ISSA - International Slalom Skateboarding Association

The slalom skate scene in Brazil is heating up... I used to run cones down there. They have insane hills leading up to Campo Grande skatepark from Rio. B part is that a bus serves that area so you can skate down and ride up.. Sick rides over 25 minutes long.



This license plate was from my highschool days- year book photos which are now online.


Rock on Bob, we all miss you.

Hi John, when you were you in Rio?

I remember the time when they were still building Campo Grande but we were already riding the sections of the half pipe that were already built... We used to have killer sessions there and not too far from the park there was a pipe factory where we found some big enough to skate in full pipes.

We used to run cones at the American school in Gavea.

I left Brazil in 1983. There were a few americans that used to skate with us so I was wondering if we have ever met before.

By the way that license plate RULES!

I rode with Gordo (whose arm was constantly broken and recasted), Eric Wilner (Spextro Skates) Galinha (Chicken), Chris Redfield, and a couple of others.. There was one really good Brazilian skater whose name I forget , and one good tiny brazilian/german kid who could do layback airs.

The big bowl at campo required a ton of speed to forever... so you had to really push to carry speed in. Sometimes I would get towed by a dirtbike into there. If you weren't doing at least 20mph you couldn't get it started.. The half pipe was nice since I like constant radius pipes.

I was the only person with a Kryptonics board with the green bumper. I rode for the East Coast Kryptonics team just before I left the USA- some nut named Frank Pasante ran the whole thing.

I brought Kryptonics Bearings into Brazil for Kjell Martin Halverson.

I went to Escola Americana

http://www.eayearbooks.com/1979_Yearboo ... ge_079.jpg

with Wilner, and Redfield- my family down there were real estate developers that made places like Novo Leblon.

I brought tons of used skateboard wheels/trucks from the USA and sold them.

We used to take the public bus at 6pm ride 2 hours then ride Campo Grande through the night until the sun came up (A lot cooler- that way no crowds and otherwise the park was like a parabolic cooking mirror) - hop back on the bus at 6am and then go directly to school- until our parents busted us.
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John Gilmour wrote:I rode with Gordo (whose arm was constantly broken and recasted), Eric Wilner (Spextro Skates) Galinha (Chicken), Chris Redfield, and a couple of others.. There was one really good Brazilian skater whose name I forget , and one good tiny brazilian/german kid who could do layback airs.

The big bowl at campo required a ton of speed to forever... so you had to really push to carry speed in. Sometimes I would get towed by a dirtbike into there. If you weren't doing at least 20mph you couldn't get it started.. The half pipe was nice since I like constant radius pipes.

I was the only person with a Kryptonics board with the green bumper. I rode for the East Coast Kryptonics team just before I left the USA- some nut named Frank Pasante ran the whole thing.

I brought Kryptonics Bearings into Brazil for Kjell Martin Halverson.

I went to Escola Americana

http://www.eayearbooks.com/1979_Yearboo ... ge_079.jpg

with Wilner, and Redfield- my family down there were real estate developers that made places like Novo Leblon.

I brought tons of used skateboard wheels/trucks from the USA and sold them.

We used to take the public bus at 6pm ride 2 hours then ride Campo Grande through the night until the sun came up (A lot cooler- that way no crowds and otherwise the park was like a parabolic cooking mirror) - hop back on the bus at 6am and then go directly to school- until our parents busted us.
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Gordo (Alexandre Calmon) is a good friend of mine, Galinha lives in Petropolis these days. Eric lived in a house in Gavea and he had a quarter-pipe I don´t know what happened to him.
We probably skated together. Gordo used to hang with the Surfcraft team guys like Marcelo Neiva, Mark, Ernesto, Maninho e others. Cesinha the team manager is still my good buddy and at the age of 53 an active skater. We used to skate a lot together.
I do remember seeing a skater with a Kryptonics board back in those days, and looking at your picture in the year book I do think I saw you skating a few times.I used to skate Escola Americana back in 76/77. I also used to go to Rua Cedro near the school.
Novo Leblon was not too far from Barramares, they had a good (for that time) bowl, have you ever skated it?
The bus ride to Campo Grande was a trip. Campo Grande has a place in brazilian skateboarding history. I remeber the opening party with the mayor of the city present!! and yes you where right to ride the bowl youhad to either use the full extension of the half-pipe to work out the speed.
Great to read that you have lived in Rio during those good old days and I do hope we have a chance to meet in the future.
Ate mais!

By the way the tiny brazilian skater that could do the lay-back air was Dorinho.

I have to say that I had the best time skating parks in Brazil. First off there were good public parks that were run by the local municipalities. They were free. I think it is reasonable to say that they were 30 years of America in that concept.

I enjoyed that there were no rules. No safety gear rules, no rule on music ...nothing... Want to ride a dirt bike in there...that's fine.

I think the kids did a really good job of preventing accidents. Almost all of the good skaters wore full protective gear and so were a pretty good example for the kds. That was when you went big and fast- and not so technical.

I used to rip 25 foot grinds coming into the halfpipe if only there were torch trucks back then.

The other thing that I really liked about that skate park, was that it was not a glorified day care center. It was pretty apparent that with the amount of speed and aggression that was going on in that skateboard park -- this was no place for your eight year old. So you have a lot more freedom to skate without fear of running somebody over and he didn't have really annoying parents hanging out.

Skateboarding was very expensive back in the 1970s in Rio de Janeiro. A good set of skateboard wheels brand-new were about $100 a good set of American skateboard trucks brand new were about $80 a great deck... that could cost $175 though Eric's skateboards were pretty good and reasonably priced. By the time you are done with bearings and hardware you are spending about $400 for skateboard that might last you only for a couple weeks.

So I had a brisk business importing skateboard gear. A lot of was used stuff I got cheap since my friends father owned the only specialized skateboard shop in New York City called city skateboards.

Because skateboarding was so expensive and the Brazilian made stuff wasn't really competitive, if you were going to get good you had to own American skateboard equipment. So it was a really strange mix of people to skateboard park. You might have some local skateboarders that didn't have much money riding Brazilian produced skateboard equipment, and then you had a bunch of Americans and their friends that showed up with their chauffeurs who watched everybody skate and made sure no one was kidnapped.

Eric's house actually had a half pipe -- and it wasn't bad, except he didn't do anything to try to insulate the amount of noise, and as a result it was really loud.

I was at your same school a year later -- summer of 1978 until fall of 1979. After that, I went back to the states, and finished high school at a Connecticut boarding school. Before I came to Rio, I started a skateboard club at the South Kent school in Connecticut (another boarding school) , that was going pretty well until one of the kids decided to bomb the hill leading up to the school and broke his arm and got skateboarding banned from campus.

It doesn't surprise me at all -that top skaters, Yuppie, Burnquist, come out of Brazil.

Sure Dogtown was happening in the US, but we really had no rules in Rio and we weren't in gritty abandoned pools as much as these amazing public built parks that felt like we owned them.

I'll have to head down there sometime for one of the slalom contests.

Flavio Badenes wrote:By the way the tiny brazilian skater that could do the lay-back air was Dorinho.

yep- that was him... a small kid... what board was he riding? Pretty amazing skater for a kid the size of a 10 year old. Ernesto was another cool skater.

Was Mario the name of the really good Brazilian skater who could forever the big bowl - turn it into carved grinds and get like 2 meters out?? That was really hard because that bowl had such a difficult transition to work. You would never see a transition like that in a skateboard park today- everything is very easy requiring almost no effort by comparison.

Flavio Badenes wrote: I do remember seeing a skater with a Kryptonics board back in those days, and looking at your picture in the year book I do think I saw you skating a few times.I used to skate Escola Americana back in 76/77. I also used to go to Rua Cedro near the school.
Novo Leblon was not too far from Barramares, they had a good (for that time) bowl, have you ever skated it?

I remember my Uncle asking us about designing a park. He owned Plarcon- his son Rodney Oei probably ended up designing part of it. Do you remember that frying pan shaped park in Jacarepaggua? (spelling) . we would go there as kids but never went there again after Campo Grande opened. Never skated Barramares...

A lot of the summer weekends we went to Angra Dos Reis so I wasn't around to skate the city as much as I would have liked. I always wanted to shoot the Corpus Christi Hill/Christ statue hill- but the pavement was always bad.. Red Bull repaved it for a luge race + inline race though.

I also skated a homemade 8 wheeler that I spec'd and had Chris Redfield also of Escola Americana build.. It had two foam core strips about 2 inches to the left of the center stringer- it was blue and stunk of uncured resin. It had Red 65mm Kryptonics (2nd gen) and Tracker half tracks we used to get 7 & 1/2 wheels out in the half pipe with that... I also used to try and ride my 4' longboard in CG with 4" UFO's once in a while...actually used to fakie the pipe with it just to show it could be done.

I also remember Eric Wilner busting his arm using hobie wrist guards- then he got the rector wrist guards which only had protection on top. So he combined the two--> Hobie under the Rectors.. it was pretty formidable wrist guard.. nothing has ever been made that good since. The flyaway helmets were the helmet to get..I rode with a blue one which I still use... its 31 years old...lol...

Good bearings were hard to get in Brazil... I rode my Sims Gold Racing bearings until the bearing cages disintegrated.

I lived in Leblon, Rua Embaxidor 350. Which was nice- but the place got invaded by a bunch of guys with guns- they shot our watchman and locked all the servants in the dog kennels and my cousin was kidnapped- he is really fortunate he wasn't killed. Luckily I had moved back to the states before then.

No rules applied to more things than skating.

I also remember the Brazilian cop cars were Volkswagen Bugs without radios (I don't think they could do 80mph)..those led to some pretty hysterical car chases..where you might even let them catch up a little on purpose...

No rules applied to more things than skating.

John this is so true about Brazil. and THAT was the main reason I left Brasil. A great place but a very dangerous one too. People have no respect for life there.

I am kind of busy now organizing the Euros here in Amsterdam. After the contest I will scan a lot os pictures I have from those days and post them here.

I have the 3 issues of Brasil Skate with lots of pictures of the skaters of that time, including myself. I also have all the issues of Visual Esportivo. I will scan some good pictures.

I went many times to Jacarepagua and to Nova Iguacu as well, but like you I started going only to Campo Grande after it was built.

I was laughing about your remark about how dangerous it was for a small kid to skate in Campo Grande. I agree entirely. It was suicidal!! and yes the good skaters of that time wore safety gear. It was cool remember?

I lived in Av. Rui Barboza in Flamengo and later I moved to Rua Prudente de Morais in Ipanema, which was not far from Leblon.

Have you ever skated the ramp on top of Morro da Urca? That was way cool. It was an "almost" half-pipe and you had to climb the rocks to get to it. The vieuw was great and the skating insane.

I have sent an email to Gordo.
Um abraco!

May be you will recognize some of these spots and faces:

http://gallery.socalskateparks.com/album16