Tony Hawk first learned to ride a skateboard in 1979 when he was 11 years old. The board was the 1975 Bahne pictured above. Now, that board is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. (Below, video of Hawk's last ride on the Bahne.) From Cole Louison's new interview with Hawk in Smithsonian magazine:

The first wave of skateboarding—when decks were wood, wheels were steel and “sidewalk surfing” was banned in 20 U.S. cities by August 1965—had ended by the time Hawk stepped on the board. Yet the sport enjoyed a major resurgence in the 1970s, thanks in part to new technology. The blue Bahne evokes an era when public outcry had driven skaters off sidewalks and into the first skateparks, where they rode plastic boards with polyurethane wheels higher and higher up the walls of in-ground pools that were capped at the top or extended with plywood[...]

“In its early days, skateboarding was considered a sport for misfits and outsiders,” Hawk tells me. “We didn’t mind the label, since we weren’t trying to fit in with mainstream culture anyway.” And even as mainstream culture prepares to embrace skateboarding more enthusiastically than ever before, Hawk says, “I believe our sense of counterculture and individualism will shine through.”

image: RIDE Channel/YouTube Read the rest

Dalton and Kanaan Dern turned their Apopka, Florida abode into a skatepark. Watch them shred the house. Don't tell mom.

The brothers won the "Murder Your House" contest sponsored by Liquid Death and The Berrics. The prizes included six months of mortgage payments (up to $10,000) but not the new roof that they'll likely need sooner rather than later. Read the rest

Twenty years after Tony Hawk set a skateboarding world record by landing a 900 degree aerial spin on a vertical ramp, the record has been broken. Over the weekend, Gui Khury, age 11, landed a 1080 using only a vert ramp. So fucking rad. From The Guardian:

“The isolation for the coronavirus helped because he had a life that was about school and he didn’t have a lot of time to train, when he got home from school he was tired,” the skater’s father Ricardo Khury Filho told Reuters.

“So now he is at home more, he eats better and he has more time to train and can focus more on the training so that has helped. He has an opportunity to train here, if he didn’t have [the skate facilities] ... he would be stuck at home like everyone else and unable to do sport. So the isolation helped him focus.“

During lockdown, Khury’s family make the 20-minute journey to his grandmother’s house on most days to deliver food and drop him off so that he can train on the vertical ramp, bowl and street course they had built in her back garden. It was on that ramp that he completed the historic feat.

Holy smokes!

View this post on Instagram

The guys @santamonicaairlines blew our @jlw ‘s mind with this awesome @oscarputdowntheknife & @burritobreath collab.

A post shared by Boing Boing (@boingboing) on Apr 28, 2020 at 10:19am PDT

I grew up in Santa Monica, CA in the 1970s and 80s. While I had and have friends who attained the levels of awesome required to get free stuff from a skate team, I was certainly too much a kook.

As a kid, Santa Monica Airlines played a huge role in helping me define 'COOL' and they still do. For 'Support Your Local Skateshop day' I had Rip City set up my re-issue 'THINK CRIME' deck with a set of Independent Trucks, Slimeballs, and ACER Racing hardware and bearings. No one does as nice a job on grip tape as those dudes at Rip City.

Imagine my surprise when repeated fan posts about legendary street skater Natas Kaupas resulted in the folks at Santa Monica Airlines sending this awesome deck!

I could not be more thrilled to receive this awesome Natas/Burrito Breath deck! My daughter has already asked if we can set it up for her. She will not be getting those ACER bearings, they are far too fast and I have to run off all the damn time.

She will be getting pads and introduced to GrlSwrl. Read the rest

In 1981, Tony Hawk, age 13, appeared on the Captain Kangaroo TV program shredding at the legendary Del Mar Skate Ranch in Southern California.

(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sour Solution (@soursolution) on Feb 17, 2019 at 10:27am PST

Simon Isaksson of Sour Solution nails a 360 degree loop-de-loop. It looks effortless now but watch the video below.

Read the rest

Brazilian skateboarder Felipe Nunes, 20, is on the cover of this month's Thrasher magazine. He just joined Tony Hawk's elite Birdhouse squad. He also has no legs. Nunes lost them in an accident when he was six years old. From Thrasher:

What did it take to get back to where you were mobile again? Were you in a wheelchair at first? What were the biggest challenges to regaining your movement and independence?

I was six when it happened but the doctors said it was super fast. I didn’t really hesitate because I was so young. I used a wheelchair until about the age of 11. I was a kid who wanted to do everything. Regardless of not having two legs I wanted to do it all. I rode my bike, played soccer, pretty much everything out in front of my house. I was a normal kid. It didn’t even look like I was missing part of my legs. My parents were essential in my recovery because they never stopped me from doing anything. They were afraid of me getting hurt like any parents, but they never held me back. When I wanted to give up the wheelchair and ride the skateboard full time, they let me go.

These days, my 13-year-old son and his friends are all about playing with their Tech Deck fingerboards during lunch at school. This 1999 video "Fingers of Fury!" is from 1999 yet two decades later, kids (and adults) are still fanatic about fingerboarding. From Consumer Time Capsule:

Famous fingerboarders Darin Langhorst, Damien Bernadet and Tony Pauthex showcase their skills on a variety of obstacles, such as a mini railing, a wooden box and, well, more railings and boxes.

After a two minute and thirty second compilation including all three athletes' arsenal, we're treated to a feature dubbed, "learning how to do what you want your fingers to do," featuring Darin Langhorst. In this section, Darin explains the succession of tricks that you should learn, each supported with slow motion illustrations. After covering the basics, Langhorst describes the importance of ollies: a lifting of the board, using the "g-forces" exerted by your fingers.

On Saturday at the X Games Minneapolis, Mitchie Brusco landed the first 1260 in the history of professional skateboarding. And yep, he acts like it was nothing.

This was exactly twenty years since Tony Hawk famously landed the first 900 at the X-Games in 1999 (video below).

Read the rest

Launched as a NYC skateshop in 1994, streetwear brand Supreme has become a religion for hypbeasts (and the flippers who serve them). Now, a private collector is auctioning off their collection of every single Supreme skate deck ever made, many of which are emblazoned with graphics from esteemed contemporary artists. The lot of 248 skateboard decks along with the Louis Vuitton Boite skateboard trunk with tool kit, trucks, wheels and shoulder strap is expected to bring around $1 million but I bet it goes for much more. From Sotheby's:

Supreme started producing their own skateboards in 1998 and have collaborated with many well-known brands over the last 20 years - most famously with Louis Vuitton. Supreme is also known for their artist collaborations, featuring the likes of George Condo, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, KAWS, Marilyn Minter, Nate Lowman, and Takashi Murakami, among others.

"Own the Entire Supreme Skateboard Collection, Now Open for Bidding" (Sotheby's, thanks Lux Sparks-Pescovitz!)

Decks by Marilyn Minter and Jeff Koons and Louis Vuitton Boite skateboard trunk with accessories:

Read the rest

Check out this rad skate deck illustrated by Hellen Jo. She lives in LA and makes bad-ass comic books and zines. LA Weekly stated that “Her zines show teenage girls in everyday scenes (like chilling at the skate park) but also in more violent settings.” The illustration on the deck is from one of Hellen's zines. “The scene comes from Frontier #2, a work filled with 32 full-color pages of troublemaking youths unleashed on the world.”

I met Hellen at the Giant Robot store in Los Angeles while she was signing the decks. I’m really into comic book art, and Hellen’s punky style of illustration stood out to me right away. You can buy one of Hellen’s decks at the Giant Robot store, in person or online.

Read the rest

Barcelona-based sculptor Xavier Mañosa created Skate Fails, a series of ceramic sculptures that look like Dali-esque melted skateboards. Read the rest

Brazil-based artisan Guilherme Casagrande makes handcrafted wooden sunglasses from reused skateboard decks. Read the rest

My friend Andreas Ekberg, who made this great Boing Boing deck for me, made a Happy Cloud cruiser for his pal Steve Guyer. Steve shot and edited the video above.

Andreas tell me he uses a Silhouette Cameo vinyl cutter to create the stencils for his designs. The design is painted with acrylic paint and coated with a water based varnish. He went to Uncle Funkys in Manhattan for the hardware.

Here are some of Andreas' other boards:

Read the rest

I love my new Jackhammer Jill skateboard deck designed and made by Andreas Ekberg. Check out his website of beautiful creations. Read the rest

"Experienced skateboarders we talked to gave him low marks." [via] Read the rest

Beautiful slow motion footage of skater Christopher Chann shot by Adam Shomsky at Stoner Skate Plaza, Los Angeles. Read the rest