PRESERVING SKATEBOARDING'S OUTSIDER ERA

Over the years, Chris Sterling has amassed an archive of thousands of photos highlighting forgotten skate moments from average skaters in the 80s and 90s. In the grand scheme of skateboarding’s timeline, it was sort of in a rut at this point. A simpler time, when skating in a parking lot might equate to a slurpee getting hurled at your head from a macho band of jocks driving by. No glam. No glitz. No cash value. Nobody clamoring, “Oh I gotta hardpost that” cause for better or worse, that shit didn’t exist.

The Past Participle has quietly become a living archive of early skateboarding when it was still considered counterculture. Like some sort of found-photo fever dream, it shines a light on the regular folks skating purely for the hell of it, despite it being alienating.

Highlighting the everyman is something we’ve always been pumped on at Jenkem, so when we saw the crusty ramps, derelict characters, and general unprofessionalism, we had to make an excuse to further prop it up.

So what made you start the archive in the first place?
It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. There was no real plan or anything. The first photo was this one I found of some kid doing a frontside air, I think, over a channel on this beat-to-hell wooden ramp sometime in the fall or winter. All bare trees, everything was just super raw. That’s what started it.

Do you have any criteria besides non-pros for the images?
Basically roughly 1980 to 1992 is my cutoff period. The reason for that is that skating was pretty big in the 70s, there were parks everywhere and it was kind of popular. Then in the 80s it died down again, and then in the early 90s it started becoming more a part of the public consciousness. In that interim period, it was this real weird subculture. So that’s the reason I like to highlight that time period.

What about like Back to The Future, Vision Streetwear being in department stores, that kind of stuff?
Oh, it absolutely had a big blip. No question. Hawk and those dudes were pulling stupid money for a while. But over the course of the entire decade, it was still very much on the fringes of society, and targeted for ridicule and scorn.

You’ve ended up reconnecting people through some of these old photos too, right?
Sometimes I’ll have lost the information of where I got it from or not have any context for the submissions at all, and then people chime in and are like, “Oh, that’s Mike from Columbus, Ohio. He lived in this neighborhood…” and then tag him and everyone comes in and reconnects again. So it’s crazy how close-knit the local skate communities were in that time period and how people can end up finding each other again through these old photos.

There’s been a bunch of times when someone has sent me a photo and then someone else sees it and it’s like, oh, I haven’t talked to that dude in 20 years, and they connect again, which is really cool.

What do you think these photos capture about skating that the more polished, professional photos miss out on?
I think especially because of the time period, it definitely captures skating at a time when it was more of a true subculture. Now if you want to find something, it’s just a click away. During the early 80s, if you wanted to find your way into skateboarding, the inroads were there, but you had to make some effort to find them. They exemplify how raw things were and how people were just figuring stuff out.

They also show a specific focus on the average everyday skater. No super glitzy ramps, no real “photographer,” nothing even that gnarly trick-wise. It’s people doing their thing in everyday life.

They all definitely have some sort of inexplicable thing to them, or like a feeling of solace or something.
Skating during that time basically just made you an instant social outcast. You’d be skating somewhere and people would be driving by, throwing stuff at you from their cars and calling you names and all kinds of crazy stuff. If anything, I think they’re a testament to the will that skateboarders have to just keep doing their shit no matter what people are saying about them.

If you wanted to skate some kind of ramp, you had to build it. You had to aimlessly go find one that was rumored to be in your town somewhere or something. So it’s kind of showcasing the resilience of the skateboard spirit.

So many people probably look at the feed as a nostalgia thing, but you mentioned you don’t really see it like that?
I don’t believe the 80s were better than things are today. That’s cool if people say those were the best times of their life, but that’s not at all why I do it. I think skating is pretty fucking great today. I wouldn’t want to go back to that period. I don’t see it as skating’s heyday or anything like that.

Fair enough, what do you think it is that’s so intriguing about the average skaters seen in these photos then?
When you look at that period, the focus was just on the magazines, and it was basically just the pros. And all of this stuff is what was happening all around the country, the people supporting the industry that you didn’t really have a glimpse at, whereas today it’s all on social media. Anyone can see similar versions of these photos from today. So I think the photos from that time period give a little window into what was happening everywhere, but wasn’t really seen that much.