A Video History Of Skaters Skating On Cars

Courtesy of Jenkem Magazine!

If you follow any one of a number of skate media sites, you may have heard of a flashy new trend sweeping across the state of skateboarding – skater’s skating on cars. But, like all trends, these seemingly fresh maneuvers didn’t come from nowhere, they have precedents, forebears that have established the basis for the skater to car relationship way before today’s youngins were even playing with their Hot Wheels™.

Sure, the cars may be getting newer and more expensive, the tricks may be getting more technical or gnarly, but the seed of the stunt was planted generations prior. In the effort of placing this trend in some historical context, we’ve taken the opportunity to parse out some of the more pivotal moments of skaters skating on cars in a video timeline. So if you do decide to do it (because “skate and destroy,” amiright?) you should at least know its history so you can try and progress the stunt to higher levels of stupidity than ever before.

1984

Lance Mountain in Powell Peralta’s “Bones Brigade Video Show”
One of the earliest car rides in skate video history comes, of course, in the earliest promotional skate video, Powell Peralta’s “Bones Brigade Video Show” from 1984. Though the video is mostly pastel short-shorts and inverts in bowls, Lance Mountain’s intro segue is something like the grand-daddy of street skating, a little slow, but still entertaining to watch in its own weird way. Street skating at this time was still resemblant of sidewalk surfing, but Lance kicks home the point that skating and surfing are separate activities entirely by acid dropping off the hood of some surfer’s car and cruising away to a less wavy pastime.

1988

Savannah Slamma Street Contest
Four years after Lance hopped off the hood of that chop-top beach cruiser, Thrasher came out with a video from the Savannah Slamma skate contest held in a massive warehouse in Savannah, Georgia. The course consisted of a random array of launch ramps, wall rides, and stray PVC piping, with an old beater car thrown into the mix to make the course resemble something like a street – it was a “streetstyle” contest after all. The Gonz, Eric Dressen, Tommy Guerrero, Christian Hosoi and the other competitors took the street style to the stadium by running over and riding across the shit-brown sedan.

1989

Natas Kaupas in Santa Cruz’s “Streets on Fire”
Natas dropped one of the most progressive and stylish street parts ever in “Streets of Fire,” and he took the car ride to new heights with his ender, a boardslide across the roll bar of a convertible Toyota 4-Runner.

1995

Hook-Ups Road Trip
Skate teams had been packing vans full with sweaty skate rats for demo tours for nearly a decade by this point, but Hook-Ups really took the show on the road in 1995 by retro-fitting their gutted Ford Econoline van with coping on the hood and roof, and a U-Haul trailer crammed with plywood ramps. Every parking lot became a demo, and every demo became a gathering of middle-American angst that could only be quenched by a Kirchart kickflip and a flash of some local girl’s tits. And then it was on to the next town…

1996

Hamilton Harris in the NYC section of “Eastern Exposure 3″
Skating in New York City is kind of like being a pilot fish in a sea of sharks – cars own the road, and skaters can only do their best to weave in and out of their wake and stay from out their grill. But Hamilton Harris wasn’t content with such a low rung on the street’s food chain. No, the great automotive beasts that prowl NYC were to him just another obstacle to overcome. Off the sidewalk, over a cab’s hood, and into the streets, Hamilton demonstrates the sometimes parasitic relationship between skater and motorist.

1997

Mike Vallely at the 411vm Europe contest
Nearly 10 years after the Savannah Slamma contest, and after more than a million advancements in street skating, European contests were still putting cars in their transition-heavy skateparks to turn them into street courses. Mike Vallely, America’s angriest skate ambassador of the 90′s, decided that instead of landing his mega mute back 180 over the whole thing, he’d rather just fuck it up instead with a body slam to the hood, a front flip to the roof, and a few futile punches to the back window for good measure. VALLELY SMASH!

2001

Chadillac Escapade from 411vm #58
The new millenium came at the crest of The Muska madness, and The Muska was always one to progress the skater/car relationship. Major moments include: Asking OnStar where the handrails were at, rocking a Cadillac logo on a pro model, and buying this old DeVille and tagging it up with cheesy graf so he and his homies could shred.

For the Rest of the story head over to Jenkem Magazine because they RULE!

Photography: @lastsuspect