Two new books record the impact of skateboarding on nineties Britain. Former Slam City Skates employee Tom Hodgkinson salutes a time when freedom came on four wheels

•Elsewhere: The Story of UK Skateboarding 1987-2002 Neil Macdonald (Batsford, £60)
•Anarchic Adjustment x Insane Art Book Ged Wells and Nick Philip (Natal, £56)

In September 1989, when I was 21, I got a job at a skateboarding shop. It hadn’t been part of the plan. I had recently graduated in English from Jesus College, Cambridge, and as a Humanities graduate was expected to do, I’d applied for various jobs in journalism, at the BBC and the Independent and so on. I’d had no luck and needed a job so I walked to the Rough Trade shop near where my Mum was living at the time in Portobello Road. They were looking for someone to help in their skateboard shop, Slam City Skates, as a previous employee had just left to become a pop star called Jesus Jones.

So began a life-changing year for me. I was to find myself thrust to the heart of an amazingly creative, vibrant and entrepreneurial “scene”, which inspired me to start the Idler.

Two new books have just come out that remind me how extraordinary it was. Elsewhere by Neil Macdonald is a majestic 466-page coffee table book, an oral history with images. The author has interviewed dozens of people for his history (including me) and it was an enormous pleasure to wander down memory lane.

And my friend Ged Wells, designer of the Idler’s snail logo, has put together a lovely visual history of his skatewear brand Insane, alongside the story of another amazingly cool company, Anarchic Adjustment.

What I found in the skateboarding shop – there was a branch in Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden – was a vast array of very talented, very creative, very charismatic young people who either worked there or hung around there.

At the older end (my end), there was the late, great Gavin Hills, a huge force of nature who produced his own fanzines (one came in a pizza box and was brilliantly titled Experiments in Social Engineering) and T-shirt companies and went on to become top writer on The Face. Ged was a brilliant skateboarder who made clothes on the Isle of Wight with his Mum. There was the classical-music-loving fine artist Rob Dukes, another great skater, photographer Vernon Adams, and entrepreneur Russell Waterman, who went on to found streetwear labels Holmes and Silas.

Younger skaters, 16 or 17 at the time, included Simon Evans and Will Bankhead, who have become successful artists, and many more. This was the scene that gave birth to massive labels like Supreme and Palace.

I learned that skateboarding is not a sport. It’s an art form. Luckily there were people like RAD magazine publisher Tim Leighton-Boyce around to document it. The images produced are mind-blowing and congratulations to Neil for undergoing the massive task of assembling all this material into a very cool book. The story ends in 2002, just before the takeover of the Internet by Thiel and Musk started to wreck everything.

Great days. Thank you, skateboarding.

The article is from Idler #109.

Lifetime skateboarders Professor Iain Borden and Neil MacDonald join Tom Hodgkinson at the Idler Festival‘s Friday evening event Skateboarding in the UK.

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A Drink with the Idler

Our guest on “A Drink with the Idler” this week is Alexander McCall Smith, best-selling author of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, who will be talking to Tom Hodgkinson about the importance of poetry.

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That’s Thursday 4 June, 6pm-7pm.

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How to Live Like a Stoic

The May/June 2026 issue of the Idler (#109) is available in Waitrose, Smiths and TG Jones.

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