RaTTown

In the early 70’s surfing was what life was all about for a bunch of kids growing up in the little coastal town of Atlantic Beach in Northeast Florida.

The whole concept of the Rattown Surf/Skate ideology can be traced back to the summer of 1971 when four kids that went to Atlantic Beach Elementary surfed the old Atlantic Beach pier every day. At the time, the Atlantic Beach area was the energy hub for the local surf scene. There was Hixon‘s surf shop, the surf beast, and the surfboard revolution. All cutting edge surf shops, and the mayport poles were right down the street.

Mentored by Chris Gardner, and adopted by Hixon surf shop, these four kids formed a tight knit bond that pushed each other on a daily basis, and when the waves were flat, they would skate the steep driveways of Atlantic Beach on homemade skateboards, often going through a set of wheels in a single day.

By 1973, all of their contemporaries from the four beach communities converged at Fletcher junior high school, and the crew more than tripled in size, resulting in the talent pool being pushed to new levels.

Groups of young surf rats, still too young to drive, or relegated to surfing and skating their own neighborhoods, were forming lifelong friendships, bonded by their love of the ocean.

One local kid, Jimmy, Plumer, was spending summers in the early 70s with his father in Santa Monica, California, and would come back at the end of every summer with hard to believe stories of his friends Jay and Tony that he was saying were the best skateboarders in the world. This went on for a few years, and although the stories seemed exaggerated, one thing was for sure, Plumer was skating better than anybody. He even told us about skating empty swimming pools .