Skate Culture Article #13: Clan Skates...

In 1988, a skateboarding shop opened in the west end of Glasgow. Around 1990-91 ish I and a couple of friends had chosen skateboarding over conventional mainstream sports as our past time of choice and a weekend ritual of travelling on the train from Stirling to Glasgow then getting the underground from Buchanan Street to Kelvinhall and hanging out at that skateboard shop all afternoon before heading back.

That skateboard shop is called Clan Skates, it still opens it's doors in exactly the same place and is still run by the very same man that opened it 25 years ago this year. This man, Jamie Blair, that you see before you now and today he is celebrating this quarter century of servicing the scottish skateboarding scene with a big skate get together at the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow.

I don't think I know of many people that have a bigger thirst for life than this man who I certainly count and a living legend in scottish skateboarding. Aside from being a big part of my skateboarding life, he also gave me my first taster in surfing which I hope to repeat very soon.

Congratulations Jamie and Clan Skates, you are a credit to the sport.

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Notes of Skate Culture Articles...
This is part of a series of Skate Culture Articles I've been writing as an insight into the sport of skateboarding for an outsider. I have vague ideas of collating these into some sort of coffee table book on the subject. You can find the rest of the articles by entering tagged skateculturearticle by tractorfactoryphotos into the BlipSearch.