When I was like 8 years old, which would be 1988, I saw one of my dads friend hit a rail with a little banana style board I used to mess with. Thinking back now, I'm assuming he had been doing that stuff for years since me and my friend were the only ones amazed and all the adults basically acted like they've seen him do it a thousand times. I wouldn't doubt if he did either after seeing some of the shit he could do on a board over the years growing up. My dad had a bunch of friends who could do all kinds of amazing shit on skateboards, bikes, dirt bikes etc back in the 80's. Meanwhile my dad couldn't do shit on anything lol. When I was young I always wondered how he ended up with all these cool friends who did all this amazing stuff then after I got older I realized he was the town pot dealer LOL
I skated in the 84 - 2004 and just got another board recently I remember all these tricks coming out and we’d work our way from sliding curbs to benches to handrails. I remember the injury rate sky rocketing but we had a blast even when we were being escorted off properties. Thanks for the videos lots of great memories from 33-34 years ago for me.
You probably won't read this johnny, but I skated exactly the same time span as you. On and off in the first 3 to 4 years as I didn't have the 'real' skater friends yet. Just kids with an old board. In England though so weather permitting. It was finding real skaters as teen, and videos. Oh how the videos blew my mind. I'd seen 1 or 2 kids locally pop little ollies, no complys, in 87 that got me into it big. But then seeing santa cruz, Powell vids, I knew who I was now. I only stopped in 04 coz bad injury. Back 360 off jump ramp, landed 270 awkward and destroyed 3 discs. It was devastating mentally, and I knew it would be, coc skating had been my mental and physical crutch for long time. Its still so painful and debilitating as 2 half disc bulge into the nerves. I have forced myself out a handful of times to the odd park. Even squeeze out front shove, pressure flip. So lame, but a feeling I had lost for 15 years. I would skate so much if I could, clean and sober, even do my physio. It sucks. Anyway, thanks for listening doc, same time next week?
Gonz's first sponsor was Alva and their earliest video called "Rock Monster" has Chris Cook doing this kinda weird Tim Jacksonish caveman boardslide down a 9 set concrete handrail/wall thing. That video included the Oceanside Street Attack contest in it, so Cooksie's trick was at least contemporaneous with Natas'
Shoutout to You Radrat! Somebody documenting all things about skateboarding. I can’t skate right now because of an acl injury that keeps coming back, but your vids, and all the skate video games (1,2&3) keep me hyped and motivated. Thank you. You truly are a blessing to the skate world. I can never say thank you enough 🤘
I don't just click the Like button, after I watch your videos. I manifest my satisfaction with the viewing experience into a physical thumbs-up to my computer screen for a job well done. Keep it up.
Are you really manifesting it? Within your subjectivity can you truly locate your self as an entity with independent volition to authorize ‘your’ actions?
I was at that contest and I know it was in 86, ocean side, NSA. We were right near there, near that rail. My brother actually sneaked through an busted a huge method off the flat board that ran up the lunch table, and he did it over the whole table, when most pros were going off the side. There was also a crazy Ollie to 50/50 I think either gonz did or natas did from flat ground over the cement seat to the back rest railing which was big for back in the day. Also I know it was then cause castl had a contest I believe that same year either before or after the NSA contest, cause it was my first castl and I got 3rd or 4th for highest Ollie for age class 12 and under. Lastly the NSA contest was funny cause there was still freestyle which no one cared to see, and it was a time when I think a lot of half pipe guys were struggling to keep up w/ street skating & you could clearly see how frustrated they were. It was fun stuff. I thought NSA threw 2 contests there one in 86 and one in 87? Anyway thought I’d share.
hey man i really appreciate you and your videos.i quit skating a couple years ago due to work and just life in general but still are very much interested in skating and find your videos very informative and entertaining so thank you for your content
Thanks for the video, it's great. for what it's worth, I believe the first Ollie boardslide handrails were the little known & short-lived Concrete Jungle/Fog(not Dog)town riders. I remember them getting pics slightly before M Gonzales and N Kaupus. I think. Not too long before that , were people sitting on top of double barrel rails with feet on board, then pushing themselves forward from sitting position, and then sliding down. It was scary to watch. My older brother did them. Maybe what streetScott was doing in that pic? Before everybody else. At that time though, ollieing onto a rail wouldve been completely unfathomable. I think the only person capable of flat ground Ollie's at the streetScott pic time was R Mullen. At that time, R Mullen was strictly freestyle, he hadn't crossed over into street yet. First Street Ollie I saw was M Gonzales in trick tips, I think. That's a very long time ago in skateboard years, but I believe that's pretty accurate
My mistake, I thought that streetScott rail pic was 82 , but you actually said 85. Lots of people were street ollieing by that time, and getting down with it
Greg Smith was a freestyler back then with Rodney Mullen . If I remember right, he was doing some big stand-still ollies in the freestyle pit, Rodney was doing them rolling. Maybe Steve Rocco as well? Bob Schmelzer too?
First 5050 gonz in nyc 87. Comes out in mondo vision video i think in 88. Kevin Thatcher shot that street scott somethin else photo. So he knows the answer best.
Everyone likes to bag on Johnee, he was kind of a goofy dude, but I still give him credit for this one. If his ad was in the June '86 issue of Thrasher, the photo couldn't have been taken any later than March of '86 and probably was earlier. Remember, this was back when mags took a LOT longer to put together, print, and mail out to subscribers. All the magazine layout was physically cut and pasted by hand (with scissors and glue, there was no Photo Shop or Publisher) and had to be printed and ready to mail at least a month before the issue date to allow time for them to be delivered to homes and shops. And in case anyone figures out who I am, yes I lived in Hawaii from '88 to '91, and while I wasn't there in '86 I heard from plenty of people that skated with him then that he did ollie into the rail and did land it, so I have no reason to doubt that he was doing them at least as early as Gonz and Natas, if not earlier.
Amazing. In those contest videos from 85-86 he barely ollies. I think the video I have uploaded he only ollies over a curb in a 1985 contest, and even that looked like he did it with a little effort.
@@Nominay True, but think about the decks we were using in 1985: 10.5 inch wide "egg" shapes with wide trucks to match, low tail kick, no nose kick, barely concave, wheels that were the size of your fist...in other words, total pigs that weighed a ton and a half. By '86, Johnee was riding his pro model, which was 9.75" wide with a narrow nose (for wall rides) and narrow waist, narrower trucks and smaller wheels. The concave still sucked, but they were much lighter. As added motivation, when you have an idea for a trick that will blow minds but requires you to ollie higher, you figure out how to ollie higher pretty damn quick :P
@@NominayIf you are going fast you barely have to ollie to get up on a rail. You only need to get your front truck over and pull the rest up. You can do about a 1' high ollie and still barge up there on many rails.
The first time I saw it in a video was Public Domain (1988). Like you pointed out when we saw it in a magazine you had no idea how they got into it or if they rolled away from it.
I saw in some video... can't remember which one... but i think it was natas or maybe gonz who explained that the "something else" section was a mix of funny pics, staged pics, and actual skateboard photos, and when they saw that pic they didn't know if it was real or not but they wanted to figure out how to do it
It's nice to see our future recognizing us 70's 80's shredders appreciate the fact that we paved the way for the future! Rock on 🤘 SKATEBOARD ING IS NOT A CRIME!
I don't even know why I am watching this, being 41 yo, started skating after 27 years, and trying to re-learn ollies on curbs. But, I really enjoying it...
We were trying caveman boardslides on rails at the VB oceanfront in 1986. Not many people had enough pop in their ollies at the time but times were changing- REALLY FAST. At the time, streetskating was starting to come into its own, but vert ruled by and large. Who was first? Dunno. Doesn't truly matter since street-riding back then was evolving fast, boards were changing, wheels and trucks were getting better, and by 1988 a knee-high ollie, backside wallrides, and no-complys were standard fare. Mini-ramp was evolving even faster with many of us "non-vert skaters" bringing street tricks to steep tight transitions, jersey- barricades, and walls. Big curbs and home-made "boxes" were the norm.
Hey radrat. Just a thought here, but you know how you do retro rippers? You should do a segment similar to that but covering upcoming or skaters who are on top right now. Modern monsters? Tacky name but the concept is something I would love to see you cover! Put some of these old heads on to a newer generation of skaters that they might not know of.
That june 87 issue with Gonz doing the rail was possibly my first Thrasher mag i ever bought. If it wasnt june it was July. The top of the cover had some black and white checkerboard design. And 86 seems more likely as far as first handrail. The first one i saw personally was done at Bartlett high school in Bartlett/Memphis TN by Greg Gallouly and Mike P i 1988 i was 12 and it blew my mind. Then at 12yrs old i learned how to bomb drop boardslide handrails then few months later olly bordslide handrail at the end if 1988 age 12. Skateboard AlvaBill Danforth.
If you listen to the Ray Simmonds and Danny Sargent episode of Talkingschmit, it seems like lots of people where trying it. They where not so aware of what everybody was trying and landing. They where in their own little bubble.
Caveman? Damn, I had to look that up because I figured with the context of how you said that I knew about it but I never heard of that word. Me and my friends called it bomb dropping back in the day. Used to do that off of trucks, houses, and anything. I can thank Ali's part in Sorry! for that.
Johnee Kop, Oahu Hawaii The story i heard was Gonz was in Hawaii skating and he was trying them, Johnee landed them . Go and ask Mark Oblow, of Mob Griptape
In spite of the Street Scott and Johnee Kop pictures in Thrasher, for some reason the handrail concept didn't catch on more until Natas at the Oceanside contest of '86, and word of him and Gonz doing it a month or so after that. A very influential feature at this time is a Thrasher interview with Gonz in the Sept. or Oct. 1986 issue. To this day I remember how big a deal that interview was, and with the photo sequence of him doing what became known as the Gonz Gap at EMB.
Love these videos, great work. Have you seen NBD Archive page on instagram? Amazing amount of research by that guy to find the olde 1st documented tricks.
I used to skate from the early 80s to the mid 90s...we used to do a boneless to a handrail way before we started to olie to handrail...that was in the late 80s ..maybe 88 to 89 ..in Greece..
That time depends. We do know for certain that helmets were introduced sometime in 84' because you see no helmets in 83 and then all helmets in all the 84' magazines at some point in that year. I don't know if they were wearing helmets yet at these street contests or not. that's the only time reference I know for sure.
can you do why style is very important to skateboarding for longevity. i think kids this day is so amazed of what they see in social media with all technicals skills and look past to how was it done, how the skater looks, is it fluid, is there something on it...you know, i can name one trick now from this generation of skater that has it.Dylan's(RIP) double flip in the table and the tre flip in the stroller. people need to see the totality of that trick. Nyjah is all good but its so robotic..but lil Nyjah thats more steeze on it. Thanks for this really enjoy watching all your vids.
Check this: www.thrashermagazine.com/images/image/Features/2009/1988/8805/800t/8805p68-p69.jpg Published in May 1988, Thrasher. (So the interview is likely from late 1987): "Over a year ago (so late 1986) I did an 'ollie to handrailing' -- a really long one, over 10 stairs long -- with Mark. Nobody had ever done one and it felt so good (...) I got the same feeling when I learned 50 50 grinds on the same railing" (!)
Tobin Yelland has a photo of Danny Sargent doing a 50-50 on that same rail that had the first fs board on it. He claims it was the first published 50-50 in 1988.
Renting video in the 80s was a trip. Lots of old footage to see. I feel the handrail thing started long before like late 70s with just a cave man as fun. Try to get in touch with the older DOGS of skateboarding.
Gonz did a 180 ollie to fakie 50/50 on a handrail in a contest video I watched in '88 I believe. I can't remember the contest name. It had a 10 foot tall curved quarter pipe and a broken down car with bump ramps and this fun box with a handrail on it. Gonz was the only one to do anything on it. At least that I remember it's been so long since I watched it back then.
Okay so have one problem with this vid who the hell told you that a trick isn't legit until you've done it on a rail ? I grew up in Cali my whole life and I remember this dude doing a kickflip back Smith 360 flip out at my local park on a ledge and everyone lost their minds the ledge was probably less than 2 feel tall but everyone was super stoked
this is actually easy to figure out.. who ever had a high enough olli at that time was teh one who did it. soo that pretty much guarantees gonz or natas. as far as street scott and the other guys. my guess is the first people to "slid" a rail, but not actually olli on. tho if that 4star johnny cop one is in riverside (i have done it on a bike and its not that tall).
I don't care who was the very first, the man who pioneered it, first filled his video parts with it, essentially making it a thing and pushed and pushed it going bigger and bigger similar to what you see today, and I don't mean no 3 stair rail, is none other than Frank Hill. Whoever disagrees shouldn't be allowed to speak
I dont know if you included this clip, but Grosso interviewed Johnee Kop for his Hawaii Loveletters....Kop says he thinks he was the first to have it published but gave the credit to Gonz for doing it first. I believe he said his was legit ollied up to, no caveman.
i think gonzs point is we will never know who the first person to do it was. you could have some totally cooked people like mullen, who potentially never got hte shot to be noticed.
So Ed's name wasn't in the ad but a few pages earlier from the same session he had a pic front boarding the same rail, so if you had a little bit of common sense you knew who did that. Also the courthouse rail was the first one that Gonz and Natas landed rail slides on, there's another story that Gonz lied to Natas about doing a 50-50 on a rail and that's why Natas went and did one, he later told Gonz and Gonz had to go make one.
50/50 down a handrail. Check out "Sick Boys", Natas (2:50 ish) with a 50/50 at night. Sick boys is from 1988, which may well mean that the grind was from 1987... RU-vid: watch?v=hzx5Ji3Yyas
I worked for Tim at rad in london.if Transworld had the documented 50 50 credited to Texas and the cover says June 1985 then based on my time at rad..the magazine was put together two months before the published cover date.documenting it doesn't mean it was never done anywhere.its documenting the foto.
I remember the skateboard magazine ad for "nut crackers" which I guess were some kind of protection for your nads in case the "brail slide" went wrong and you slammed your nuts on the hand rail. That ad kind of psyched me out. I would ollie to the rail and just ghost it and not commit. I did not want to get my nuts cracked. We laughed about the ad, but it was one of those funny not funny kind of things.
Frankie Hill= my 1st generations1st person to emerge new style from the stiff bones brigade era. His deck & Bucky's we're everywhere.. esp cause PowellPeralta quality of decks were noticeably more durable and had better everything at the time.. *If you can skate any late 80's powell deck you will notice it...Mine is a ray Underhill(RIP) CROSS DECK FROM 1987/1988.Surprisingly it has huuuge kicknose a good 1-2 years b4 they were popular....
Gonz was coolest of the cool in late 80's..Everyone was still wearing those lame short shorts and Gonz was sporting what we would sport until we all cloned Matt Hensley's uniform
Joel Wrona was doing huge rails before anyone!!!! Also, Danny Sargent and Shawn Martin as well. Joel was doing the big rails at SF State by 1987! Ray Simmonds and Jeff Petit were a ways back and they eventually ended up on H Street. Joel didn't care about being sponsored or a famous skater, he just loved skating. The dude is a LEGEND!
As someone who skated with some of these people at some of these spots when all of this stuff was going on, I generally find these videos where people go back before their time to try to figure this out quite cringe worthy. I will give you credit for the Street Scott reference-- not many people get that one and btw Natas was reported to have landed or at least come way closer to those boardslides at that Oside contest in the warm ups than the one filmed in his run. Also Danny Sargent had a 50 -50 at Everette ( same school as Julian's first frontside boardslide ) in a Concrete Jungle add ran in Thrasher that I believe pre dates the Templeton photo in Transworld. I'm pretty sure but again like the Kopp photo, by the time these pics ran, other people ( a small handful ) were already doing these tricks, just not getting coverage.
@@apeapeape999 Dude are you serious, How does someone I can confirm was around these guys because I seen him on a daily basis with these guys make him or the guys who pushed skating the elite? Maybe look at yourself pal Shane is confirming the story and giving props.
Tobin Yelland sells a photo on his site of Danny's 50-50 claiming it's the first published one. Funny that Gonz and Natas get 99% of the credit. Respect to Gonz for not just going along with that narrative.
Hey RadRat, have you seen that video of Nazi soldiers with skateboards? it's a rare video showing that skateboarding was originated way before than people thought... here's the link watch?v=Iwxsay44LUY
