Shot and produced by my one time boss at Vision's Unreel Productions, Don Hoffman, this video is a look at skateboarding "streetstyle," about a year after the first contest, I think. Roots.
On Facebook a couple days ago, BMX legend Dave Voelker asked, "Who invented street contests first, BMXers or skaters?" Since I was at the Oceanside street skating contest in 1986, a year and a half before Wilkerson's first 2-Hip Meet the Street in Santee, in 1988, I knew it was skaters. Dave Vanderspek put on a bike street contest in NorCal before that, but skaters still did it first. When I went looking for an early street skating contest video, this one came up. This was when skateboarding was ruled by vert skating, and the freestyle skaters were a sideshow, off to the side, as talented as they were. Freestylers got their revenge a few years later, by becoming the guys running the industry. Street skating was just begining to be a thing, and people were trying to figure out just what could be done with a skateboard in an urban setting. Thirty-seven years later, that mission continues.
