radical skateboarding w/3 kneecaps |
Busting an early frontside "stink-bug" air at the Northport Pipeline skateboard park, 1978, New York. Photo: Wayne Griffith. |
At 13 years of age, I, the young teenage "Ted" discovered skateboarding, and focused all my energy into the sport/art. I spent my formative adult years, ages 13-18, growing up with the birth of the first extreme sport. It was an exciting time to be alive. The timing was perfect. I had just learned to ride a Black Knight wooden board with clay wheels when the urethane wheel came out, which revolutionized the sport. Skateboarding evolved at unprecedented speeds by the standards of any sport. Starting with handstands & nose wheelies on fiberglass boards in '74 to inverts & no-hands "ollie" aerials out of pools on wood laminate boards in '79, it was Kitty Hawk to the moon in five short years. |
dogtown & z-boys adrenaline levels w/ Wentzle Ruml IV |
Each new issue of Skateboarder Magazine was an adolescent tour-de-force of innovation in maneuvers, terrain, and equipment. Seeing the first lipslide was mind blowing, seeing the first aerial and invert doubly so, pulling it off it was even better. I learned first hand what the word "radical" meant and passionately pursed that perfect moment of weightlessness, that front side hang time, which comes from pulling off a vertical aerial or grind.
I skateboarded every day. There were days when I spent more time standing on my board than walking, for real. I built boards and a mini-halfpipe in my basement. I competed in contests and was interviewed in the Hampton Star newspaper. In the midst of growing up in white-trash born-again Christian negativity and Jr. High School bullying, it was a really positive thing. |
Look closely, I have three kneecaps & one red sneaker. The teenage "Ted" with a dislocated knee from an aborted invert, Northport Pipeline skateboard park, New York, 1979. Check out the homemade, foot-wide vert board with copers! Photo: Wayne Griffith. |
a time where no shoes, fiberglass boards, |
and loose ball bearing wheels ruled!
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This is not rad...but it is! Imagine if you can, a time before precision bearing wheels, a time where the urethane wheel was just being born, a time where no one knew the meaning of the word "ollie" or even the word "rad." This is before Dogtown and Z-boys, this is before kicktails, this is Spinn'in Wheels (sic). A time where no shoes, fiberglass boards, and loose ball bearing wheels ruled! This is Mike Weed "flowin'" on the streets of California in the early '70s. Mike's "end-over" up the curb, scraping the bottom of his board (see movie still above), and one-and-a-half three-sixty banking off the driveway at the end of the sequence, blew my fifteen-year-old mind like seeing your first ollie. Also note, like Bob Burnquist, Mike is riding switch-stance half the time, in bare feet! This is truly great skateboarding from another time and place, don't dis it, watch in respect!
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A humble shot of "The Wedge" on a hot and hazy summer day. Even on the hottest days, The Wedge was always cool on the inside, like visiting a deep-sea concrete reef. Note the car on the far left, like a motorized shark with glowing phosphorescent eyes, looking to devour skaters and their boards! |
Clean and smooth, like a beautiful cathedral of the extreme made of concrete and steel, "The Wedge" as viewed from the inside. Like surfing a wave rising up, about to break on huge concrete pylons, you could ride The Wedge both left and right. (I searched through my old photographs for hours, pissed I was unable to find a picture of The Wedge. Finally, after years of waiting, I was psyched when Google Maps finally expanded their street view to include this lovely industrial photography of my favorite childhood skate spot, yea!) |
The Z-boys had Paul Revere Jr. High, we had "The Wedge." My first skate spot, The Wedge was a Sunrise Highway underpass in Bayshore, New York. A freak of highway architecture, there was about a street width of concrete between the bank and the concrete pylons, and then another street width to the actual street. It was the most dangerous skate spot I ever rode in the early, pre-vert days. You'd start at the top, hanging on to an overhead concrete I-beam, then let go like ski-racer busting out of a racing gate. You'd take the drop and make your bottom turn just missing the pylons at the bottom. Then, you'd cut back up the wall and bank off it a couple of times like riding a wave, it was fun! The concrete was super-smooth too. The roar of trucks and skateboards wiping out on the concrete echoed throughout the underpass like hellish, industrial waves pounding onto a concrete beach, RUMBLE...BAM! Bam...bam... I never saw so many boards break at a skate spot before. If you fell, your board rolled out into the street and got run over by a truck or some macho, Italian "gavone" driving a Camaro cursing you out. Or worse, if you didn't fall, you had to weave through the pylons and hope to make your bottom turn on the outer concrete section before hitting the street. Sometimes, dudes would take the drop and slalom through the pylons, that was a little trick you could do. The first time I took the drop I was so scared, I made it to the bottom flat, got speed wobbles, freaked, and ran into another skater twice my size going the opposite direction, THUD...uh... Tame by today’s standards, The Wedge was the badass skate spot of the neighborhood in the early 70s. |
Years later, revisiting my roots with an early 80s layback on a smaller wedge-like underpass a couple of exits away. The city put speed bumps on the old Wedge, SIGH... but this photo gives you an idea of what riding the original "Wedge" was like. Check out my trusty Ford Maverick with no front end in the background. Photo: Adrienne Richter. |
The blue line is directions from my house in Islip to "The Wedge" in Bayshore. I'd have to pedal my bike over seven miles to ride The Wedge, it was totally worth it. |
Ariel view of The Wedge. Where Howells Road turns into the North Sunrise Highway Service Road under Sunrise Highway, that's where the action was! |
My dreamland skate ramp's got flow! Someday, I will have a warehouse with solar collectors on top and will build this skate ramp to ride in it. Now, it's just a lopsided pencil-sketch dream, SIGH! |
Outline
Scan Hampton Star newspaper article.
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