I tracked down a copy of this documentary on DVD purely for nostalgic reasons, being a former skater myself in the early 90's.
It is a well made documentary that starts right at the beginnings of the scene in the UK in the 70's when, much like in the US, surfers would make their own boards and skate when they wern't able to go out surfing, and charts some of the significant developments of the sport through to 2005. Despite being an avid skater, I'd never heard of the ESA English skateboard association, who remarkably paid for an English skate team to enter international competitions in Europe and the US in the 80's.
The filmmaker manages to get contributions from a large number of people who made an impact on UK skateboarding, including the founder of the seminal RAD magazine Tim Leighton-Boyce amongst others.
Despite some input from some legendary figures in the history of UK skateboarding, as the film wore on I found myself feeling that there was a definite London bias to the film, though.
Apart from about 45 seconds of the film, where the filmmaker talks to the guy who helped get the first custom built skate park in the UK built in Livingston, Scotland, the rest of the documentary is focused almost solely on the London scene, and while undoubtedly important, I felt it skewed the film somewhat, as I felt like the guy making it felt that there wasn't anything worth reporting outside of the city.
Being from the north of England, I distinctly remember pockets of skaters existed throughout the country in cities like Sheffield, Nottingham, and Leeds to name but a few places, and one of the biggest indoor skate parks in the UK when I was skating in the early 90's was in Barrow in Furness, Cumbria. As a consequence it felt to me somewhat like an opportunity was missed to document a definitive history of skateboarding in the UK, but still it's definitely worth a watch if, like me, you have an interest in the subject.
