Steve Keenan took the pictures and Steve Douglas wrote the story about the 1987 Labor Day competition at the legendary ramp at Raging Waters.
These were some of the most exciting pictures seen at the time.
Rumours had been flying around about Raging Waters, but this was the first time we got to see it, although there had been glimpses in the American magazines. Caballero won the highest air (as you can guess from the picture), but in many ways the ramp itself was the star. 
Bod was featured prominently in a shot which owed nothing to blatant localism, and everything to his skating. Hosoi soared on the tantalising last page. “You’ll want to see it for yourself, and maybe you will” was the concluding caption. The caption was typical of the spirit of R.a.D: the point was that we were all included, and the assumption was that all of us looking at that picture were sharing the dream. And that the dream might become the reality for any one of us. The dream had already begun for Bod Boyle and Steve Douglas, even if most of that was yet to come.
The introduction to this feature told of “tantalising glimpses” but another tantalising aspect of this story was that there was no story: this was back in the days before desktop publishing and the pages were made up by hand. Nick Philip’s trademark special effects were done using physical means: photocopier, pen (cigarette lighter, griptape… ) and the raw type was glued down on boards. In magazines of the time it was common to see captions which had slipped (tiny slivers of type were hard to glue), or dropped off entirely. But it’s rare to see an example like this: the entire story fell off in transit.
Nick and me were gutted. Steve D was livid.
12 responses to “R.a.D Issue 58 Raging Waters”
this ramp was the dream… didnt steve win a lip trick contest against all on it?? ramp and genius fondly remembered
Does the story still exist? – it would be great to read it now.
I doubt very much whether the story exists. At this point I think Steve would have been sending stuff by fax, I believe (though he also used email very early on) and I don’t think that would have survived. I DO have a load of old 5.25 inch DOS floppies dating back a long way. It’s conceivable that it’s on one of those. I’ll need to see if I can find a way of reading them. The original PC from this period (and contents of the hard disk) travelled with me all the way to the New Deal skates fire in 2003.
if you want to see more of this ramp, get a copy of santa cruz’s classic wheels of fire, its heavily featured in the video with footage of hosoi roskopp and claus grabke. the water park is still there today but sadly the ramp is long gone.
i cant really remembe this article but its soo cool that someone ahs found all the old rad articles, i used to read it every month because at the time in the 80,s and early 90,s it was you lifebood of skating there simply wasnt anything else, oh yes please please please dont do a page for skate action it was soo shit!!!! im 31 and old enough to remember it! p.s. visit ramp city in blackpool
The sun, the sole skater, the ramp – the stuff you dream of, especially when faced with a cold, wet sunday afternoon in Asda car park. But it was these types of photo’s that charged us with energy to go out and rip even if it was just a local curb and, alas, not a 100ft spine ramp with street course attached……..
By the way, although I share rogue’s view on Sk8 Action (and have made similar comments on this site), I have since realised that Sk8 Action was another skate magazine that fuelled our creative outlet in a time when society wasn’t that receptive to our antics and skate facilities (by today’s standards) were rare. Plus I won a T Guerroro deck in a Sk8 Action prize draw so who am I to criticise!!!
The thing which always makes me smile about SK8 Action was that we had originally used that title for the “special free skateboard magazine” in BMX Action Bike which was the first mass-circulation British skateboard magazine of the eighties revival.
Later they also produced a copycat cover which was an amost direct duplicate of one of ours. But, as mentioned in a post about premium telephone adverts, the publishers of SK8 Action prospered which the owners of R.a.D never did (let alone the people producing it)! That makes me smile too.
well when backside puts it like thatthen yeah ok it was another magazine that kept us all going! cheers for the “other point of view ” mate. does anyone think now though that skating has become a little de-sensatizsed? i mean were all for acceptance but its every were now and you only wonder how long its gonna last before we go boom again.
the reason i personly never liked skate action was that it always seemed so childish, you had skateboard! and r.a.d. so what else did we need? well there wasnt internet readily available then and sms txt was out the window for a few years. i just couldnt help but think that sk8action always copyied everyone else, but ovoiulsly mr boyce would know better becasue he was in the industry.cheers to all speak later.
are you going to release anymore old issues to discuss? please do!!
My current plan is to carry on adding a page each day until I have worked my way through all the issues of R.a.D magazine up to the point when it was taken over by another team.
Whether I can keep to that plan remains to be seen.
Wow i had the picture of Cab doing that phat method on my wall for years, along with the ‘intro’ of Danny Way when he was on powell and only 14! baaaaaaaaaadddd !!!!
Mr TLB give us some more of the old school!