Not all skate shirts are black! Check out the Silverfish Gear Page . There are new men's, women's and kids' shirts! (Some are even black.)
We're using "spreadshirt", so you order straight from them. Dig through the listings and you'll find some classic 'Fish designs, including shirts with art taken from member Ryan's art-pen drawings. Check back for new designs, as we prepare to release the Fall Line (soon as Armani signs off...)
In 1978, I got hooked up with the guys that were making UFO Sk8 wheels, Gary Beacher and “UFO Seth”.“UFO”, if you don’t know it, stands for “Unlimited Freighting Objects”.UFO Seth was a mellow guy and Gary was a crazy mofo.Gary’s still in San Diego, shaping surfboards from what I hear, but I don’t know what became of Seth.Anyway, they came out with a wheel called the Saucer and it had run of popularity. In 1980, they had a great idea for an ad to run in Skateboarder Mag.They decided to have Brian Schroder paint the Saucer logo on the face wall of the by-then famous Kona Bowl, in Escondido, Calif.The plan was that UFO Team skater, Jim Sigerson was to air over the logo for the ad shot.
Jeff Tatum, big air over the lip, Kona Bowl, 1980.
Brian Schroder was a very different type of guy at the time, and a way cool artist.I called him “Devo”, because he was the one to turn me on to the band of the same name.He was also the one that designed the “Del Mar Skate Ranch” logo.So, Brian and a few of the UFO owners went out to the Kona Bowl early in the morning, so Brian could paint the Saucer logo.He started early so that nobody else would see it before his work was finished.Jim Sigerson, a few other skaters and I showed up much later in the day and started skating.It quickly turned into quite a party scene.
Continuing now with a series of scene reports by Jeff "JT" Tatum that range from the 1970's to present, the original longboarder has another gem for us regarding the legendary Ameron Pipes. These massive concrete pipes are now submerged as the intake and exhaust for seawater used to cool the San Onofre nuclear power plant, but for a magic time in the late 1970's, they were a private playground for a very few skaters and photographers. This time, JT gives us a tale about one such shooter, Joel Broida... [UPDATE: Joel Broida gave us a call: one of skateboarding's earliest photographers went on to become a highly-respected professor of mathmatics and physics. Professor Broida is faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of California, San Diego. He and JT are back in touch, and JT's got more photos dug from Joel's archives that will be uploaded to his gallery. In the meantime, let's take another look at: ]
Nukeland Part 2: The Tale of Crazy Joel Broida
Sonny Miller, Art “Rat” Mingeaud and I had taken Joel Broida and his camera to the Ameron Pipes a few times and he got some killer photos!Joel was a very eccentric guy we’d met at the Del Mar Skate Ranch when he’d approached and asked if he could take some sk8 photos of us.He became one of our regular shooters when we saw how his photos came out!
Joel was good enough to get recognized by Skateboarder Magazine, and he got some photos of me published.This story is about an adventure that led to some of those shots, including some that have never been published before either or my previous article on Silverfish about the Amerons.
If you're looking for a park to hit in the Scottsdale/Phoenix area, then you're going to want to read this. After 10 years of planning and blueprints set forth and turned down, and planning some more, a skate park set in the beautiful landscape of the McDowell Mountains has finally been built. It's called McDowell Mountain Ranch.
When you first enter this park you notice the great amount of kids here. Not teenagers, I mean kids around 10+. But the thing is, these kids can rip! I was watching them 50-50 rails, clearing 6 stairs, and ollieing up 3 foot boxes. Then there are all these banks and stairs that create a tremendous amount of lines and gaps to clear. I am not that kind of skater tough, but for one who is, this would be an excellent place. Gaps ranging from 3 to 6 feet and lines that can carry you all the way around the park. Plus there’s a whole mecca of hills ranging from the mellowest to the fastest around right around the corner.
There’s a skate park that sits in the middle of a square mile of semi-new tract homes in Corona, California called Harada Skate Park, This park is way cool, with quality, smooth concrete and a great design. It has a half pipe, about 4 ½ feet deep but fun as hell, that curves around a killer keyhole pool. This perfectly round keyhole bowl is small but deep--about 9 feet with a drop-in channel that’s steep and a bit wide for jumping across, but possible. You don’t want to fall off in this bowl because it’s hard to climb out of. This keyhole has a good transition; almost vert.
Continuing our series of exclusive stories and original material by Jeff "JT" Tatum, we've got the story and background of the famous "Kona Pool" that inspired a similar pool at the now fabled Del Mar Skate Ranch...
One night in 1975, we were on the way home from the Escondido reservoir and my friend Wayne says, “ Hey dudes, I know where a kill pool is!” When we pulled up, it was pitch dark so Wayne shined his headlights in the bowl and we jumped in. I was on a 45” water ski. After a few runs, I knew my life had been changed: I was obsessed.
We called this pool the “Esco Bowl" at first, since it was in Escondido. For the next year, I rode that pool every chance I got. The bowl was a left-hand kidney about 9” feet deep, with lots of vert. It would be gnarly to ride, even now. It sat on top of a small hill and had a cement slab next to it that was from the house that burned down. The whole yard was surrounded by a stand of witness trees. When rain did make it un-ride able, it wouldn’t take long for the locals to bail it out.
Scene Reports 
