Dave Gray and Jason Matthews Skateboarding the cliffs at Compton
Surfers started Skateboarding on the Island back in the 1960’s after hearing about the craze taking off in California. It all started with wooden boxes or boards with roller skate wheels slapped on the bottom. Eventually companies were producing decks of pressed layers of wood similar to the skateboard decks of today.
By 1963 there were already big downhill slalom or freestyle competitions taking place. By 1965 it seemed that skatebaording had died and that it was just a craze. Coincidently it was probably about this time that surfers on the Island started their own experiments with wooden planks and roller skate wheels.
In 1972, Frank Nasworthy invented urethane skateboard wheels, which are similar to what most skaters use today but it was to be many years before this new invention was to be seen on the Island. In 1978 a skater named Alan Gelfand (nicknamed “Ollie”) invented a maneuver that gave skateboarding another revolutionary jump. He would slam his back foot down on the tail of his board and jump, thereby popping himself and the board into the air. The ollie was born, a trick that completely revolutionized skateboarding.
By the end of the 70’s skateboarding looked to be having it’s second death. Public skate parks had been being built and on the Island I remember one at Golden Hill Fort, but by the 1980’s they had started to crumble and were in a terrible state. Skateparks were starting to be forced to close. Through the 1980’s skateboarders started to built their own ramps. Skateboarding began to be more of an underground movement, skaters making the whole world their skatepark.
In April 1990 the first known advert for a mountainboard appeared in a freshly-formed Transworld Skateboarding Magazine. Although many people tried off road wheels on skateboards over the years no one has a true claim to have invented the first All Terrain Skateboard.
During the late 1980’s I remember being at Compton on a very small wind blown day and it was the sort of day you could guarantee that Dave Gray, Jason Matthews and a few of the others would be found skating the car park. There were a few of us hanging around chatting when I noticed Dave and Jason checking out the the grassy slope that was the way down to the beach (Where the top steps now are). This is long before anyone had thought of, or even seen off road wheels for skateboards on the Island. I grabbed my camera from Clive’s car thinking I was going to get some pics of great crashes.
Jason and Dave soon mastered the top bank and would come down the new concrete path a great speed each time eyeing up the muddy bank down to the beach. It was just too un-even and muddy and they eventually had to give up on the idea of getting all the way to the beach (but not without giving it a pretty good go). Dave wasn’t prepared to give up now and started to climb the cliff to the side of the path. At this point I really thought it was going to get messy but Dave get persevering. Although the drop from the top of the cliff turned out to be impossible Dave managed a pretty hairy drop from at least half way up the cliff.
Were Dave and Jason the first to achieve off road skateboarding on the Island, probably not, but here is the proof that they did it.