Pinpointing the first instances of things is integral to skateboarding culture and folklore. A couple of years back, whilst readying our first issue, we were contacted by Tom Stewart who believed he might have built the first and had evidence to back it up.
Jim Sigurdson, frontside kickturn on Tom Stewart’s halfpipe | Encinitas, California, 1977 | Warren Bolster | Published in Closer Skateboarding #1, Spring 2022
“I’d heard about these big pipes out in the Arizona desert, so we would go out there to camp and skate them. These pipes were twenty feet in diameter with twenty feet of concrete thickness. At the time, I was doing carpentry work. I took the exact dimensions of that fullpipe radius, because it was so perfect, and built the first halfpipe ever, to my knowledge.
“If someone else built one before I did [1977], I would love to meet them and shake their hand, because I didn’t copy anybody, that’s for sure. People kept asking how they could build one of their own, so I got together with my brother and drew up a set of complete working plans and we started reproducing blueprints. We sold tens of thousands of these ramp plans all around the world.” — Tom Stewart
Did you skate or even build a halfpipe prior to 1977? If you’ve got scoop on an earlier iteration of the halfpipe the please get in touch, we’d love to hear about it. Check out a news broadcast of Tom’s halfpipe below alongside CBS checking in with him in 2022.
Archival footage of Tom Stewart’s halfpipe, courtesy of CBS San Diego
“People kept asking how they could build one of their own, so I got together with my brother and drew up a set of complete working plans and we started reproducing blueprints.“
— Tom Stewart on early halfpipe construction
This story originally appeared in Closer Issue #1 under the headline First Things First: Rampage Halfpipe.
More from Issue 1 of Closer Skateboarding
- First Things First: Clyde Singleton
- Jasons Adams: Clear Eyed Sobriety
- Louie Lopez on AVE’s Green Bench
- Louie Lopez talks ‘Days of Grace’
Favorites from the print edition of Closer
- ‘Have You Met Nelly Morville?’ — An Interview with Limosine’s Breakout Star
- Ariana Spencer — One Rad Mom
- Topography: Wallrides with Silas Baxter-Neal
- The Long Play with Mason Silva: Early 2000s Skate Video Soundtracks
- A Static Retrospective with Josh Stewart: Part I: Starting Light — the Original Static Trilogy • Part II: Closing Doors — Static IV and V • Part III: End of the Line — Josh Stewart on Static VI
