Handrails Before Gonz and Natas? Who Did the First Handrail?
Short answer: Not Gonz, and probably not Natas either. The earliest handrail I can find is Street Scott boardsliding a stair rail in Golden Gate Park, published in Thrasher’s April 1985 issue. Natas famously attempted a handrail at the Oceanside streetstyle contest in 1986, and a few months later he and Mark Gonzales both landed one the same day in Westwood. Johnee Kop’s handrail boardslide ad came out in Thrasher in June 1986, and Ed Templeton has the first documented 50-50, published in June 1988.
Handrails are one of the biggest testing grounds in skateboarding. Taking a trick to a rail is a big deal, and tricks that can’t be done on stairs and rails get treated like joke tricks. But where did handrail skating come from? Is it possible that it wasn’t Gonz?
Handrails pretty much defined skateboarding in the 90s. TransWorld even had a “handrails and grass” policy for the photos it published. Counting stairs, taking ledge tricks to rails as NBDs and hitting the biggest stuff possible were a huge focus. Things have cooled off a bit, but rails are still an essential part of street skating. So who did it first?
Huge thanks to Dan MacFarlane, friend of the show, who did most of the research for this and sent it to me. A lot of people had asked me to cover it, and thanks to him, I finally could.
The story everyone knows: Natas at Oceanside
In the mid 80s, there was a contest at the Oceanside Amphitheater. There’s a five-stair handrail off the stage, and Natas Kaupas very famously attempted a boardslide on it. It wasn’t a land, or even close, but it got the gears turning in a lot of people’s heads.
When did it happen? Look it up and you’ll mostly just see “the 80s.” In a 2016 Emerge Conference interview with Gonz, Dune suggests it might have been around 1984, and Gonz says he doesn’t keep track of when things happened. A TransWorld article says 1986, which seems much more likely: the attempt was caught on video, and contests weren’t recorded and released on tape until 1985. I think it’s safe to say 1986.
Natas had already been trying handrails before that. He told Gonz he’d been trying them at the beach, into sand. He’d obviously never rolled away from one.
Then Gonz, Natas and Steve Rocco went to skate a rail at a small demo, and Gonz and Natas both landed one in the same session. According to TransWorld, that happened in Westwood, California, a few months after the contest.
So that’s the story we all know: Natas tried it first, then he and Gonz landed it the same day in 1986. But there’s more to it.
Street Scott
In that Emerge interview, Gonz is very reluctant to take credit for inventing handrail boardslides. He mentions a guy called Street Scott and says he was inspired by him. That was the first time I’d ever heard of him.
Street Scott made a couple of appearances in Thrasher in the early 80s, including the cover of the April 1982 “Gnarly Street Issue” and a mini interview in April 1984. It doesn’t say much beyond that he was an ironworker from Minneapolis who moved to California, and that he was “one of the more visible skaters on the San Francisco skate scene.” If you were around back then you’d probably heard of him; he just didn’t get much coverage that survived.
But one picture did. Here’s Street Scott boardsliding down an eight- or nine-stair rail in the “Somethin’ Else” feature of Thrasher, April 1985. There’s very little information with it. The caption is basically a disclaimer that skateboarding is dangerous, and it says he’s rail sliding a shortcut down the stairs in Golden Gate Park.
That’s very clearly first. Even being generous with the date of Natas’s contest attempt, the April 1985 issue hit the streets at least a month before that, and the photo might even be from late 1984.
Did he actually land it? We don’t know. It seems unlikely, but it’s possible. He might have been doing boardslides for years without anyone documenting it. And we can’t ask him, because according to Gonz, he’s passed away.
Whether or not he landed it, he inspired Gonz to land one, and that’s a big deal.
Johnee Kop
So in 1986 Gonz and Natas landed theirs, and people saw it, but it wasn’t documented for a while. They were beaten to the magazines by Johnee Kop, in a Town & Country ad in Thrasher in June 1986. He also shows up in the 1986 NSI Streetstyle in Tempe contest footage.
That’s really close. We know about the 1986 contest and that Gonz and Natas landed theirs a few months later, but this photo was published in June, so it was taken before that. TransWorld said this when it ran the ad later:
“Although Natas and Gonz had already been hitting handrails at contests and out in the streets for sometime, Hawaiian Power Bra Johnee Kop was the first to feature this new concept in the pages of Transworld via this (cavemanned?) Town & Country ad. February, 1987.”
It’s kind of funny. It was in Thrasher eight months earlier, but they used the first date they published it.
Nobody really argues that Johnee was first, but he deserves respect. Like Street Scott, though, we don’t know if it was landed. It could have been a caveman or a bail. I also want to give props to Julien Stranger, who did a boardslide down steps in 1986. Not a handrail, but in the ballpark.
The first Gonz photo, front boards and 50-50s
The first Gonz handrail photo I know of came a year later, in TransWorld’s June 1987 issue. The caption:
“Usually untouchable in the area of obstacle skating, Mark Gonzalez racks up an ollie to boardslide on a four foot high handrail.”
It’s funny how technically they had to describe it. It was still a brand new thing.
Around that time, Julien Stranger did the first frontside boardslide on a rail. I couldn’t find a date, but Chrome Ball Incident says it was definitely the first, and Gonz did one in 1988.
1988 is when handrails really became a thing. Natas has a boardslide ad that year, and the rails got much bigger, like the Federal Building. They were starting to get legit.
New tricks came too, like the 50-50. Ed Templeton landed the first documented one, in a photo published in June 1988, and it might even be from 1987. Here’s what he says:
“For certain I was not the first to ‘do’ a handrail, gonz (and natas) take that honor. Johnee Koop had a boardslide on a rail photo earlier too. It was just a zine in time where things were happening and it was very slow to be documented and shown in magazines. After hearing about gonz and natas doing them, (wasn’t there footage in some contest video of them sliding a rail?) loads of skater kids started trying them, Jason Lee Mike V, Ray Barbee, and myself, along with lots of other local kids in HB and I’m sure everywhere.”
Weirdly, even though it was the very first one, the ad doesn’t credit him by name. It’s him, though. And he makes a good point about kids everywhere trying rails by then, which is why I’m careful to say “first documented.” Street Scott could have done a nollie nosegrind down a ten in 1983 for all we know.
Natas also did a 50-50 around that time, plus one with copers in the late 80s, though I don’t have a date. Gonz did one on Eighth Street in New York in 1987, probably before Ed, but that footage didn’t come out until later.
Frankie Hill, Pat Duffy and the 90s
At that point handrails were a thing, but not what they are today. The trick variety and the size of the rails weren’t there yet.
Enter Frankie Hill and Pat Duffy. Frankie was one of the first guys to legitimately go big, ollieing huge stuff and grinding long rails. Sure, he was mostly doing caveman entries in the 80s, but the rails themselves were unlike anything other people were skating.
Then came Pat Duffy, the first to get serious about variety on rails, with smith grinds and all kinds of other tricks. That was a really big deal too. After 1992 it was on: a race for bigger and longer rails, kinks, new tricks and stances, and flipping in and out. I can’t possibly document every handrail NBD from the 90s, but that’s how it started.
Sources
- "Somethin' Else" photo of Street Scott railsliding stairs in Golden Gate Park
- Street Scott mini interview ("skater/ironworker")
- Gnarly Street Issue cover (Street Scott)
- Johnee Kop Town & Country ad
- Mark Gonzales ollie to boardslide on a four-foot handrail
- Mark Gonzales at the Emerge Conference
- NSI - Streetstyle in Tempe (1986)
