Natas Kaupas, wallie (detail). Natas showed that you could even use the hard surface of a vertical wall upon which to skate. Photograph by Craig Stecyk, used for the cover of Thrasher Magazine, Sept. 1984. Street skating at its finest.
Jay Adams, bank skating. These banks approximated a wave. I wish more schools had these sorts of banks.
Jay Adams pool skating. Photographed by Glen E. Friedman
Tony Alva pool skating. Tony’s style, whether on a bank or in a pool, was perhaps the most graceful and stylish of all.
So I am speaking very personally here when I say that, for me [sic], pool skating is my holy grail of skateboarding. I’m not saying it is “the best,” merely that it is my grail. Why is in part because of the lines that can be carved in a pool — and one can perhaps get no better sense of this than by watching legends and masters like Tony Alva or Jay Adams skate a pool.
Pool skating has a certain three-dimensionality about it. It is hard to describe what I mean by this. It is not a matter of an ‘x’ or a ‘y’ axis; rather is it that and everything in between. Insofar as that is the case, a pool can be so very fluid and filled with so much potentiality.
I wanted to share a couple of videos here today on this subject of pool skating, both coming from Vans. Enjoy. (If you want to read more about pool skating, I’d highly recommend Blue Tile Obsession and Empty Pools.)
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