Elsewhere, The Story of UK Skateboarding 1987-2002, Neil MacDonald (Batsford)
I was a bit apprehensive about this one. The late 80s was when it all seemed over for skateboarding: loads of skateparks had shut or been demolished, boards had shrunk, many skate kids seemed more interested in hanging around the streets smoking, accompanied by their skateboards, than actually skating, and those who did skate were doing weird tricks on street furniture. Having spent a decade skating in London at Meanwhile 2, the South Bank and Rolling Thunder, with occasional trips to Romford, Harrow and elsewhere, sliding down railings or flipping a board off a bench didn’t feel the same, and I soon bored of doing kick turns and little else on the sloping roof above the car park stairs in Exeter.
Of course, as this book shows, skateboarding didn’t disappear, it reinvented itself. Not only on the street but by building wooden ramps instead of concrete parks, creating new tricks and moves, gradually amassing enough momentum to support indie magazines, clothing lines and new skate shops. Having got itself together, it then saw skate & surf fashion enter the mainstream and a new batch of wide boys trying to ride the commercial wave of instant profiteering, the likes of which killed it off first time round.
It’s strange to see how parts of the skate community got swept up in all this, buying expensive skate shoes, limited edition decks and over-priced t-shirts. Although this book suggests that ‘it wasn’t until the early-to-mid 2000s where the money really caught up’, there’s plenty of evidence here – be it slick magazines, fashion or over-designed deck graphics – that it happened much earlier.
Anyway, this book is a fragmented series of written and visual snapshots, in chronological order, of skateboarding during this period. You have to work out your own history and how everything is or isn’t related here as the book jumps geographically, socially and from overview to detailed subject matter, with fantastic photos all the way. These include the obligatory action shots but also some great casual photos of backyards, street moves, splintered or half-constructed ramps, and an encounter with the police. There’s also the brilliant cover shot of a flying board going through the rear windscreen of a car at Meanwhile 2.
The diversity of skating is foregrounded here, along with the music, art, illustration, drugs, bullshit and hype that surrounded it. It’s a gritty and forthright alternative to the airbrushed versions that we are used to and that seemed, at the time, to be what was happening in the USA. MacDonald uses the word ‘commodification’ and he is not wrong. Elsewhere is a glorious, sprawling, energetic history that helped me fill in some gaps about what I didn’t know and got me quite nostalgic. It didn’t however, convince me that sliding down metal rails above public stairs was anything like the rush of skating a concrete half-pipe or pool.
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Rupert Loydell
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