Agenda Trade Show

The Agenda Trade Show is where the skate, surf, and skate & surf lifestyle companies go to show off their new goods to the retail shop buyers. The show is held a few times a year, twice in Long Beach, in January and again in July. the following are photos from yesterday. We were also here for the show back in January, click here for the blog post.

Dusters skateboards Booth.

GoPro's booth.

Showing off their newest soon-to-be on sale camera: GoPro HERO4 Session

Here it is with the new Kung-Fu grip mount. This is going to be excellent for those boxing match POV shots.

Plus, a few Gopro accessory companies were on hand with various creative mounts for Gopros.

Over at the Vans' booth, while business was being handled inside the booth, outside the booth Steve Van Doran was cooking up waffles for everyone.

Steve is always happy.

Zoo York booth.
At the Uppercut Deluxe/Z-Flex booth, skate legend Eric Dressen fresh from getting his hair cut by Shane Nesbitt.
"When we are kids or adults alike, there are always people we look up to for one reason or another, could be basketball players, baseball players, musicians, politicians, dancers or in my case, skateboarders. One of the guys in looked up to as a kid was Eric Dressen, dude had the best style, indelible fluidity, and an uncanny ability to wiggle through the streets on a skateboard. Today for whatever reason, he decided to come get his haircut by me and it was an absolute honor. When you finally meet someone you have held in such high regard for so long and they are everything you had expected and more, it makes the wait well worth it. One of the most humble, down to earth, righteous brothers I have ever met. Good times Eric and man, it was a fucking honor." - Shane Nesbitt

Speaking of Dressen, here's some of the new Dogtown decks with his old graphics.

Jim and Mike Muir in the Dogtown Suicidal booth.

New Dogtown wheels with names and graphics of streets in Santa Monica

The H-Street booth displayed some re-issue classic decks.

and some new ones.

A few months ago, we scanned and posted some old H-street newsletters from the early 1990's ( check out the high resolution scans in this blog post ). We brought this 1993 H-Street newsletter to the H-Street booth for Tony Magnusson to check out.

Deathwish decks..

Mobile surfboard making trailer?

This dog was just so happy to be there.

Samoan tattoo legend Su'a Petelo creating artwork for a longboard at the KahunaCreations booth. Did you know that Kahuna Creations invented the patented land paddle in 2006? Land paddling is the ultimate cross trainer to paddleboarding. Kahuna Land Paddling combines the smoothest riding longboards with world class land paddles. Did you also know that you can save 15% at KahunaCreations.com with promo code: STOKED.

See told you, check out KahunaCreations.com.

Selfie time!!!!!!! Famous Stars & Stripes booth girl Sydney likes to update her social media throughout the day.

A lot of sock companies nowadays.

Some new decks with classic graphics.

The famous Jim Phillips Screaming Hand was walking around.

Playboy clothing was there with a booth.

What happens when you don't have someone watching your booth.



Nice Sector9 board.

Salesman at work.

Sometimes, the simplier booths are the most interesting.


There was also some skating going on outside the convention center. Next blog post will have that. Several more photos of inside the show in the gallery: Agenda Show Gallery

Meanwhile, some other stuff of interest:

Vintage Skate Mag, Flyer & Catalog Scans: California Cheap Skates

Part 2 of a look into a collection of various skateboarding memorabilia from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Every week (or so), we will pick a couple items to go over and give them high-resolution scans. This week, a California Cheap Skates Catalog.
California Cheap Skates was a very popular mail order company in the late 80's and early 90's. Based in San Luis Obispo, CA, they started in 1985, but according to some of their ads, they state they had been "Serving Skaters Since 1975". California Cheap Skates ran ads in all the skate magazines and put out a free catalog about twice a year. The catalogs were full color and ran about 30 or so pages. They were very popular. To get a catalog, and be put on the list for future catalogs, you just sent them a letter with your address or called the phone number they put in their magazine ads.

As the years went on, skateboarding went through several changes, California Cheap Skates eventually rebranded itself as CCS. Then in 2008, the company was sold to Footlocker. This was when Footlocker was trying it's hardest to get some of the "extreme sports" money. Up until then, CCS was mail-order and online only, but in 2009, Footlocker opened up 22 brick-and-motar retail stores. They lasted just 4 years, with the last one closing down in March 2013. The popular catalogs were discontinued as well. And in 2014, Footlocker decided they were going to completely shut down CCS, they already started diverting customers to their Eastbay site. Fortunately some skate industry people up in Portland, OR, heard about this and bought CCS and are currently working on returning it to it's former self. They felt such an iconic company like CCS shouldn't die. Whether you ordered from them, or just read through their catalogs, CCS is a company that has created amazing memories for millions of skaters.

Here is a California Cheap Skates catalog from 1988 (possibly 1989, there are no dates on it). Like all their catalogs, it's roughly 5" wide by 10" tall.

This is one of their dual catalogs, one half being their skate section, and then you flip it over and the other half was their apparel section, which they called California Surf Style. Tony Magnussan was on one cover, while Tony Hawk was on the other.

Opening the California Cheap Skates side, you find a selection of skateboards. The boards were placed in a random order it seems. There's the price for the deck and for the complete under each one, along with the name of the trucks and wheels it comes with.







Next section was the individual components, a page for trucks and then for wheels.


Next up were the accessories.

Many of these items have disappeared from skateboarding completely. Like those plastic coppers that went on the trucks so that you grind them instead of grinding down your trucks, and the Cell Block riser pads that were supposed to absorb the stress of landing jumps.


The prices of those VHS tapes seem ridiculous today.

The center of the catalog has the order forms. One side is for the Cheap Skates side of the catalog and the other is for the Surf Style side.
Flip the catalog over and there's the California Surf Style side of the catalog , where all the clothing is featured.

Some really odd clothing, but back then, it was (probably) cool.












That's all of for this catalog. Will have scans of another item next week.

Part 1: Vintage Skate Magazines, Catalogs, Newsletters & More...