I think something in-between would be nice. You go to the Rusty Harris contest, the first one where Rodney did the flat Ollie. And after the contest he showed how to do this to some of the skaters there. Just go, "That opens up so many ideas" and do a big spin (I think Rodney did a Gazelle at the next contest). And then just mention you go by RadRat. No need for photo documentation, you can bet Rodney mentions that RadRat dude who immediately saw the potential and took it a bit further in every interview, his book and his Ted Talk. You also get to return to a future where Rodney in his prime grasps how much you could do with the new technique a bit quicker.
I would just tell everyone in the 90s to stop partying so hard and start training more, and I would buy more pairs of those amazing shoes that we cant get since forever.. BTW, so you miss any of the shoes you had, or would you go back in time to buy anything skate related that doesn’t exist anymore?
It's insane to think that if skateboarding didn't begin exactly when it did, its history, direction, and relevance would be completely different. We have a rich history of skateboarding development that most other sports don't get to have. I believe this is almost purely due to the advancements of cameras and video recording devices. If skateboarding started a hundred years earlier, lots of history and 'firsts' would not have been documented because the cameras were large, bulky, and mainly operated by professionals. Because skateboarding was evolving alongside rapid camera advancements, it got to be recorded. Even 10 years would have been detrimental. Around the start of skating, there are only some gaps in knowledge before the era of convenient handheld recording devices. I just find it interesting because its one of the only sports that was in this situation. Something like soccer doesn't have that history where we can say this guy (name) is the first one to juggle a ball. This is because someone kicking a ball existed thousands of years before any recording devices and an interconnected world existed.
