I too bottled it at Radlands. Me and my mate were gonna do it. He went first. He was wearing a Hensley style keychain, slammed and the chain embedded itself into his hip.
I was like, nah.
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I once did a backside roll in on the Redlands vert ramp with the insane overconfidence of youth that makes me go cold now. Rode along the platform at an angle, lifted my front wheels, felt my back truck grind, kickturned in and rode away. God knows how I didn’t die, but I’d never even dream of trying that now.
It’s why little kids are often so good at vert drop ins: nothing really bad has ever happened to them yet so they haven’t yet developed the fear that puts off older skaters.
The first time I ever dropped in was on a soaking wet mini ramp in the middle of a random field in Carnforth. I’d probably been skating 5 months.
Dropped in, fell back and smashed my head on the coping. Luckily, I was wearing the helmet my parents had made me wear, which cracked from the impact. If not for that, I’d probably have died. What a way to go…
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First time I learnt to drop in on a ramp was a fiberglass bowl shaped like a penis in Grenoble. Dropped in but slid out on my bare knee. Friction burn taught me not to bail again.
Years later at the old skatepark in Lyon, they built a new 6ft quarterpipe for the street course. Loads of us were having ago except for a friend of ours who had never skated transition despite being a rad street skater. We all egged him on and he reluctantly went for it. He slipped out backwards sullying hid fresh beige cargos and swore never to skate tranny again.
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Dropping in on vert with a chain on is mental.
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First drop in was on a roughly constructed mini ramp made from wood thieved from god knows what plus road signs, located in a rough DIY in a sibsiding retail park unit just by Bidston train station on the Wirral. Sketch as fuck. After I think it was either the Monkmoor ramps in Shrewsbury or the metal at central park Wallasy.
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First very ramp I dropped in on and rock fakie’d was the big blue one at Leigh on sea I think. Was fucking massive back in those days. Tiny now.
I’d padded up, helmet etc etc and had a bigger set up for transition when I stood at the top of the vert at Ramp City maybe 12-13 years back. Nah was exactly what I said as I went giddy at top 
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First one I did was the big metal outdoor one in Bath
Don’t remember the biggest one. Birmingham was quite big
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First was at Southsea. Dropped on on Satan’s toilet the same day and was absolutely buzzing! It had these metal 6’ tall & 2’ wide vert walls out the top of it, but surely no one has ever skated them lol. Learnt a few stunts on the Radlands vert but my favourite ramp was Mount Hawke. A proper beauty.
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Am I wrong in remembering articles featuring Mount Hawke when it opened where one of the main attractions was a curb cut that skaters like Neil Urwin and Ben Bodilly (?) flew out of?
Curb cuts as a feature in a skatepark felt like an inspiration from the Greyhound curb cuts in Virtual Reality.
@anonymity am I dreaming or were Mount Hawke curb cuts a thing?
Dont know how to post pictures on here but yeah it did. Pretty sure it was like a black pavement with white kerbs.
When I lived down there it was indoors but went on holiday and skated it when I was little.
This is how I remember it. Park was outdoors though.
If anyone (Buildafire?) has scsns this is circa 1993-4 video grab sequence era RAD
Yeah the kerbs were defo outside.
Used to happen all the time 10+ years ago but not even really had any police problems since. Was probably a period of anti-social behaviour shit at the time they were going for. Newcastle monument in its day was prime for it. I always used to give my name as different pro skaters and use my next door neighbors address.
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Yeah I remember being chased around Newcastle one Sunday by a load of police in vans. To be fair an unofficial meet up had been arranged and a load of people turned up and it caused a bit of chaos in the centre. They also had some pretty high fines for skating monuments and memorials too.
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Like a dweeb I gave my real name and phone number when we got busted for the highly criminal act of skateboarding in birmingham. Cops were really aggressive. My dad got a call, I was shitting it but he gave the copper a bollocking for being grabby and sweary at a bunch of kids. Cop ended up apologising
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