah, the days when you’d hunt around for scrap pieces of wood, oak if you were lucky, to shape into a general skateboard shape. If we didn’t have that, we of course lifted it from the local hardware store. Good times.
(Yea, I don’t skateboard, and I am way too young to even begin to remember a time before urethane, but I still want to be Tony Alva.)
Johnny, when and where were you skating with clay wheels? I imagine you were right in LA when the Zephyr team took over everything, but I may have my dates mixed up.
That sounds about right. I must have gotten my first 'board in '66 or '67. By the time I got to jr. high we had urethane. They were still fairly new, and I remember some boards being made in wood shop. But I had my cool custom-painted (by me and a friend) aluminum board by that time, so I didn’t make one.
Hey, you know how longboards are popular nowadays? Probably around '75 or '76 I put wheels on one of my dad’s old Cut’n’Jump waterskis. Didn’t turn worth a damn.
We just used pine cones separated by a (Christmas gift) oak branch axle. Hook that up to a sawed off boat paddle from someone that drowned and you had pretty good skateboard.
If you took one of those things and rolled off of a high place, you would fall just as fast as you do today with these new ones.
Heh. My rather brief skakeboarding career (steel wheels) was in San Diego in '65-66. We started off making primitive scooters by pulling the trucks off some skates and nailing them to some 2X4’s. “Real” skateboards came after we realized how nerdy we looked! With those steel wheels, I got tired of falling off every time I hit a piece of gravel or crack in the pavement. I guess I must have given up before clay came along.
Let’s see, mid-60’s, sheet metal steel wheels made from two flanged disks back-to-back. My first 'board was storebought, red, I cannot quite remember the name in white paint on the deck…
Then, the world rocked when older brother scored a natural wood finished, wide almond-shaped board (rear point trimmed) on clay wheels! Smaller diameter than the steel wheels, with much more sophisticated trucks (black rubber instead of steel springs, as I recall). Wow, those clay wheels were cherry.
The original StingRay bike came out shortly thereafter, and after many months of hard labor on the paper route the butterfly handlebars, banana seat and “slick” (vs. “knobby”) rear tire were mine. Bye-bye skateboard, before urethane changed everything.
And the shirts with the single 4-inch horizontal stripe between nipples and navel.
At around the time of the great shift to urethane ('76 or so), I remember the “big kids” all had those really thin fiberglass skateboards. They looked about a quarter inch thick, with cool designs printed on them. My mom gave my brother a skateboard for his birthday, but it was kind of lame: it was thick clunky molded plastic instead of the much desired thin fiberglass. The trucks and wheels weren’t the best either. He used it anyway, probably a bit embarrassed to not have the latest cool board.
How 'bout the change in board size?
The skateboards of the day were about six inches wide and two feet long. The craze of the 70s kind of faded a bit and then, overnight, those big boards that folks use to grind rails suddenly appeared in the 80s. If a modern board is truly superior, why did they go with those skinny boards back then?
Because the first skateboards were homemade, typically a two foot piece of 2x4 with the steel wheels from a strap-on skate nailed to the bottom. Skateboards started out thin because that was the material we had at hand.
Come to think of it, my first 'board was three-quarters of an inch thick; not a half-inch. Dad made it. I don’t remember what kind of wood it was, but it was about two feet long and about six inches wide. Dad painted it avocado green with the same paint he used on the fence. I don’t know where he got the wheels.
I remember the funky thick plastic boards. I didn’t think they were lame at the time, but my Hobie was much cooler. It started out bright yellow, but the guy I traded with and I used two shades of metallic blue spray paint and some silver spray paint. We’d put the nozzle very close to the deck and spray a little puddle, then blow on it with a straw to make an interesting design.
I bought a new skateboard in the early-'90s. It was thin laminated wood, about two feet long and rather wide. (I still have it, but it’s inaccessibe right now; else I’d measure it.) The deck was completely covered with anti-slip tape. That made it difficult for me, since the way I rode as a kid required that my right foot (in back) pivot on the deck. i.e., my right foot would point forward while I kicked with my left. When I got to speed I’d put my left foot across the front of the 'board and rotate my right foot 90°. The skid-tape made it difficult – especially since I’d destroyed both of my knees in high school and I was (and am) taller and heavier than I was in jr. high. We didn’t need non-skid when I was a kid. We ‘sidewalk surfed’ instead of doing all sorts of tricks. About as radical as we got was to ride off the curb to cross a street.
We used to call them rock wheels – as soon as you hit a rock you stopped. I remember getting my first good board . A Bonzia with 750 trucks and UFO wheels . I was the envy of my peers. That was a looooooong time ago.
My first, and only, board was a Sears model, made from 1/2" plywood, flat from one end to the other. It had wheels made of a composite that include walnut shells. Each wheel was about 1 1/2" wide, and they were hard enough that a wee pebble would stop it dead, and spit me off.
I played on it every afternoon, and my hands got gradually more scabby and bruised from falling off. When they got so sore that I couldn’t bear to land on them, I started landing on elbows and shoulders. Then I quit, and I never got back on it again.
On the special features of “Lords of Dogtown” they revealed that the real-life Stacey Peralta and Tony Alva did their own clay-wheel stunt double work for the film. They could not find skateboard stuntpeople who could ride those wheels proficiently enough.
You can also view some hairy footage of a stuntman breaking his leg in two in the Dogbowl. They reveal that they bought their Venice Pier Ferris wheel on eBay (“we saved a bundle!”) Really, the special features were better than the movie.
My very first skateboard (purchased from a classmate for a quarter in the mid 70s) had steel wheels, because it was homemade. It was also basically useless.
My second one had clay wheels and came from a variety store called “The Akron” (no idea if it was a chain or not, but I suspect it was) and was somewhat better in that it actually rolled when it had a person on it. Still not very encouraging, though, since it stopped at any and all obstacles.
My third one, which I had for a long time, was a “Grentec GT” with a rubbery hot pink plastic board, urethane wheels, and a little kick tail. Compared to the others, it was heaven! Then I got another plastic board (blue, kind of see-thru) with nice soft red urethane wheels and that was probably the last one I had until I got in college. All of them were cheapies–I don’t think I ever had a ‘real’ skateboard until I bought one on my own.
My lust objects were a board with a clear deck and a board with a US-flag design (this was in 1976) but I never got either one. (I’d seen other people riding them but never knew where they got 'em).
’ I tell them, ‘No, really. They were made of clay!’ I’m not sure some of them believe me.