In photos: The gritty golden age of the UK’s skateboarding scene

When Neil Macdonald cleared out his childhood home over a decade ago, he found a treasure trove. Having grown up as a member of the ​“Back to the Future generation” of skateboarders, he was obsessed with buying magazines, and still in the house were hundreds of them that spanned across several years, publications and genres, with very few missing editions. 

“From the age of about 12, I’d get every skate mag, every music monthly, music weekly, every i‑D, every THE FACE – I just got really, really into magazines,” he explains. ​“I wasn’t collecting them, but I just wasn’t throwing them away. I had a fairly complete collection of most of the skate magazines and started filling up the gaps.”

On the other side of the pond, Kevin Marks was pulling together his Look Back Library project from his own huge archive of skate magazines, and the pair got in touch with each other. ​“There was a lot of UK stuff that he needed that I had duplicates of, and there was a lot of US stuff that was missing, like when Tower Records closed down and you suddenly couldn’t get Slap Magazine,” Macdonald continues. ​“Then it felt like, ​‘Fuck, I’ve got custody of all this imagery, all this information – people should see this stuff.”

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It led him to begin the Science Vs. Life Tumblr page, which eventually became a much-loved Instagram account, and he began his years-long journey into posting and archiving skateboarding photography, ephemera and the history of skating in the UK. It’s a dedication that’s ultimately culminated in his newly published book Elsewhere: The story of UK Skateboarding 1987 – 2002.

With hundreds of pages of photographs, boards, ephemera, posters, stickers and more, set alongside reflective interviews featuring the scene’s key characters, Elsewhere is a mammoth document that captures UK skateboarding’s grit and rawness just before commercialisation and the internet changed its fabric altogether. Early Slam City Skates decks are laid out alongside stories from the likes of Simon Evans and Reuben Goodyear, who reminisces on evading security at the Southbank, while historic photographs from across the country line the book’s spreads throughout.

The era saw the transition from vert ramp skating towards street skating, with one photo capturing Ben Bodilly pulling a huge ollie against the backdrop of Mount’s Bay in Cornwall, soaring high above a car. ​“This was the contents photo for the first issue of Sidewalk Magazine in 1995,” Macdonald explains. ​“It’s so British – the car, those types of bins that existed. I grew up in a seaside town, and we’d skate the beach all the time. Beaches are great because of the architecture; they’re accessible so there’s ramps everywhere.”

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Between the years that the book covers, and before the widespread adoption of the internet and social media, skateboarding in the UK was barely understood by most in society ­– it was truly outsider culture. ​“The ground here is rougher – you’ve got to push harder to go anywhere,” he continues. ​“At that time, it was not a regular thing here. Your parents didn’t like it. Your classmates didn’t get it. The police didn’t like it. Nobody liked it.”

It ultimately took on its own character, especially compared to its more celebrated cousin across the Atlantic. ​“The big difference between UK skating and US skating is that there’s less opportunity to do it here,” he says. ​“People are going to be more inclined to try harder when it’s not raining – in Southern California, you can just go skating any day you want, but in the UK you might have to wait days before you can get out, and it might only be dry on the ground for a couple of hours.”

While America, and particularly the West Coast remained skate’s epicentre, lesser known is the cross-cultural exchange that went from east to west. ​“The first person to skate in adidas Gazelles was Simon Evans,” Macdonald explains. ​“He was fed up of looking like a skateboarder – skateboard stuff was corny and American, and the shoes were massive, and Simon started skating in these Gazelles. They had flat soles so you could feel the board – they didn’t last very long, but they cost £2.99. Whether Simon Evans liked it or not, he changed the world.”

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Skaters in the US quickly caught on, and now the classic trainers are canonised as part of the sport’s history. But beyond documenting the footwear fashion and the gnarly skate photos, Elsewhere is a tribute to the lost appreciation of physical culture. There’s intricately designed graphic stickers set alongside the multitudes of print magazine clippings, covers and posters, while the analogue photography nods to the rawness of the sport and culture itself.

“Physical things were coveted,” says Macdonald. ​“Anyone that was skating in the ​’90s will tell you that they would just stare at the mail order ads. You would hang onto things, swap things with your friends – some people would keep broken boards, just because of the memories of what they did on them.

“Now, everything is completely disposable,” he continues. ​“When you were only getting a board on your birthday and at Christmas, you had to make it last – that thing would mean so much to you. For the general skateboarder, physical stuff was super important.”

Elsewhere: The Story of UK Skateboarding 1987 – 2002 by Neil Macdonald is published by Batsford Books.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s digital editor. Follow him on Bluesky.

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