30 DAYS IN LA
“While it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment that street skateboarding began its boom, for many, the journey began with Hensley and Shackle Me Not in 1988.”
It was 30 years ago that Matt Hensley, armed with a bag of no-complies and a pair of knackered Converse, began an assault on the sidewalks of Southern California. Street skateboarding existed, sure – Gonz and Natas and Vallely were big names already, if only recently – but Hensley’s opening section in Shackle Me Not injected While Mike V’s escapades were captured by fancy film cameras and shot all over the US, Hensley was followed down local streets by the kind of rickety, heavily-vignetted fisheye you might have attached to a camera found in your parents’ attic. He had the same shitty jump ramp as you; he told us how he loved McDonald’s, hated school, and adored skateboarding. It was real and relatable. He wasn’t a superstar; he was a skateboarder.
