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Skateboarder magazine is unique in the history of the sport. It was not only the world’s first dedicated skateboarding publication, it was also the most respected and emulated, as well as the guidebook to the 1970s skateboarding revolution. Other magazines have followed, but none have enjoyed the influence or admiration of the original Skateboarder. Starting out as the little brother of Surfer magazine, The Quarterly Skateboarder was published by John Severson for a single year in the mid ’60s before the sport’s first downturn. By the mid ’70s, skateboarding was more popular than ever thanks to the urethane wheel, and the magazine was revived–first on a bi-monthly and then a monthly basis.
The ’70s incarnation boasted over two million monthly readers at its peak in July 1978, before it altered course and eventually ceased publication in 1980. Although the magazine resurfaced in later decades, the ’70s issues still hold a place in the history of skateboarding like no other magazine. Warren Bolster was the original editor and photo editor. A skater himself, and the obsessive genius behind the curtain, Bolster assembled a team of gifted photographers (King James Cassimus and Jim Goodrich among them) , designers, and writers who won international awards and influenced the culture at large for generations to come.