Having grown up on Market Street, Belfast, Bernie Rea was one of the most stylish and naturally gifted humans from the Emerald Isle to ever set foot on a skateboard. The small amount of footage he committed to tape over the years definitely gives you the idea of how easily skateboarding came to him, but it’s the vast amount of stories you hear about Bernie, or things that were witnessed first hand that were never documented, that will live on in Irish skate-lore forever.

First try ollies in the dark that haven’t been touched since, never-ending lines around St Anne’s purely for the sake of, and a certain level of nonchalant command over his board that drew comparisons with a certain floppy-haired Oxfordian lad.

Spend some time this morning and enjoy Bernie’s section from the 1998 VHS offering ‘Deconstruction’ which features a whole load of footage from his stint in Boston, with a smattering of clips from mid-90’s visits to Dublin. The section starts at around 1:28 – ignore the vomit…

Filmed and edited by Ciaran O’Connor with footage from Paddy Byrne.

Bernard Rae – Deconstruction (1998) from The Baggot Gap on Vimeo.