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by Keith Hamm
Published by Chronicle books
Our experience of skateboarding holds countless individual stories and monumental moments that make up its collective history from the past fifty years. From sidewalk surfing in the 60s to killer private backyard pool and ramp sessions through the 70s and 80s, to skating new spots with your friends and getting busted from the police and on and on. Some of these tales and significant events have been documented, many of them not. So it goes.
From the half dozen skateboarding books that have emerged over the past two years that reawaken these accounts of our wild youth, Keith Hamm’s Scarred For Life hits high marks through and through. From the start, its pages delve into and deliver eleven stories from various facets and personalities of skate history including those of Cliff Coleman’s life as a skateboarder and his addiction to charging down hills and Jim Fitzpatrick’s trans-Atlantic journey as a surf/skater of the 60s. Their history surely doesn’t stop there though. Scarred also offers chapters on Jay Adams life as a skater, a clutch of backyard pool tales, Christian Hosoi’s rise to fame and (then) saddening life behind bars and the Skaterock movement that pierced our ears in the 80s. There’s an entire chapter devoted to the women who ride on planks with four wheels as well. Throughout the book there are several page stopping photographs that will most likely bring you back to a place within your own personal skate history. The images move you and put these accounts into motion.
The world of street skating is touched upon, albeit primarily as glimpse into the crews that skate the environments and regions around New York. And given its overt popularity, those that determine skating purely as rails, gaps, stairs and ledges will feel somewhat slighted that there aren’t more chapters focused on street terrain tales.
One of my favorite chapters has to be, “The Great Beyond: Upside Down.” Which takes you through the recollections of Bob Burnquist growing up as a young kid in São Paulo, Brazil to his emergence on the North American vert skate scene in 1995. From there, Hamm’s text turns you upside down as an insider to Bob’s mind-blowing make or break attempt at the legendary Mt. Baldy pipe years later. However, it does seem a bit odd that there is no mention of Bob’s mind-blowing switch loop accomplishment at the Skatepark of Tampa in 2001. This is an unfathomable benchmark in skating that will perhaps never be matched by anyone ever in our lifetimes.
The closing pages leads you through the trials and tribulations of Mark “Red” Scott, Sage Bolyard and Mark Hubbard the other creators of Portland, Oregon’s famed Burnside Project. Hamm joined up with Red and his Dreamland crew during their stints of pouring concrete at the skatepark in Hailey, Idaho in 2002. He traveled back to pen together a chapter that informs the reader of how a small group of Northwest skaters began to pour concrete to create their own skatespot and serendipitously kick started their own “design and build” skatepark companies. *(Dreamland and Grindline are now considered among the two most creative and progressive park builders today.)
Scarred For Life is a book written by someone who gets it first hand. Keith Hamm has been a skateboarder for over twenty years and his craft of words and their stories clearly carry through for the past, present and future of skating. This 240 page book is a must for any serious skateboarder’s library.
Order this book online or pick it up at your local book reseller. It’s one piece of pulp that will enlighten you and the reason why you got into skateboarding in the first place.
- bk

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