HISTORY OF SKATE SHOES - PT 2

Fill us in on your personal history?
JUERGEN: In 1987 I bought a seventies shaped plastic skateboard from a good friend for 10 marks (former German currency). In 1988 at my fifteenth birthday, I got the money together to buy my first real board. In 1989 I started working in a skate shop next to school and later I became sponsored... well my school grades went really down and my parents were absolutely anti-skateboarding but my ollies were popping higher! In 1994 I finally finished school and as a gift from my parents, I made a trip with friends to skate sunny California. I still love to (rock’n) roll!

DANIEL: Around 1988 I was watching some older guys at school skating and I was immediately fascinated. A classmate had a crappy supermarket skateboard called Street Rat, with which I learned how to ‘tic-tac’ and tried the first boneless ones in front of our house. No way for the ollie though, since the board weighed a ton and I was really small in those days. Then I saved all my money from doing paper routes and mowing lawns and in 1989 I was finally able to buy my first real board. It was a Santa Cruz ‘Corey O’Brian’ with Tracker trucks and the cheapest set of wheels from SchmittStix, because that was all I could afford. There was no more excuses for not learning how to ollie and shortly after came the love for skulls and the Dead Kennedys, which is still there today.

Who were your idols when you were kids?
JUERGEN The Bones Brigade was huge for me! Vallely and Mullen were my personal heroes and I was even imitating Mullen’s fingers position, but I was looking up to most of the eighties and nineties pros and my local German hero was of course Claus Grabke.

DANIEL Ray Barbee and Mike Vallely (first video I saw was Public Domain from Powell), Matt Hensley from former H-Street and a little later Ed Templeton from New Deal. On the halfpipe it was Tony Hawk, Danny Way and Lance Mountain. Then after seeing a Powell Demo with Tony Hawk doing ten McTwists in a row on a shitty narrow halfpipe I thought, ‘yeah he’s a great skater, but his style is really a little weird’.