HISTORY OF SKATE SHOES - PT 1

Tony Hallam is about as vintage a skater as you’re likely to get (we don’t think he’ll mind us saying that). with a remarkable collection of skate memorabilia including stickers, photos, magazines and a mind-blowing 800+ boards, the guy is also a serious collector. How serious? When he offered to bring in some shoes for us to photograph, he even asked if we wanted to see the original plastic shopping bags from back in the day! He’s an obsessive-compulsive for sure, but Tony is also a qualified engineer who has been designing skateparks for over 15 years, and he is still a common sight on a board in his hometown of Melbourne. he remains one of the few elder statesmen of the sport – Thanks to gnarly dudes like Tony Hallam, history has survived to tell this tale...

You started skating as a little kid and you’re still in the industry, so give us a quick rundown.
I was born in ‘67, got my first skateboard in ‘75, won the New Zealand title in 1980 and then came to Australia where I won the Victorian title in ‘83. Then I went to the States in the late eighties, did pretty well over there, never got ranked because I didn’t do enough contests, but I had a lot of fun travelling. Through the eighties I had a couple of models out, designed a couple of boards and never stopped skating except for injures. I did my engineering degree in the eighties, and now I design skateparks.

It’s amazing how much stuff you’ve collected over the years. you also kept the most thrashed pairs of Vans I’ve ever seen. What made you hang onto this stuff for so long?
Well I guess there’s sentimental reasons. Growing up in New Zealand, having stuff that was really hard to find, especially Vans and Nikes... it made you. You had to wait twelve weeks for the shoes to turn up in the mail and God knows what you’d actually receive. I’ve hung onto pretty much everything I have ever ridden. There’s a couple of boards I don’t have that I don’t regret giving to people because they needed them at the time, but the stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years is stuff I couldn’t get as a kid.