We are also working on our documentary film "1985 Summer Camp Nostalgia" featuring Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen as the invited trainers that year. This site will give you some sneak previews, comments, pictures and rumours about this ongoing movie project. So keep coming back. It is our intention to update the site regularly to keep you informed of its progress. We may also add a forum later on where you can share you skateboard memories with other skaters.
As active skateboarders since the mid 70's we have a lot of skate history to tell. We have been thinking of documenting the period around 1979-1988 since a long time ago. Being very active on the Swedish-European skate scene during these years both in the Swedish and the European skateboard associations we think it's our duty to make this happen. Note that the intention is not to make only our view but to create a base for all skaters that have something to contribute to the pieces of skateboard history we handle here.
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Jani Söderhäll
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Hans "Corky" Koraeus
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Stefan "Lillis" Åkesson
Jani is a former president of the Swedish and European skateboard associations. He is still president of ISSA (International Skateboard Slalom Association) created in the mid 80's. He also published the magazine Slalom! during 10 years. For more info see: see
www.SlalomSkateboarder.com and
www.pcpal.se/issa. He is a multiple Swedish and European Champion slalom skater. In 1991 he created the French/Swedish company PC PAL (
www.pcpal.se), developing software for the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession.
Soon thereafter Corky joined him as his first employee. Jani and Corky has known each other since 1980 when they met at a "judge" meeting arranged by SSF (Swedish Skateboard Association). After that Corky also started to get involved in SSF writing articles, photographing and judging skate competitions in Sweden and Europe. Corky was a flatland freestyle skater at the time but is now more into slalom.
A few years ago a third skater, Lillis, joined the company as web designer. He is a Swedish, European and World champion flatland freestyle skater and is one of the few that has kept on skating hard since the early 80's. He is in fact the current World Freestyle champion after the World Championships 2002 in the United States.
The Swedish Summer Camp seemed like the perfect topic to start with. It ranged over a very interesting period in skateboard history, from 1979 to 1985. It had trainers and participants from all over the world. And some major milestones where set at the camps with Mike McGill's first 540 (McTwist) in 1984 and Tony Hawks first 720 in 1985. Not to talk about all of Rodney Mullen's invented tricks during the period of 1983 to 1985, being the obvious choice as freestyle trainer at the camp.
Eurocana, a skateboard shop in Stockholm, and Sörlins Sport, a local sports shop, introduced the Swedish Skateboard Summer camp in 1979. At first the camps were hosted in Rättvik, a small town in central Sweden. In the early 1980s, a slump in the skateboard market threatened the camp's survival. But the Swedish Skateboard Association assumed management in 1983 and continued running the camp through 1985 in Hägernäs, part of Täby, just north of Stockholm.
After Stacy Peralta's film "Dogtown and the Z-boys" treating the early period of modern skateboarding 1975-1979 we have started to make a film ourselves about the Swedish skateboard summer camps. The early intention was to continue the story from 1979 to 1985. We soon realized that this was going to be a too huge of a project for us. So our film "1985 Summer Camp Nostalgia" will treat mainly the year 1985 but will also have a small section from the earlier camps.
