I’ve been having a conversation with some of the guys on NeverWas Skateboarding about freestyle skateboarding and how back in the mid-late 70s and even early 80s skaters were more prone to being all-around skaters. By all around, I don’t mean “I skate transition AND street”. I mean skater who did vert, banks freestyle, slalom, downhill, as well as just skating in the street.
You’d have guys like Doug “Pineapple” Saladino show up at a pro pool event and place in it, then the next weekend he’d win the Oceanside pro freestyle contest. My friend Paul was on the local Wizard Skatepark team. I used to see them practicing. They all practiced everything. The legendary Jeff Phillips was on the team, and I remember vividly being at the park on a Friday night and the team was all in the freestyle area doing their routines one after the other, and I saw Jeff doing his.
In 1978-79 Skateboarder Magazine published a series of “Quivers” articles, showing the board setups of a number of current pros like Stacy Peralta, Gregg Ayres, Mike Weed, etc. They all had a range of boards for different purposes, including freestyle.
That’s how it was. I suppose as each form of skating became more difficult and more advanced specialization came more to the forefront.
The all-around era was really the formative era for me. As I could only go to the skatepark for 2 hours a week, freestyle and bank skating (at local spots near my house) were most accessible for me. It was easy to practice freestyle at the nearby school parking lot. The banked driveways in our alleys were my bank skating training ground. Occasionally one of us neighborhood skaters would build some shitty little ramp. But all-around skating was always my goal.