The Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente, California is presently hosting a "Surf 2 Skate: From Liquid to Asphalt" exhibition. The stated purpose of the exhibition is to "cover the origins of skateboarding to sidewalk surfing and the early sur…
The First Ever Zephyr Board Produced?
The Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente, California is presently hosting a "Surf 2 Skate: From Liquid to Asphalt" exhibition. The stated purpose of the exhibition is to "cover the origins of skateboarding to sidewalk surfing and the early sur…
Skate-Punk Culture as Seen in an Epic Topside
It is not too often that I focus on the topside of a board (though there are surely some great topside graphics out there) but that is precisely what I am going to do today. It really doesn't matter what's beneath (though if you simply must know, it's an Uncle W…
Chlorine: A Pool Skating Documentary
Recently, I picked up a copy of Chlorine: A Pool Skating Documentary which was originally released around 2005. I've always had a particular affinity for pool skating because of its roots in skateboarding history -- and because of the greater diversity of what you can d…
Felix Culpa: Vision, Sean Goff, Bernie Tostenson and the Unknown Deck
One of the things I have said about skate art before -- or if I didn't say it, I certainly meant to -- is that the industry was so prolific art-wise that you can seemingly look at historical board art everyday and still, even after years of doing this, expect to run int…
Thoughts on the Place of Vans in Skate Culture
Recently I was contacted by one of the senior editors of the periodical AdWeek . They were doing a story on the history of Vans and wanted an angle on the brand taken from its skateboarding roots. I don't proclaim to be an expert of course, but I know what I know and it&…
Empty Pools
Pool skating is something I've been thinking of a lot for a long while now. For me, it is my holy grail of skateboarding. I'm not suggesting that other forms of skating are somehow second rate -- far from it. The rise of half-pipes and, of course, street skating, co…
A Noble Cause and an Auction for a Rare Spidey De Montrond Personal Rider
A rare opportunity to own the personal rider of one of the great Santa Cruz skate legends of the 80's has come up -- and also a concurrent opportunity to support a noble cause in the process.
Spidey De Montrond -- who needs no introduction here -- is auctioning off his …
Some Santa Monica Localism: The Rip City Skates Board
For those of you who are wondering, this site has mainly been active as of late on my Skate Culture Facebook page , so if you into the kind of stuff we have been posting about here, make sure you go over to that page and give it a "like" because otherwise you'r…
The History and Importance of the Vallely Barnyard Deck
Head on over to Mike Vallely's Street Plant brand site and read Kyle Duvall's interesting account on 25 Years of the Barnyard . Here's an excerpt: 25 years ago, World Industries released the Mike Vallely Barnyard “double kick” deck. It was the first professionally…
A Short History of Rip City Skates
A great interview with Jim McDowell on the history of Rip City Skates in Santa Monica, California. Jim gets into the origins of the shop, some early competition wars, their collaboration with Wes Humpston and their philosophy of providing high quality pro boards.
Wes Humpston and the Dogtown Skateboards
Wes Humpston needs no introduction of course. He is the Dogtown skater and artist who was behind so much of what we've come to associate with the Dogtown art of the 1970's. As my refrain always is, there is "o.g." and then there is "O.G.". For m…
Is This the Greatest Grip Art Ever?
Okay, I admit it; the title of this post is an exercise in hyperbole, but I do find myself asking that very question -- knowing all the while that there really is no satisfactory answer to it since there is not standard by which to make such a judgement. Grip tape can be a…
Bernie Tostenson Follow-up: Brand X Team Deck Variant
As a follow-up to our last post on the skateboard art of Bernie Tostenson, I wanted to share a little variant on the superb Triple X team deck. Essentially it's the same graphic, but in a different colourway and with the Brand X labelling -- instead of "Triple X.&q…
The Skateboard Art of Bernie Tostenson
S ome of the very best known skateboard artists out there are names like Wes Humpston, Jim and Jimbo Phillips, Sean Cliver, Marc McKee, Andy Jenkins and Ed Templeton -- to name a few. Rightly so of course. These names have contributed a very great deal to the corpus of skat…
Seldom Seen Deck Art: Steve Caballero "Cab Man" Deck Inspired by Ironman
Here is a deck you don't see every day. Steve Caballero's early 1990's "Cab Man" deck from Powell which features, of course, Ironman for the deck art. Image source: "Moloko-plus" on SNB
Cab himself notes the rarity of this particular deck and …
Spidey de Montrond: The "Swindle 2" Story
Skate Culture is very excited to be able to present the following guest piece, written by Spidey de Montrond for this site. The article not only gives readers a history of his Santa Cruz model and skating career, but also details his current career with Pocket Pistols Skate…
Denny Riordon: Bridging the 70's and 80's
Early on in my skateboarding life, I fell in love with the Denny Riordon "People in My Head" graphic as advertised in TWS in 1988. I still consider it one of the great bits of skate art, though -- regrettably -- I have no idea who actually did the graphic. Here wa…
A Future Skate Pilgrimage -- For Now a Virtual One
Some people dream of making a pilgrimage to some holy site or shrine that is particularly important to them, whereas others of us dream of a pilgrimage to the "shrines" of skateboarding. For some while now I've been thinking about what would be a fun and inte…
Basic "Six Million Dollar Man" Team Deck: Rare 1990's Skate Art
Speaking more on the subject of rare decks from the 1990's, here is a Six Million Dollar Man team deck from Basic skateboards.
Here are a couple of details from the deck:
1990's decks can be so very fun. They have a character that is quite distinct from the classic …
The Wonder Twins: Rare 1990's Skate Art
As skate art is concerned, I am admittedly primarily drawn to and focused upon decks from the 1980's as well as the original Dogtowns from the 1970's. This is in no small part due to the fact that I was born in the first half of the 1970's and so it was the 1980…
