It’s crazy to look back and think how long ago I started skating... Early 90’s, I believe, and the craziest thing is that I still do! Not as much, as I would like to, but I do and I still have a blast doing it . Anyways, I feel like I’ve told this story too many times, but for those, who haven’t heard it yet, here it is. I started skating after seeing that 80’s movie “Thrashin”. It was playing in the movie theaters at the time and I think I went to see it at least 20 times. It blew my mind! I wanted to do the same! One of my friends was skating at the time and he showed me how to ollie. From that point I was hooked! All I could think of, and wanted to do, is skate. There were like 5-6 of us , probably the only skate population in the whole Estonia at that time. We couldn’t get any gear: no boards , no shoes, no skate videos or magazines. We were so desperate to get any info we could, like some very old copies of Thrasher and Transworld. So, in our first year, we were just learning ollies and early grabs of launch ramps we built from found and stolen wood. It was not like these days. Kids can do every nollie trick in the book the first month they start skating! Imagine our shock when one day we got a copy of New Deal’s “Useless Wooden Toys” video and saw that you can actually flip a board. From that moment it was on! Every day we tried to learn every flip trick possible, by previously watching it 50 times in slow motion on the VCR and then ran quickly to Lauluväljak and try to land it. Lauluväljak was our spot! We were there every day after school. It had brand new tarmac and hundreds of wooden benches we could move around and skate without anyone kicking us out. Those were the days! We could skate anywhere, any time of the day or night, waxing the shit out of ledges and curbs and no one said anything. We started going to Latvia, because at the time they had a bigger skatescene and they had skate contests as well, which we were super hyped about to enter. From there, we expanded our travels to Finland and Sweden,
where we could buy skate gear, even though it was way out of our price range. We desperately tried to figure out ways to get boards. Like we used to buy hand made boards from Latvia. They were made out of birch, so they were good just for few days and became super soft and broke easily after that, but we were hyped, because they were affordable. The other option was to buy a original old school fish shaped boards from the sports store. It was super weird, that they sold Zorlac and G&S! So we bought them and used their very short nose as a tail and cut them, to look more skinnier and modern. I think my first kickflip was on a board, that was 10.5 inches wide. We also customized our huge old school 60mm wheels to 35-38mm by cutting them. At the time, everybody was skating those tiny wheels. Some people even called them bearing covers. Only way later, after begging for a very long time, Surfhouse managed to order a few boards, which we bought right away. Next time they ordered a couple of more boards and a couple of pairs of shoes. It was a dream come true for us! Kind of crazy to think of it, looking at a selection of skate goods kids have now. Skateboarding has changed my life in so many ways! Music, fashion, art, my views on life and most importantly: people I have met through skateboarding have become my best friends! I feel like a kid, when we get together for a session. Happy skating! Juri Loginov