CalStreets was recently featured in A Book by Ben Marcus called ‘ The Skateboard: The Good , The Rad And The Gnarly ‘. Many Photo’s for this book were provided by CalStreets.com as well as many of the vintage skate ads.

Our friends at CalStreets.com were featured in a wicked book written by Sean Cliver! In this follow-up to Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art, Sean Cliver has assembled what is undoubtedly the most comprehensive visual overview of skateboards in print.

Dave Rochlen Speaks of Makaha and Hobie – Dave Rochlen was instrumental in organizing the Makaha skateboard team and later leading the Hobie team. As such, he was skateboarding’s first coach.

Skateboarding let its belt out in the last years of the 1970s as pool and skate park vert riding demanded wider and wider boards. How wide? Sims Team manager Kirk Putnam designed a 12-inch-wide monster for riders with size 13 and up shoe sizes.

Tom Sims: “A solid fiberglass board that someone gave me. It had no flex. I like flex.”

By the late 70′s I got very busy getting snowboarding off the ground, and licensed Sims Skateboards to Brad Dorfman in 1981. At the time we had the #1 team with Brad Bowman, Dave Andrecht, Steve Rocco, Todd Swank, Pierre Andre, Chris Strople, Wally Inouye and a lot of the guys who would become very influential in skateboarding. Many of these guys were the Who’s Who of skateboarding. It’s amazing the guys who were on my team and what they went on to do later in life in the board sports world.

In 1960 we took a vacation back to visit my grandparents in Los Angeles – and to go to Disneyland. I saw some kids skateboarding on the sidewalk, and that changed my whole life. I ran into my grandparents’ garage and grabbed some ancient metal roller skates, cut them in half, mounted them to a 2” x 4” took one run and said: “This is it. I love sidewalk surfing.”