A personal perspective by Rodga Harvey

|On July 15th 1978 Harrow Solid Surf first opened its doors to the paying public. It was a hot sunny day and anybody who was anybody was there including Tony Alva & posse. I remember TA's first run in the Performance Bowl (14ft deep with 4ft of vert), he did a 2 wheel edger carve, barely held it in........rolled out of the bowl looking like he'd seen a ghost.

The park was designed & built by Skateparks Limited. A guy named Jim Rennie was brought over from Florida to oversee the work and ensure it was all done properly, Jim was always talking about his mate "Ollie" who could do no handed aerials.....we used to say  "Yeh...whatever", turned out his mate was Alan Gelfand who revolutionised skateboarding with his groundbreaking manoeuvre.

At that point I started working with Jim as a design consultant and am kinda responsible for the shape of the Bollox and the trannys' in the Pool. I was late getting to work one day and when I arrived they had built the Pool. When I told them that they had done it all wrong and had messed up the transitions..........they threatened to kick my ass!.........End of story.

 By late 1978 the craze had come and gone and I had been skating other parks, but as I lived locally I though would go visit the park to see what was left. When I arrived I found the clubhouse smashed up, glued up skinheads lined the freestyle bank, the park was a mess. Despite the state of the place a small group of skaters were sessioning the Pool......I was stoked!

The tabloids had pronounced skateboarding dead but in Harrow it was business as usual.......That was when the likes of Buzz, Mick, Dave, Colin (SH), Steve, Ape, Zeenie and myself got together to form the H-Boyz.