Tony Hawk's Hair...

So, Yup. You guessed it. That's me in 1987. Do you like the Red sweatpants that I'm wearing? No? Yeah KNDA thought that too. I did however have a pair of these bad boys from Powell Peralta. The one good thing about those sweatpants is that in 1988, my 8th/Freshman years, I had cut the bottoms off, and my friends and I started wearing the last 8 inches of the leg as hats. Pretty stylish I know, but as teen skaters in the 80's you just didn't care about fashion, it was all about personal expression.

Take for instance this pic of my friends Justin Mueller and Steve Davenport, to the untrained eye we might have and prolly looked all the same to people outside of the know, but to each other it was almost like an almost Heathers-like envy of Amigo bracelets stolen from Pier 1, what skate company you had a Hip Pack from, how much of an ollie hole you had in your pants' cuff or how cool your grip tape art was. Although Airwalk shoes were pretty dominant in this era it was what obscure style of shoes you had that really stuck you out of the crowd with brands such as Vans, British Knights or even Ellesse, which Jesse Neuhaus used to rock or even just some Chuck Taylors with custom sharpie doodles. The old stand by was the Air Jordan, the shoe of shoes for skateboarding.

The shirt hanging on the door in the background is an old G&S shirt I had bought at a local T.J.Maxx. The one my Mommy used to take us to was by the Spring Hill Mall in West Dundee, IL. This store was soooo kewl B in the D because they would carry all these skate brands like G&S, Jimmy'z and Vision Street Wear. It was like a skater's paradise to get all these west coast clothes in the midwest without paying skate shop prices, by the way, when you're 13 your Mommy loves that. I still have that G&S shirt, it's in my closet and it still fits. Don't know if that's good or bad. Is it good that I'm thin at 35 or bad because I was this size in 1987-88?

As of the end of this post I am currently listening to "The Robots (die Roboter)" by Bacalao from the "8-bit Operators" compilation. A Tribute to the Music of Kraftwerk. 2007