05/11/2025
Here's a teaser.
Here's what's coming in the next few weeks...
In the winter of 1977-78, Tim Cunningham was a young skater, I first noticed at the Glass Wave skatepark, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He was the first any of us had seen doing no-hands backside aerials, and, the next spring, some of us watched him "invent" footplants, on Pete Murray's driveway quarterpipe, in Rockville. We called ourselves the "RV Rats". By then, Tim had earned himself a nickname; Little Ripper.
In the summer of '78, the Crofton Skatepark opened and it had two decent pools. That's where the legend of the Little Ripper took hold and, although I wasn't around, I expect he put on a pretty good showing in the contests of the summer of '78.
15 years ago, Tim handed me a box of slides, given to him by Powerflex's Rusty Harris. Tim wanted me to clean and scan them, but, at first, the task seemed so big, particularly the cleaning part, I set them aside. I just got back to them.
This is what I seem to have... There are probably about 200 slides (maybe more) that were shot by Rusty, after Powerflex sponsored the Little Ripper in the fall of '78. Many of the shots are not good. It seems, maybe, Rusty gave him the shots that weren't "keepers". Nonetheless, most of the slides have a processing date, month and year, stamped on the frame. That gives me a nice timeline.
So far, I've gone through about 40 of these slides, all from late '78 and 1979. This is the earliest of them, which is dated November, 1978. I think the picture was taken at Cherry Hill, but is noteworthy for the fact that Tim is still riding an Airflow board, with Gullwings and Belair wheels, and doing his no-hand aerial. One month later, he'd be on a Powerflex board and Powerflex wheels, with Independent Trucks... Sponsored.
