Mike Kolar jumping Cosmo on The Strand – 1975
I bought my first "real" skateboard at the Dewey Weber shop on PCH on the way home from church at Resurrection Lutheran in Hollywood Riviera. This would have been about 1978? It had the diamond-shaped kicktail, regular Bennet trucks, and red Weber Performer 2s that were like knock offs of Road Rider 2s. I saved up my chore money for that guy. A year later maybe, I graduated to thee board of the day, an ET Ripstix with RR 4s. That board was the fastest thing on Anderson St. until Fletcher and Allds got mopeds. I was looking online for a picture of a Ripstix and came across this little history of South Bay skateboarding courtesy of the Hermosa Beach Historical Society. Check it!
In 1963 Venice Beach lifeguard Larry Stevenson founded Makaha. He made skateboards by hand in his garage in Santa Monica and developed the first skateboard with all pro components called the “SURF SKATE”. Makaha boards introduced two revolutionary components – clay wheels, and Chicago trucks (the first double-action, adjustable truck). They were ordered through the mail for $10.95 - shipping included. Top surfers rode Makaha skateboards, including: Mike Hynson, Phil Edwards, John Peck, Mike Doyle, Dave Rochlen Jr., Mike Purpus and L.J. Richards.
The “First Skateboard Contest” was sponsored by Makaha, and held in 1963 at the Pier Avenue Junior High School in Hermosa Beach (outside the present Museum) - about 100 people showed up. Larry also put together the first skateboard exhibition team in 1963 with Westside and South Bay skateboarders, including Bruce “Earth Ski” Logan of Hermosa Beach, “I was skateboarding on the strand, right in front of the Redondo Breakwater when the Makaha team pulled up in a Chevrolet Nomad station wagon. The whole team piled out of the station wagon, and they all started skating.
Makaha manager Jimmy Ganzer came up to me and asked if I wanted to be on the team. We already had a team called the South Bay Skateboard Club, sponsored by Bing Surfboards. My brother had started it, and it was about as good as the Makaha team, but Makaha had a lot more to offer - travel, demos, department store appearances. They were the first to get skateboards into the big department stores. We were on TV probably half a dozen times.”
A second generation Makaha team still included Bruce, along with other Hermosa Beach locals including Ty “Mr. Incredible” “Ty Stix” Page, and Mike Purpus (Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame). This team promoted the invention that changed skateboarding forever - the kicktail & double kicktail board.
A soft urethane wheel developed by Frank Nasworthy in 1972, and manufactured by Cadillac in 1973, revolutionized the sport. These wheels provided much better speed, traction and maneuvering – no longer did skateboarders have to worry about small pebbles and cracks flinging them face first off their boards. Tricks evolved, empty concrete swimming pools became popular skate parks, and safety gear began to be worn – gloves, knee/elbow pads and helmets. In 1975, Road Rider made faster boards with sealed bearings packed in grease – no more adjusting & oiling ball bearings. In 1976, Kryptonics created the resilient wheel. In 1977, more than 30 companies were producing skateboards with wider “trucks” - the part that holds the wheels with better steering mechanisms.
In the late ‘70s, cities began building skate parks to keep kids off the streets and sidewalks. Surf shops became surf and skateboard shops. Unity Surf Shop at 422 Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach made the first skateboard push by sponsoring Ty Page and putting out a popular, wooden kick-tail skateboard called the Ty Stix. Eddie Talbot fired back with his own ET Ripstix - a wooden, kick-tail skateboard designed by Kevin Anderson. He has been with ET since the first day he opened the doors of ET Surf Shop. Anderson became the best vertical skateboarder in the South Bay.
AND, here's Ty and his bros skating the plexi half-pipe at Cal Jam II.
A while back I found this 45 by a group called Bentley Road on Mike curb's Forward label. Aside from the killer graphics, the label's kinda hit and miss, but they did put out the Markley A Group LP which is one of my all time favorites. Well it turns out this here record is amazing, especially the flip "Kill the Cobra," a perfectly wonderful coed West Coast sunshine masterpiece which combines WCPAEB creepiness with Free Designy vocal embellishments. It's easily as good as any Peanut Butter Conspiracy or Neighb'rhood Children side. 
The group was a mystery to me until I stumbled on Chas's extremely satisfying post on his Garage Hangover site. Turns out Bentley Road was a spinoff of a Fresno, California area group called... unbelievably!...The Sedate Sunshine Colony. I highly suggest you get on over there and read the whole story and dig the purty pictures, toot sweet! Definitely the second freakiest thing in Fresno (after Forestiere's underground gardens of course!).
Alice Konitz, who has a keen interest in desert sages, first met Garth, a local hermit when she visited him at his outdoor home where he has been living in a concrete teepee for the last 27 years.