In the early 1970s, Los Angeles’ once bohemian, now rather dodgy neighbourhood Venice became the centre of an American cultural renaissance. While airbrush artists, car customizers, and rock musicians shared the affordable houses and workshops around Abbott Kinney Boulevard with slackers and hustlers, local kids were shaping their own surfboards to ride the waves of the Pacific. As summers got hot in Southern California and authorities cut down water supplies, it was the same cool, sun-burnt and long-haired ‘dogtown boys’ who surfed the concrete basins of drainage ditches and empty swimming pools with their skateboards. When Cadillac Wheels introduced a new kind of soft polyurethane skateboard wheel in 1973, Venice youth finally had the right equipment to take their casual, low-slung surfing style to the streets – and stir up a worldwide skateboarding revolution.
Floyd
In the early 1970s, Los Angeles’ once bohemian, now rather dodgy neighbourhood Venice became the centre of an American cultural renaissance. While airbrush artists, car customizers, and rock musicians shared the affordable houses and workshops around Abbott Kinney Boulevard with slackers and hustlers, local kids were shaping their own surfboards to ride the waves of the Pacific. As summers got hot in Southern California and authorities cut down water supplies, it was the same cool, sun-burnt and long-haired ‘dogtown boys’ who surfed the concrete basins of drainage ditches and empty swimming pools with their skateboards. When Cadillac Wheels introduced a new kind of soft polyurethane skateboard wheel in 1973, Venice youth finally had the right equipment to take their casual, low-slung surfing style to the streets – and stir up a worldwide skateboarding revolution.