All Pro Skateboard
Life / SkatePoint Roberts, Washington used to have an ocean strip of stores and fast food cafes. It was the type of place that on a summer Saturday night, hot rods, bootleggers, and skateboarders could be found running beer and launching blast ramps. Being Canadian, I used to jump the border and go to a store called Whalen’s and buy American candy and pop.
Recently, I was going through some old magazines and out fell one All Pro Skateboard trading card that I bought a Whalen’s store when I was a kid. The sticker says “Street Freak” and shows a monster/freak pushing down the street; the typography treatment is pretty cool, and it amazes me I still have a few of these cards. Most of them instantly went on my bedroom wall, a duo-tang or a skateboard. I can remember some of the other cards – “Bail Out”, “Frontside 360”, “One Foot-Nose Wheelie” and my favorite “On the Ceiling”. All the illustrations depict skateboarding in its first steps into street and pool skating - when doing just about anything was a trick and considered cool. The flip side of the card would show an actual photo of a skateboarder, most likely bombing a hill.
I was checking out some new decks at a skate shop and noticed that the Street Freak sticker is used as a graphic for a new skateboard, which is a coincidence, since I just recently stumbled upon that very card that inspired me to write this post.
