"I t was not the post about an X Games vert champion or someone catapulting themselves down multiple sets of stairs on a skateboard that received immediate support from followers on my Instagram account. The post featured Liz Bevington (RIP)-a German-born, Venice Beach misfit who learned to skateboard at age fifty-two in 1976. She wasn't content to sit around and watch her son have all the fun, and when Bevington was eventually widowed, skateboarding became her core social outlet."
"Bevington experienced being in the limelight to some extent during her heyday, making a cameo in a Coors Light commercial in 1984 and then a Pepsi ad in 1990, even receiving sponsorship from the clothing brand B.U.M. Equipment. The Los Angeles Times presented her in an article when she protested a proposed ban on roller sports in Venice Beach, followed by a photo shoot of Bevington skateboarding the Santa Monica pier."
An Instagram account documenting the history of women in skateboarding highlighted Liz Bevington, a German-born Venice Beach skater who learned to skateboard at fifty-two in 1976. Bevington embraced skateboarding after widowhood as a core social outlet and remained active into her eighties, riding a custom board with a windsurfer sail. Photos showed her in pink high-top shoes and a tasseled Skateboard Mama beach T-shirt; retro footage captured her in vibrant spandex dancing to disco amid a street party. The post prompted enthusiastic online praise. Bevington appeared in commercials and ads in the 1980s and 1990s, received sponsorship, and protested proposed roller-sports bans.
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