Skat'n News Magazine


Skat'n News was a southern California skateboard newsletter/magazine published from 1979 through 1981. I received my first physical copy as August 9, 1980 after skating the July 1980 ASPO contest at Delmar Skate Ranch, and continued to receive most of the physical issues after that.

I have worked over the years to scan each issue, and backfill missing and prior issues to complete the collection. This has been through Ebay purchases, and the generous contributions and assistance of others*



Note: the first issue of Skat'n News was August 15, 1979. Reference August 23, 1980 Issue #15, Vol.#2, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US! IT'S BEEN ONE YEAR. On August 15, 1979, our first issue covered the Pro event and foretold of the future of skateboarding (see above)."

* (Some PDF scans courtesty of John Tassi)

The following issues were provided for scanning courtesy of Eric Schreiber:
Vol.#1, Issues #4, #5, #8, #10
Vol.#2, Issues #4, #5, #7, #11

The following issues were provided for scanning courtesy of Kevin Marks:
Vol.#2, Issues #3, #10, #12(cover), #13, #17(cover)

The following issues were provided courtesy of Sam Myhre:
Vol.#2, Issue #17


Note: later issues (Vol.#2, Issue #8 and later) are 11.5 inches wide and 13.5 inches tall - too large for an 8.5x11 consumer flat be scanner.

One option would be, instead of scanning, to simply photograph all pages from each issue.

Another option would be to use the self-serve scanners and Fedex/Kinkos in 11x17 mode. As of 2024 at least, most Fedex/Kinkos locations have these available. The process is as follows:

You'll need to take a USB memory stick with 100Mb or more space available to Fedex with you. Plan to spend an hour or so per issue at Fedex. I've been doing this by using a credit card $25 hold on the scanner. Each page is $0.55, so you will probably end up a bit less than $15 for the issue.

General overview: the large format issues are 11.5 inches wide and 13.5 inches tall. You can scan them using the Fedex self-serve scanners set to 11x17 size. The mag pages typically have a good 1/2-inch of empty border on the page width, so we can get way with using the 11" scanner width. I think the Fedex 11x17 mode actually scans up to 11.5 or greater anyway. And the the 13.5" issue height is well under the 17" scanner dimension, so no problem there. Overview summary: you can place mag pages in the 11x17 scanner lines, and this will work fine.

Scan parameters: each time you scan a page, it will allow you to set the Quality, File Type, and Destination. Each time you scan a page, select the highest option for Quality, which at my store is "very high (400dpi)". For File Type, select "JPEG". For Destination select "USB" (you'll need to bring a USB memory stick with you). Do not select PDF for File Type, as JPEG is preferable to work with. I can convert all of the individual JPEG files into a single PDF file for the issue. These settings reset after each scan, so it is important to remember to set to "very high", JPEG, USB each time.

Also, each time you scan a page and save it to USB, it will provide the option to "send to another destination at no charge", and "e-mail" is one of the options for this. So you can/should e-mail each scan to yourself each time after saving to USB. This is just as a secondary/redundant backup in case of later issues with the memory stick.

When your done, if your issue is 20 pages long you should have 20 JPEG files, one JPEG file corresponding to each individual mag page. You'd have 20 JPEG files on your USB stick, and 20 e-mails (each e-mail will have one JPEG file attached).

You may want to make a printout of this process, take it with you, and ask the Fedex staff to get you started and walk you through the process for the first few pages.