Hello and welcome to Herstory. Today on the show we have the first Betty of skateboarding.
My name is Patti McGee but they called me the first Betty of skateboarding because that
was like an old-school slang term for a girl who skate-boarded. It kind of evolved to be
more of a female skateboard groupie but back in my day, it was all about skating. Tell
us a little bit about how you got into skateboarding. I was born in 1945, grew up in San Diego and
began surfing in the fifties and in 1962 I began skateboarding after my brother built
one at home by taking the wheels off my roller skates and putting them on a plank of wood
and we just started skating. Come again, did you say built by your brother? Is he single?
I am ready to springtime mingle. Dude it's my brother. When you were skateboarding around
in these early days were there other girls like you? Not at lot of people were skateboarding
to begin with, certainly not many other girls so a lot of times it was just me and a bunch
of guys. What kind of skateboard tricks were you doing aside from just cutting up the asphalt?
We were just kind of figuring things out, so still doing things like 360s and 180s,
hanging five and hanging ten, wheelies, nose wheelies, foot over foot, not to mention my
signature move which was doing a handstand on my skateboard. Impressive Patti but let
me show you how it's done Herstory style. Welcome to a little thing I like to call....sitboarding.
Double ollie, coming in for a landing. Perfect ten but it was close. Now in 1964 when you
were but 19 years old you made Herstory. That was the year that I won the first annual National
Skateboarding Championships. In 1965 I decided to go pro and I became the very first female
professional skateboarder. I've never won anything in my life, I mean the most I ever
got was an honorable mention in a cat portrait painting contest even then I was the only
contestant and they just eliminated first place because mine was so bad. I thought I
capture Mr. Mestophalaces true essence. During this time you were also a magazine cover model
were you not? I was a cover model for Life magazine and also for Skateboarding Magazine
which still pinnacle of my career. I was able to talk a lot about how I felt like and still
feel like skateboarding is as much for girls as it is for boys. In that 1965 Life magazine
piece--uh-huh-if I may read a direct excerpt, it describes this new sport as a men-ace?
How do you say that? Menace. A menace to limb and even to life. I skateboarded without a
helmet and rarely wore shoes, but this was like the mid-sixties no one wore shoes. Aside
from skating willy-nilly sans helmet what was life like as a professional female skateboarder?
Honestly it wasn't too glamorous, uh I was sponsored by Vitapack and Hobie skateboard.
I was paid about $300 a month, toured around the United States, went to department stores
and would do in-store demonstrations. I would go to different conventions and I was on tv
a few times, did some commercials. I didn't always fit in very well everywhere, when I
was in New York I was turned down by a number of cab drivers because I tended to not wear
shoes because I like to skateboard barefoot. There were some downsides but it was a pretty
exciting year. Your professional career essentially ended a year later in 1966. What happened?
Skateboarding was considered more of a trend than a long term sport at the time. It really
didn't come back into mainstream popularity until the 1990s and 2000s. Tell me at least
that your status as the first female professional skateboarder kept paying the bills. To be
honest no, I sort of faded from the limelight and held a number of different jobs doing
things like snow-skiing and leather smithing--leather smithing--and turquoise mining. Most recently
my daughter Haley and I have started up the Original Betty Skateboarding Company which
supports women and girls in skateboarding so it feels like I've really come Herstorically
full circle. Brava. Did I use your little Herstory word right? The silver lining of
this career cloud is that in 2010 you made Herstory yet again. Yup, I became the very
first woman inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. Well Patti you are certainly
a trail-skater for women and girls even though not a model of proper safety because you didn't
wear a helmet.