Friday, September 17, 2010

Video: Sidewalk Surfers, 1965



In 1965, there was—as the woman with the hysterical hairdo in this video puts it—"a new terror loose in the streets of the city": early skateboarders. According to Wikipedia, sidewalk surfing (also known as "skurfing", because who doesn't like adding extra k's to things?) started in the late '40s or early '50s in California when actual surfers got bored. And while it didn't really take off until the '70s, there was a spike in popularity during the mid-'60s. Skateboarders got their own magazine, their own Life cover story ("Skateboard Mania—and Menace"), their own Toronto police crackdown and this awesome CBC report by an oh-my-god-he's-so-young Lloyd Robertson. You're going to want to click here to watch the full video, because he actually gives it a try—and when did you ever think you were going to get to see Lloyd Robertson riding a skateboard?

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