Portsmouth as a city has a very long and illustrious history of skateboarding from the 70s with Dread City Skates through to the 80s with Pros like The Abrooks and Gary Lee through to the 90s with videos like Pigeon (which you can watch HERE) to the early 00s with videos like Walk the Plank up to now with 14:01, Herbal and Signature. In more recent times skateboarding in and around Portsmouth has also seen more local parks crop up which some might argue has a negative effect on street skateboarding, the act of skateboarding out in the streets using the environment in new creative ways that in many ways has defined skateboarding culture for the last two decades. This use of urban spaces has been actually been academically discussed with papers by Ocean Howell, including “The Poetics of Security: Skateboarding, Urban Design, and the New Public Space”, and the Iain Borden book ‘Skateboarding, Space and the City’ (both with insightful perspectives from an architectural and sociological context) and is skateboarding’s defining image in relation to popular culture.

Despite the popularity of skateparks it’s great (and in many ways vital to the local scene) to see some of the new breed of local street skaters out in the city’s streets putting their stamp on both the classic and new street spots. This video features parts by Jack White, Travis Baker & Nick Munday. Plus a classic skate photo of a local spot with visiting US legend Lance Mountain from back in 1988.

Lance Mountain Frontside Grind Lawcourts (1988) Photo by Tim Leighton-Boyce