GHETTOBLASTER - SINCE EVER
Ghettoblaster is a skateboarding and streetwear brand owned by UTC Distribution, a distribution company created by Giorgio "Bongo" Contati , one of the first skaters in Italy with over 30 years of experience in the distribution of American skateboard brands and the production of skateboard shoes and streetwear.
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Below is the interview with Giorgio Contati from "Nessuna Regola" by Lele Lutteri, published by Alcatraz.
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I started skateboarding around 1973 with my brother.
We both came from the world of skating, and having trained every day since I was about five years old, I had my antennas quite up for everything related to this world.
One day in Genoa, I saw a boy with this strange device under his feet speeding down the main street in the city center (I only discovered years later that he was Ed Natalin, a famous Californian surfer and skater, passing through town); that figure, pushing and curving through the crowd on that board with wheels underneath, struck me deeply.
I immediately started looking for that tool and finally found a skateboard model in a toy store in downtown Genoa. It was a fiberglass Gipron, and my brother and I pestered our parents until they finally gave in and bought us one for the two of us to use.
That was actually my first board, although, to tell the truth, before buying the Gipron, my friends in our neighborhood and I had already built a sort of cart with engine bearings to go down the slopes while sitting on it.
A few years later, around '76, '77, with the arrival of the fashion for everything that came from the United States, another shop in Genoa started selling skateboards.
We alternated training on skates with using the board, but keep in mind that those were years when the ollie hadn't been invented yet (this fundamental trick was invented in 1978 by skater Alan Gelfand in bowl and later developed on flat surfaces by Rodney Mullen in 1982, Editor's note), so we limited ourselves to going down slopes, turning, braking and little else, until we found an American magazine in a newsstand that opened up a whole new world for us and thanks to which, three of us friends decided to buy an American board by mail order.
Eleven months passed when we finally received a postcard notifying us that our package had been in storage for seven months, and so after almost a year we got our hands on our first professional board!
After all these years, I don't remember exactly, but it was either a Bert LaMar with ACS800 trucks or Powel MiniCubic wheels. That was the real beginning; at the time, we traveled a lot for skate competitions, became friends with Angelo Zambito during a trip, and thanks to him, we learned about a skatepark in Antibes, France. We made plans to go skate there, traveled, obviously without a ticket, found the skatepark closed, but we climbed over and immediately threw ourselves into the facilities, without knowing how to use them in the first place.
As soon as the owner arrived to open the facility, we were obviously kicked out in a rude way, but we begged him until we were exhausted to be able to come back and continue skating, and just like what happened with our parents when we bought our first board, the technique worked!
Inside that park, there was a small bowl and some ramps without flat buttons or balconies, as well as some slalom slopes. It was after that experience in France that we decided we'd also have our own ramp in Genoa; thanks to the help of one of our skating coaches who worked in a municipal workshop, and thanks to some councilors, we obtained the materials and permission to build a halfpipe without flats (like the ones we saw in Antibes).
Within a few days, people began using it improperly, some people got hurt, and then they told us the structure absolutely had to be dismantled and removed. We made it disappear in a single night and found a place on the hill in an area managed by the priests, who allowed us to keep it there for a nominal rent.
A nice scene began to develop, we modified the structure to optimize its dimensions, and the first skaters began to arrive from all over Italy to skate it. They then gave us space and materials for a second ramp, which lasted until around '83.
These were the beginnings of the scene in Genoa and Liguria; after the mid-1980s, with the arrival of street skating and new board shapes, there was a revival and the scene expanded, moving onto the streets, thanks in part to a space built above one of Genoa's new sewage treatment plants, which became the perfect spot for the nascent street style.
In the late 1980s, there must have been at least a thousand people skateboarding in and around Genoa; people came from Chiavari, Savona, Albissola, and Lavagna. We built other structures near that first spot, but there were so many people that sometimes you couldn't even skate! The first skateboarding boom had arrived, and we were right in the middle of it without realizing it! It was 1988!
Once I reached a good level of skating, I started to take part in freestyle competitions around Europe, obtaining important results in many competitions (second place at the Munster Freestyle World Championships in 1987 and third place at the European Championships in Prague in 1988). I met Rodney Mullen , an idol of all skaters at the time, in Sweden at the Eurocana Summer Camp in 1984, where to get there we did "false papers" with Max Bonassi ... and I started to work together with Max Cuciti (BMX) with a group of athletes who did travelling shows around Italy.
Thanks to the experience I had begun to accumulate in this world, a shop in Genoa basically asked me to be their consultant for orders relating to skateboarding items.
Within two years, the business grew significantly; I began placing orders directly in the United States and attending trade shows in California. In 1991, I took over the entire "skateboard package" when the shop owner decided to sell.
This is how Totally Distribution was born. It was 1991. I was in a garage and I started importing and distributing various brands, also taking advantage of the arrival of the “big wave” of snowboarding in those years.
We created a mail order company, the forerunner of online sales, a magazine “Freezer” , a free press of the time, as well as producing some videos with a theme of Italian skaters including Federico Vitetta, Panfili, Joe Onorato, Marco Marzocchi, Giovanni Morri, Pietro Matacena, Davide Giuliani but at the end of the nineties and the beginning of the new millennium my first child arrived.
At this point, family came first, so I was forced to scale back; I had already started producing a clothing line and shoes after working in the industry for 10 years.
Having then opened some shops, I focused, together with my partner "Tian" , on the “Ghettoblaster” project, a line of complete skateboards, the main Italian skateboard brand with high-quality production.
My passion for skateboarding has introduced me to distant worlds, different cultures, and incredible experiences. It has taken me to 58 countries, and I'd say I'm more than happy about it!
Keep skating!!! And thanks to everyone who has always helped me.!!!
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