Here's Ian from at the Brooklyn Bridge.
I like that grainy sort of out of focus, but the goal was to go higher, faster, get more
air.
The board led them to these new heights.
During the dark ages, Jessica Bard was an adventurous high school student who hung out
with the city's shrunken tribe of skaters.
I'm from upstate New York, and then I moved to New York City in 1980 with my mother.
So the high school I went to was a small private high school, but one of the things they had
was a required photography program.
I had unlimited film, free camera.
So for four years, I photographed as much as I could being out there in black and white.
I always had my camera on me, mostly, right?
All these photographs.
Bard's black and white photos captured a bygone time when skating in New York was so off
the radar, it barely registered.
And if she hadn't been there with her camera, there might be no record of how New York skaters
took their next step.
Adapting the backyard ramp to the city.
So I'd just skate around, and then you'd see a lone skater.
And you'd make friends with them.
We'd make friends, and we'd hang out, and we'd skate.
That's how it all started.
The old set was like, well, back in my day, it was different, and blah, blah, blah.
But in skateboarding, there weren't many kids doing it in 83.
So if you saw someone skating instantly, you had a connection, and you're just like,
what's up, where are you from?
So everywhere you went, if you bumped into somebody, your crew would kind of grow.
You'd think you're skateboarding alive, you know, no skate shops, no contests, no photos,
none.
Fuck that.
I mean, I don't want to sound emotional, but we were the guy in green to survive.
I think on the one hand, how many niggas skateboarding in York City in 83 and 84?
If you saw somebody with a hose in their shoes, then he was a skateboarder, you know.
And I'm proud to say I had a hose in my shoes, because if you saw my shoes, you'd say, yo,
I need to get busy.
I used to have to fight over garbage cans with people who sold fake Rolexes and stuff,
because they would use the garbage cans to display their wares and stuff.
So when I would come into the park, they would start grabbing the garbage cans and pulling
them away and going, this is mine, oh, excuse me, this is mine, this is mine, you know.
And then I would get into wrestling matches over the garbage cans with them and like threaten
them.
With its history as a stomping ground for artists, beat generation poets and writers,
Washington Square Park in the heart of the village was a community meeting place for
all manner of citizens.
A democracy of derelicts, drug dealers and buyers, street performers, buskers, and skaters.
Oh, fuck, I can't do it anymore.
This is how I put myself through college and I don't think anyone will watch this crap
anymore, but I don't care.
I'm going to place this banana peel right here on the board I plan on landing on.
Now imagine if I land on that banana peel at over 50 miles an hour, I'm done.
I'm already done, but will you shut up?
So in Washington Square Park, there were a lot of garbage cans and there was a break
dance crew out there one day making some money doing a show and stuff and I started
jumping garbage cans and the crowd got a lot bigger and I put up three and then I put
up four and then the crowd got really big and then I put up five and the crowd was
gigantic.
I mean, I couldn't believe it was like a sea of people and I didn't know anything about
collecting money or anything from this crowd, but it got me thinking if I started putting
my own gloss on this whole thing, really relating to these people in some stupid way, I could
make a lot of money jumping over garbage cans with skateboards.
I could have done that job without you, you folks are wonderful.
I'll be appearing at Carnegie Hall next Monday night.
