‘I could have sworn they were flying’: California skateboarders – in pictures

Radical Palms, Santa Monica, 1976

Hugh Holland: ‘One afternoon in the summer of 1975, I was in my car, driving up Laurel Canyon toward Mulholland, when I noticed a group of kids skating in a drainage bowl. They called it the “mini bowl”. It was small with very steep sides, and they were going up and down those banks. Out of the corner of my eye, while driving, I could have sworn that they were actually flying. The bowl was mostly below street level, so I just saw skaters bobbing up and then sinking back down out of sight’