Ok, so I’ve been reading when I’ve got the time about Quicksilver’s “All 80s All Day” shindig and have seen some of the vert footage, but I hadn’t stumbled upon any of the street footage and was wondering if it was just strickly vert that they were doing. So, I used my high tech searching skills and pulled up youtube and searched for “All 80s All Day street” and low and behold in my wildest dreams….I found the Street Session that went down at the Quicksilver All 80s event and it rocks your mothers socks!
I mean, I love 80s vert and all because I grew up skateboarding in mid to late 80s and when you watched skate videos, you watched alot of vert and vert is awesome….the only problem is where I lived in Omaha, Nebraska, the nearest skatepark was a couple hours away and so you had to have an adult willing to drive you and then you had to pay to get in. I remember doing this once with a friend and saw it as my one opportunity to skate vert. I was scared shitless and I owned no pads at all and the skatepark we went to didn’t even require me to wear any! I remember distincly standing up at the top of that vert ramp with my naked deck that I had jigsawed into a Hosoi Hammerhead shape along with custom artwork and griptape and a nice polyurethane coating! 🙂 I was trembling…I had never dropped in on vert before and nobody was at this skatepark when we were there to even encourage me but my friend Aaron who had never done it either. I tried to envision myself on top of the quarterpipe at my friend Tom Sullivan’s house and kept telling myself to lean forward more because it was vert….I remember as I was dropping the nose of my skateboard down onto the ramp….asking God to please not let me die! 🙂 It all happened so fast, all four wheels were on the ramp vertical and then the next thing I know I’m at the bottom of the ramp standing on my board and I hadn’t fallin yet! Awesome I thought to myself and then as quick as that happened I was faced with the other side of the ramp and I was haulin ass real fast….I remember thinking, oh shit, what do I do now, I didn’t think that I would actually be standing still going up the other side! 🙂 LOL! So, I bailed, fell backwards on my ass and shot my board up the otherside, then covering my head as my board went straight up into the air and crashed hard back onto the flat.
So, that was my vert experience and my only vert experience to date unless you count my first pool session 3 years ago, but that is another story on it’s own. So, back in Nebraska I grew up worshipping vert skaters like everyone else but I skated street, ledges, stairs, curbs, parking blocks, launch ramps, homemade rails and once a miniramp. That is not to say I didn’t also worship street gods like Natas Kaupas, Tommy Guerrerro, Mark Gonzales, Ron Allen and others…Vert was just where it was at back then.
Ok, I just have to say when I watched this video, I was very impressed with how much the production of the whole thing was so believably 80s. I mean, if you were not watching closely, you would think it was authentically 80s footage….it’s that good! 🙂 Enjoy if you haven’t already! 🙂 Be sure to watch until the end to see the results…you’ll be surprised that a dagger won the contest!
