Is this what happens when your hips feel like dry biscuits and you’re only skating once a week?
Genuinely thinking about trying to put together a small book about the history of skateboarding in Coventry, which is pretty odd considering I’ve not lived there for nearly 20 years. However, I’m very aware that some of the OG guys won’t be around forever, and it feels important to collect their stories for posterity. If you were putting a rough questionnaire together, what would you be asking? I’m trying to create a framework for referencing purposes / track networks, but do you think I’m missing anything? Early days yet, but here’s what I’m thinking,.
Date you started skating / first memories?
People you skated with?
Spots skated / spots travelled to?
What were you riding / where were you procuring gear from?
What were you listening to?
Notable anecdotes?
How your relationship with skating changed as time went on?
It’s really early days, but I’ve lined up some chats with a few people and hope to get a few interviews done before summer. I’ve already seen some batshit photos from the late 70s which very few folk have seen, so it’d be great to share those in the future. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Yeah, there’s definitely a folkloric element to it! It’ll be a year or two at least if it gets off the ground as I’m also working on other stuff, but just collating the stories will be a great start. Plus it’ll be a great excuse to trawl through the magazine pile!
Wish i photographed every item that was on fire in holbrooks bowls over the years. Fair few cars, random rubbish and that one time a sofa was still smouldering
Don’t forget Build has his book coming out soon. That will probably have some Cov stories and photos in it, I’d imagine (could be wrong)? Definitely check it out any way.
Ah! I wondered who was putting that together! Yeah, I wondered if there’d be anything in there, looking forward to picking up a copy when it’s out. I’ve been massively inspired by what Jono Coote’s done recently with his last two books, and will obviously be doing some due diligence to see if someone else has already made a start on something similar.
Cheers for the input on that, that’s a really good open-ended angle to approach from. Haha, they’ll definitely be some person specific tailoring going on!
Ideally they’re deep inside some AI somewhere and it will eventually bubble to the surface and break it, as it won’t understand the significance of the time that Wavey Dave drank three bottles of white lightning on a Monday night and still managed to mug a pensioner on the Tuesday morning.
The Knowhere site is still available on the Wayback Machine archive to some degree.
Here’s Brighton’s ‘Skate spots’ page for example:
The old Sidewalk forum is also partly archived too, though most threads don’t work, but you can try different months from different years on the bar at the top to try other captures. 2007 seems to have been captured a lot for some reason.
Here is the very first page of the STOKED thread from 22nd November 2006:
