Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

(epic music)

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

(people chattering)

Everybody over by two.

Everybody take a step back, okay?

Let's get these guys some room. They need room to move.

(upbeat punk rock music)

♪ Forget the light, skate and destroy ♪

♪ Pass the jogger, skate and destroy ♪

♪ Snap it back, skate and destroy ♪

♪ Kick that bike, skate and destroy ♪

♪ It's not a cause or political belief ♪

♪ It's something in my thinking ♪

♪ If you agree it's cool by me ♪

♪ At least I'm not a robot ♪

♪ I'm not afraid of things I read ♪

♪ I won't divide my friends up ♪

♪ Dictatorship of people's minds ♪

♪ Is not what I will strive for ♪

♪ Forget the light, skate and destroy ♪

♪ Pass the jogger, skate and destroy ♪

♪ Snap it back, skate and destroy ♪

♪ Kick that bike ♪

(upbeat punk rock music ends)

(funky music)

- [Narrator] The evolution of skateboarding

dates back over 100 years.

What started out as a plank of wood

and wheels taken from roller skates,

the skateboard has evolved into a creative tool

and canvas to create art.

(funky music)

Skateboarding is now embedded into the fabric

of modern pop culture,

but it's the art on these skateboards

that tells a whole different story.

So let's kick back, take a ride

and see how this craze began.

♪ Sk8face ♪ ♪ Sk8face ♪

♪ Sk8face ♪

So skateboarding has been around

since the turn of the century.

(upbeat music)

When this country was being paved

is when skateboarding started.

They were making scooters back then,

you know, the old soapbox scooters with the handles

and the old roller skate's wheels on there

and they were having races down the streets of New York.

(wheels rattling)

These handles were nailed onto the scooters.

They would, like, break off.

So people were like, "Oh, man.

Oh, well, I can ride this to my garage without the handle

and nail the handle back on."

Pretty soon people were just like, "Whoa.

I can ride this just fine without the handle."

(upbeat music)

In the early '50s,

skateboarding consisted of just a two-by-four

with roller skate wheels nailed on the bottom.

You know, I swiped my sister's skates

and took 'em apart and nailed them on a piece of wood.

(upbeat music)

The boards were horrible.

They had no grip tape.

The wheels were metal in some cases,

I mean, it was so much vibration

that your feet would fall asleep,

like it would numb the bottom of your feet

if the wheel didn't explode beforehand.

(upbeat music)

The boards of the '60s, they all related to sort of surfing.

A lot of 'em were sidewalk surfboard.

Duke Kahanamoku and Surf Skate,

the Tiger, to the Rattler, the Black Widow,

Or they related to what was going on.

Like a lot of 'em are spaceship related,

the Rocket Ship, the Titan, the Space Traveler.

[Announcer] July 20th, 1969.

[Neil] Tranquility Base here.

The eagle has landed.

It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

(upbeat music)

- I have over there a "Life" magazine cover.

It's got a chick doing a handstand.

It says "Skateboards, the craze and the menace."

They were looking at it as more of a fad,

like they just had come off like the hula hoop.

And a lot of people looked at this the same way

and it almost was a fad

because it got a bad rap because the gear sucked.

It was the Urethane Revolution in 1974

that really turned things around

and that was like day and night

to have a wheel that would grip and ride smoothly.

Once the urethane wheel became invented

and the precision bearing and grip tape,

the boards got skateable and that's when the tricks

started getting better and crazier.

(upbeat music)

- Narrator] In the 1970s skateboarding scene,

famously known as the Dogtown era,

is when skateboarding went from sidewalk surfing

to skating empty swimming pools.

(upbeat music)

- No one really had sick graphics going on.

It was really logo based.

SIMS had beautiful wood boards.

Like, from a visual point, it was beautiful.

But then, what was the graphic?

Was just the logo.

(upbeat music)

- Just, you know, powerflex, like Logan Earth Ski.

It wasn't about pictures

and it wasn't about identity,

it was just more about labeling.

(dramatic music)

(upbeat music)

The thing that people did back then

was to do the little signature, you know,

and that's how they did graphics.

Dogtown kind of changed that

by really announcing who this rider is

and framing his name and putting the Dogtown logo

and just saying, "Hey, you know, this is who we are."

(upbeat music)

You know, everybody calls Wes Humpston

the godfather of skateboard graphics and in a way he is.

He definitely made the template

from which all that our skateboard graphics came from.

After you see a Wes Humpston skateboard

with graphics on the bottom,

how could you go back to a plain skateboard.

To us, just, you know,

riding a board without any drawing on it,

it didn't have as much soul.

The board didn't feel as live.

It just was missing something.

It felt better to have a drawing on the bottom

and especially the kind of drawing that Wes was doing

because it was indigenous to our neighborhood.

It was our town.

It had our colors and our symbology on there

that we understood.

When we were skating pools,

there was like a one second

when your board would flash over the top

and somebody'd take a picture of it

or somebody would see it, even just looking at it.

And I mean, to me

it always had to have that shock or catch your eye

and when it flashed, you would remember it.

You'd go like, "Whoa, what the fuck was that?"

You could buy a board for five bucks,

but if you wanted the artwork on it, which Wes would do,

he would draw a Dogtown cross on it.

I think it was 10 bucks, like it would double the price.

It wasn't the first time art was on board

'cause people always drew stuff on their boards.

But that was the first time, you know,

that you noticed people actually paying other people

to do art on their board.

Wes made this board for me

and he actually take characteristics from the person

and put 'em in the drawing.

(upbeat music)

- Graphics are graphic 'cause it's stamped in the middle

with a big image that's attention grabbing.

No, I didn't see it before he did it.

Now that's all you see, so gotta give it to the man.

(upbeat music)

- These are just one-offs.

There was never two or three-offs.

Wes made every board in his garage.

Actually it was kinda like this.

You'd go to Jim's house

and you'd go in his garage and he had a bunch of wood.

You'd pick a piece of wood out

and he'd glue the tail on for you and then you'd go to Wes

and he would shape it for you.

You would draw out the shape and he would shape the boards.

Even though all these fiberglass boards

and everything were coming out,

there was nothing that rode better than these wood boards.

We'd go down to House of Plywoods

and pick out a nice board, shape it out.

A lot of times the boards

had natural concave in 'em already.

So we'd pick out boards that were warped.

- It's kind of funny 'cause every board was different

but we didn't even realize it.

PC or whoever was riding a board

is like, "I split this fucking board, I need a new board."

It's like, "All right."

So you get it and you'd take it down

and throw it down on a piece of wood

and you trace around it,

but a sharp is fat and the points here.

So each time we'd do it,

it would be like the line would be out that much more.

So the boards were slowly getting wider

and then everybody's going like, "You know what?

This works better.

Just make me one like this.

It's the best board I ever had."

We just started realizing

that certain boards worked better in pools

and started working at making better pool boards.

Back then there was really nothing good,

I mean, that worked in a pool.

You couldn't buy anything.

- There were reasons for the nose to be a particular way

'cause that's the way that you liked to ride.

They didn't come pre-drilled.

Even boards that were store-bought later on,

many of them did not come pre-drilled.

You would drill your own board to the way you like it.

(upbeat music)

- All of a sudden we clicked that we're onto something.

So, I mean 10-inch, I mean, 11-inch, 12-inch.

I was like, "Well, who knows?"

And it all kind of happened really fast

and it kind of revolutionized the whole skateboard industry.

(upbeat music)

- A lot of people think that Wes is the one

who came up with the Dogtown cross,

but that was actually Craig Stecyk

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] In the 1970s, "SkateBoarder" magazine

was one of the largest skateboard publications in America.

It was the nucleus of skateboarding

and Craig Stecyk was in the middle of it,

capturing the raw essence of skateboarding

like it had never been seen before.

Stecyk's images and concepts were a dramatic shift

from the clean cut images of the 1970s.

These kids had a passion and aggression

that affected the minds of misfits around the world

and a new breed of creative skateboarding exploded,

not just in the streets and pools,

but on the art of the skateboards themselves.

I think Craig Stecyk

is the best skateboarding photographer there ever was.

There was always something going on in the picture

that made you wonder,

or use some little technique that I hadn't seen before.

And he was obviously around the guys at the right time.

He's everywhere.

He's chronicling it.

He's thinking about it.

He knows more than you do.

He's four steps ahead of you.

Working with Stecyk is kind of like,

you never really know you're working with him

'cause he's the kind of the behind the scenes guy,

the idea guy.

Stacy always said he'd sprinkle on the salt.

He wasn't in everyone's face saying, "Hey, I'm doing this,

and this is what I'm about."

He would just add all this cool little stuff

that if you weren't paying attention, you didn't know.

(upbeat music)

- Want to get used to Stecyk writing style,

you can see that, you know,

"Trash" and "Thrasher" was all, you know,

that's his voice

and all the various pseudonyms that he used,

Lowboy, John Smythe and them,

then you really put it all together,

like how much Craig was really involved with skateboarding.

I worked in Jeff Ho's shop for a while.

I used to watch Craig Stecyk spraying boards.

It was more like peeking behind the curtain

for the Wizard of Oz, you know.

Stecyk was the guy that did so much shit

that nobody gives him credit for.

I mean he is a freaking, I think a genius, you know,

and a fucking artist and a half.

(upbeat rock music)

[Narrator] Stecyk introduced the concept

of high art to skateboarding,

but it was Tony Alva who exposed it to the masses,

not just through his visceral skating,

but a visual attitude as well.

(upbeat rock music)

When TA came around

and he just was like, he really was kind of a mad dog

and, you know, he had his own logo

that had a lot of attitude.

As little kids we looked up to that, it was like, "Wow,

here's a guy who's blazing a trail."

- In those days an ad was a guy doing a trick,

a picture of a wheel or a board

and Tony's advertising created these really simple,

non hardcore sales type ads that just,

they created the Alva brand

and he was doing it by showing Tony in a different way

than anyone had ever seen him.

(upbeat music)

- "Skateboarder" magazine and magazines like that

that had never run anything

besides action shots and product shots,

started seeing these ads.

It completely, like, put out the water.

The logo became identified

not only with the brand of skateboards,

but it became identified with the advertising campaign.

(upbeat music)

- TA brought in like a higher sense of graphic

and a combination of art, which was sick.

Everybody was showing their product

and showing the trick, advertising in a standard way

and Alva all of a sudden just had a photo of him,

"My Boards Will Blow Your Mind,"

or whatever they said, just standing there.

- [Wes] His ads, everything was total artwork,

artsy fartsy, just stylish, you know,

I mean, he was the fucking man.

(upbeat rock music)

When punk rock came along,

it was like it just blew the doors off everything.

It was the most perfect thing ever

for a skateboarder's attitude in life.

The art thing affected the music

and the music affected the skateboarding

and the skateboarding affected the rest of the kids.

- It translated straight into the boards, you know.

There's a lot more checkers going down,

a lot more swooshes.

(upbeat rock music)

- The way punk rock influenced skateboarding, you know,

even influenced the art on skateboards, was with punk rock.

There's no rules either, so the two fell hand in hand.

Punk rock was on and it was, you know,

there was part of skateboarding

and the hippies were like now,

like, "You gotta get outta here."

It's almost overnight.

And Olson and TA and Bowman,

and these guys adapted that into their skating

and who they were.

(upbeat music)

Say from late '70s into early '80s,

all skateboarding influenced.

Bands that were playing at skate parks

because they couldn't get a gig in a theater, you know.

Circle Jerks shooting the cover of "Group Sex"

at Marina Del Rey Skate Park.

[Interviewer] Well, we noticed

that you have a pretty strange hairstyle there.

Is that to psych out the other competitors?

Nah, it's, I don't know,

I'm just a weirdo, I guess, I don't know.

I like it.

Duane Peters had stripes on his board

'cause it was like a punk thing, you know,

a red and black stripe,

and Steve Olson before that, you know,

he had other models prior, you know,

with just his signature

and maybe the Santa Cruz stripe, real simple.

But then all of a sudden it's like he had, you know,

the checkerboard, which was a very like new wave

punk rock, you know, graphic at the time.

I mean, my shit was checkerboard like,

'cause I'm a winner.

(laughing) I'm only kidding.

(upbeat music)

Duane wasn't the first punk rocker.

- [Interviewer] Who was the first punk skater?

I was, for sure.

Yeah, please, let's get this record straight.

- Punk skaters like Steve Olson and Duane Peters came in

and they wanted some of these punk rock geometric shapes

and day-glo colors and stuff.

They wanted that stuff on the white boards.

Duane wanted stripes.

It was kind of a punk looking thing

and so I did my best and put the stripes on.

Same with Steve Olson.

He wanted the checkerboard stripes

and we put the Santa Cruz red dot logo on there

and it just looked cool.

(upbeat music)

♪ Sk8face ♪ ♪ Sk8face ♪

♪ Sk8face ♪

- [Narrator] By the 1980s, film and television commercials

started to feature skaters

to help further popularize skateboarding

and bring it from the fringe to the mainstream.

At the same time, the VHS home video market was on the rise

and accessible to skateboard companies,

which capitalized on the latest technological craze

as a platform to feature team riders

and promote their product.

Kids from all around the world

were not just being introduced to the latest tricks

and skateboard stars,

but they were also getting turned onto a whole new crop

of artwork and graphics fueled by punk rock music.

Powell Peralta, Santa Cruz and Vision

were just three of the main companies

that figured out how to use skate videos to their advantage

and created some of the most iconic graphics of the decade.

Powell Peralta being the first

with "The Bones Brigade Video Show."

(glass shattering)

Now, this is a skateboard.

(savvy music)

This is my first graphic in...

Yeah, yeah, for Rodriguez,

Ray Bones Rodriguez.

Oh, actually, yeah, that was '81

'cause that's when I finally got the dragon done at the top.

Beginning of my cocaine years.

Once they started doing stuff

that was very prominent on the boards,

stuff like Ray Bones' graphics,

obviously all the Bones Brigade stuff,

that's really what started the graphic revolution.

(upbeat music)

- All I could tell from those early skateboards

was that some other person was involved with me,

like a teacher, an unseen teacher, was working with me.

Marlin or something.

(upbeat music)

- Courtlandt Johnson for me was always the artistic standard

or sort of like the watermark in skateboard graphics.

And I think anybody who's ever been, you know,

followed skateboard graphics has that watermark.

(upbeat music)

The early skateboard art

is the awakening of an appetite

for archetypes, you know,

ancient symbols.

(upbeat music)

The phrase power symbols

was kind of brought into mind like, just these graphics

that had this strange iconic staying power

and the sales proved it.

These graphics were staying around for years.

(upbeat music)

I meet someone.

What kind of image is that gonna evoke?

I meet Tony Hawk.

What kind of image does that evoke?

I meet Caballero.

Well, that's gonna be something twisted

'cause his body is asymmetrical

and it deserves an asymmetrical design.

(upbeat music)

- VCJ'S graphics were were very detail oriented.

They were like brilliant tattoo graphics

when a lot of stuff was really more sloppy

and wasn't as fine tuned

and definitely once screened didn't hold its own.

And Court's graphics, once they got on a skateboard,

they kept that Christmas.

I was drawing the art for the boards,

cutting ruby lifts and following a process,

all the way through to silk screening,

where five or six colors would get put on one side

and then two on the other.

And I was watching the whole process all the way through.

(upbeat music)

- Powell had their skull and sword graphic.

That was like one of the most visible

striking graphics of that time.

And you think about it now, it still is.

(upbeat music)

- Powell took the Dungeons and Dragon route.

We took Phillips.

Oh, my old nemesis, Jim Phillips.

(upbeat music)

Jimmy, in any other venue,

if he lived in any other place in the world,

would've been an Asher, or Dali, or a van Gogh.

I mean, he's as good an artist as they were.

He just got stuck in commercial art.

- What I especially appreciated about Phillips' stuff

is that for the most part

you have to dig a little bit to get it, like, you know,

like what's a screaming hand?

Why would a hand be screaming?

People that skateboard tend to be young

and facing the world and there's a lot of angst

to what the world is about.

And so to me the hand represents that angst.

- Jim Phillips decks were just so solid and eye-popping.

I started off on comics before skateboarding

and so I could kind of identify with it, you know,

like, "Oh, I recognize that."

Like, there's just no way to not look at it.

- Inspiration for art comes from the formative years,

when you're really young.

It all happens in your bedroom,

in the comic books you read and the cartoons.

I was really inspired by Walt Disney artists.

(upbeat music)

- Everyone had their own little iconic look, you know,

like Corey O'Brien had his Grand Reaper and, you know,

Jeff Kendall had a pumpkin,

and Rob Roskopp with the target and the hand coming out.

This was done by Jim Phillips

and it's very iconic to this day.

I mean, I've seen people with this tattoo on their arms.

And yeah, everybody knows the Roskopp graphic

and the series that have all...

They started out with a bullseye

and then they created it to a monster.

So Roskopp, he had 10 years of sales

and it was due to the art.

He had progressive art.

(upbeat music)

- Watching Jim Phillips, the way he approaches,

it's just such an amazing technical skill.

The best, he's still the best.

I still don't see graphics

that really can surpass what he did in the '80s,

so I don't really have to explain why they're awesome.

You just gotta look at them and you're like, "Wow,

this guy stepped it up."

And he stepped it up at a time that no one was doing that.

I think Jim Phillips' artwork,

it was super important at that time period.

To me, I was just more into, I guess, Vision at the time.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Vision took a different approach

to skateboarding.

Their new wave aesthetic with neon colors and bold imagery

had a profound impact on the scene.

(upbeat music)

When I came to Vision,

day-glo was almost part of the fabric.

Around the art department,

there was day-glo markers all over the place.

(upbeat music)

And so we would do our comp artwork

and use the day-glo markers.

(upbeat music)

A lot of the Vision graphics to me

were just kind of goofy, like really kind of new wavy,

like, just like they were just like big bursts of color

that were like, I think it's kind of annoying.

- It was a reflection of the culture at the time, I think.

And those guys were in the middle of it, you know,

they were in California.

For me, being in West Virginia,

to see this little chunk of pop culture

kind of get shifted into my life

that wasn't like mainstream stuff on television

was like peering into California

in a way that I never could see.

(upbeat music)

Vision, at the time they had, you know,

Mark Rogowski, Gator, and they had him

and his board was like, you know,

one of the most popular boards.

He outsold Alva in the thousands.

So I figured the distribution of my board

when it came out would be bigger on Vision

rather than on Alva.

(upbeat music)

- So where do I take this Mark Gonzales board?

Do I take it down the surf path

and put some hibiscuses and palm trees?

Well, that didn't seem right.

This is all about energy and sweat

and I looked around at my desk

and what was laying on it, some graphic arts, detritus,

and I scotch taped it together and I walked in the office

and they said, "This is bitchin'!

We love it.

Here's your money."

Thanks.

That first Mark Gonzales Vision graphic,

it just, I mean, as far as design goes,

looking back on it now, it's just a really solid design.

At the time it was real bold.

It had real heavy lines, bright colors.

It was kind of typical of the '80s,

but you couldn't separate the board graphic

from the pro skater, in my mind.

So, just as important as that graphic,

was this element that Mark Gonzales was riding the board.

(upbeat music)

[Announcer] Last time, right there,

Mark wrapping it all up.

(crowd cheering and clapping)

Yeah.

- And the face on the Mark Gonzales board is mine.

It was a little chatbook

that I had made called "Stay Up and Sleep."

They just gave me enough graphic.

It wasn't my choice.

- The skateboard deck got very, very popular

because of Mark and Mark got more popular

because of the deck.

[Narrator] By the late '80s

skateboarding sales were at a new high

and the Mark Gonzales pro model was a massive success.

I got another phone call from Vision,

"Would you like to come in and do another skateboard?"

The deck that they handed me was the Psycho Stick,

which had fairly exotic shape.

But he started getting a little crazier

with shapes and stuff, you know,

everybody had to have their little money bumps

is what everybody was calling 'em, you know, (laughs)

so they're like, "Oh, the more bumps the better."

(upbeat music)

- In reality, the Psycho Stick was a minor player.

It wasn't associated to a professional skater,

it was just a whimsical deck really.

The Psycho Stick was huge.

It was like this weird entry level,

just bright, bold skateboard

the first time skaters would buy

and they made millions of them.

(upbeat music)

Style wise, I'd say that Vision,

they sat almost on the Disney fence.

We have the opportunity to take all the challenging risks.

We kind of didn't and we didn't need to

and we were having fun.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] With the rise of skateboarding

in the late '80s, Brad Dorfman, the owner of Vision,

was looking beyond the skateboard deck to expand his brand

and created Vision Street Wear.

Well, by the time we got to '87,

they got all their production worked out

and they were producing everything they needed

and Brad's ability to grow boardwise wasn't there anymore,

but he started Vision Street Wear

and he did shoes as a category

and he did clothes as a category.

- I don't think the industry was ready for it.

I mean, like Vision.

That was probably the first example

of a skate company making clothing and getting that big.

- When Vision Street Wear is the biggest company going

and all they're doing is ripping off Vons,

like the trucks on Vons,

with like basic black and white,

sad.

- [Narrator] The creativity of skateboarding

eventually inspired pro skaters such as Neil Blender

to create their own artwork for their pro models.

This sparked a new evolution in skateboard graphics.

(funky music)

Neil Blender was the whole package

in the sense that man, he skateboarded,

he designed and he did his own art and he, I mean,

he did so much on his own.

He's a true do it yourself kind of guy.

- Neil was the first one to be like a pro skater

and put his own artwork on the board.

- Remember Steve Cathey, he goes, after a bunch of contests,

he's like, "Okay, we're gonna turn you pro

but you need a graphic and you draw,

so do your own graphic.

No one's doing that right now

and none of the pros do their own graphics."

I'm like, "All right, I'll try."

- It wasn't even like he even called this art,

it's just what he did, you know?

He just made it his own.

I think he's probably

one of the skateboarding's best artists, not just art

in terms of, like, painting and stuff like that,

but in terms of, like, skateboarding as an art form.

(funky music)

(upbeat music)

There was an Arizona contest, I think,

where he, skating around doing his run,

a school street contest

and he went up, there was like a ramp to wall,

and he went up and slammed his board into it

and pulled out a spray paint can

and spray painted a little face on the wall.

- The skaters on Stereo, the younger guys are like 20

and they were all talking about it.

They were like, "Did you ever see that contest

where Neil Blender just like starts painting on a wall?"

- [Announcer] Frightening our lives just a little bit.

- It's funny to hear them discover it 20 years later

'cause I got it back then, you know,

so it's funny to hear their reaction

and they were so stoked on him.

And that's like perfect example.

It's like it was just part of his run, you know what I mean?

Like, it was the best, it was so cool.

If you think about it,

that's like an early statement for skateboarding as an art.

It definitely symbolizes that, like, skateboarding

is kind of an extension of art.

- Neil Blender kind of did this real personal expression

and it was very kind of random to what, you know,

was there before with all the graphics

and logos and stripes and, you know, things like that.

Neil's influenced skate culture hugely

and skate culture has influenced other things hugely.

Therefore there's huge worth to Neil's stuff.

He's always, I think, struggled with ego

and been offended by ego from other people, you know?

And I think that as a reaction to that,

I almost think, like, he's gone too far the other way.

Neil just didn't and still doesn't

really wanna play the game.

Never be bought, never be sold, you know?

- Neil Blender, come outta hiding, you know,

we need you.

Come save us.

(upbeat music)

- Neil is a creative genius in his own right

And he's probably one of the main reasons

that Mark Gonzales and a lot of people draw.

(upbeat music)

- Probably the most naturally best skateboarder ever

was Mark Gonzales.

I mean, just gifted beyond belief.

And it's amazing how good he was

and he never practiced anything, he just did it.

- [Interviewer] Mark Gonzales, your favorite

is one of the top street style competitors.

For those people who don't know

what street style's all about,

can you tell us a little bit about it?

It's just skating on ramps and stuff,

little obstacles, like mainly, I guess,

just anywhere on the street.

[Interviewer] What's it gonna take

to win a competition like this?

A lot of practice, I guess.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Mark's creative approach to skateboarding

changed the way skaters looked at the world

and because of this, Mark is considered one of the pioneers

of street skating today.

(upbeat music)

- When I first met Mark he was riding two different trucks

that he got outta the garbage at Veriflex

and he got the board outta the dumpster

and he was doing shit that I'd never even seen.

Mark Gonzales used to come to my house

to skate the ramp, as a little kid.

Like, we had funny names for him

'cause we didn't know who he was and stuff.

And I remember taking him to the bus stop once

and I dropped him off and I saw him get out of the car

and push ollie up the curb, ollie up the curb, flop, flip.

He just like rode the street

like you would ride a snake run or a pool, you know,

you're not pushing somewhere to transportation

and you're not doing what we used to do,

which was mimic road tricks

on a curb out front of the skate park.

He was actually skating it.

- Mark Gonzales's art is just like his skating,

in that it just comes out of him.

- It's a manifestation of ideas in real time

without a filter.

He just flows in every possible way,

like, flows as a human being

and flows as an artist and a skater.

(upbeat music)

- Artwork is about kind of like being rebellious.

Most of the artists that were fine artists

that were trained, were trained by the church

so they had to do church artwork, you know,

the Madonna or Jesus.

Yeah, they're mostly like commissioned to do church art

and they would be rebellious.

The first piece of art that I did that was significant

was the little boy fishing

and it says, "No fishing art dogs,"

'cause it was rebellious

[Narrator] While The Gonz was known

for his free flowing art style,

John Lucero was another pro skater

that had a very different approach

that was more mechanical and design based.

I don't necessarily think

I would be considered a skate artist.

I dunno, I'm more of a designer I would think.

I don't know,

I've done countless graphics, you know what I mean?

On skateboards.

Lucero's a great illustrator,

he just doesn't want to do it,

so he calls himself a designer.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] John not only did his own skate graphics,

he also did the graphics for other top pros

such as Jeff Grosso and Kevin Staab.

I think the first graphic

that really broke into the character realm

and really made a impact

was John Lucero's first Madrid board.

I think that was the first one

where everyone was like, "Whoa," you know,

like, "Look at that, like, and he did that?"

(upbeat music)

- That board kind of proved my place as an artist

'cause clearly the graphic

was selling probably more than my name was selling.

- Lucero was doing a lot of the artwork for...

Well, he did his own and he did Grosso's,

and I think was producing probably some of the best graphics

ever done on skateboards at the time, you know,

I mean, couple of those early Lucero

and Grosso boards were incredible

and they were super commercially successful too.

I mean, those were some of the best selling boards.

John took over the art at Vision

as sort of art director of the Schmitt Stix's brand

and instantly Schmitt Stix's

went from their selling 500 boards a month

to over 5,000 boards a month.

(upbeat punk rock music)

As a pro skater in competition,

I was a good top 20 skater,

definitely not a top 10 skater, you know what I mean?

So my board started selling really well

and it was pretty apparent that maybe it was the artwork

that sold the board and not selling on my name.

(upbeat punk rock music)

I think John is an artist,

even though he may claim to be a graphic artist.

Regardless if he's a graphic artist or an artist,

his work has made an impact.

(upbeat punk rock music)

He's not a rebel.

As far as, like, with making art,

he is not like a rebel like Neil.

He's more of like going with the system.

That's why I say he's second best, (laughs)

second best artist in skateboarding.

First Neil Blender, then John Lucero, then Chris Miller.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Chris Miller was another top pro at this time

and was also inspired

to create his own art for his pro models.

- Watching Chris Miller skate is like going to a demo,

shows up, quietly drops in and just has the most amazing run

and you're like, "How the hell did you do that?"

(upbeat music)

- At the time, not very many pros did their own graphics

or that kind of thing.

And basically Neil Blender kind of encouraged me,

"You should do your own art."

And G&S had done a board for me

that I was really unhappy with,

kind of just wound up being like, "Okay.

Well, here's my sketches or this is what it is,"

and it wound up in just me attempting to describe it

and almost sketch it out and almost like storyboard it.

That just evolved into like,

"Well, maybe you should just do it."

(upbeat music)

- Chris Miller says, "This is what I want,"

you just say, "Yes, sir."

He'd already broken the mold of a skate graphic artist.

But I think with his Schmitt Stix stuff,

he really came into his own

of developing a style and a look.

(upbeat music)

Chris Miller and I had done graphics

for our boards and stuff, but really

didn't have any kind of creative control over anything.

And Miller had gone first to Paul

and said, "I wanna start my own company."

Ended up getting to Dorfman, Dorfman said, "No."

Miller bailed and started Planet Earth.

(upbeat music)

Well, I was never that negative

in terms of like, I didn't hate Brad Dorfman and Vision.

My inspiration to do my company

was more about personal expression

and creating art around these things

that weren't necessarily,

like other people on skateboarding

weren't really touching on them, you know,

whether it was nature themes

or whether it was kind of social or political themes.

(upbeat music)

Chris Miller's a master for sure

and he's one of those guys that stepped up

and said, "I can do this better than you can, you know?

I'm a skateboarder, I know what to put on boards,

I know, you know, who to put on the team."

(upbeat music)

The rest of the guys left on Schmitt

were like, "We've lost Chris Miller," you know,

"what are we gonna do?"

And we just decided to start New Deal at that time

(funky music)

[Narrator] In the 1990s,

street skating started to rise in popularity.

As many of the skate parks started to close down

due to the high cost of insurance, kids took to the streets

and a new form of street skating started to develop.

That included tricks downstairs, handrails, curves

and just about anything.

At the same time, these pro skaters

started to break away from their legacy sponsors

and started their own companies.

Hobbies include water polo,

scamming on hot babes, driving my fast expensive car.

That's about it.

(funky music)

[Interviewer] What's your name?

Steve Douglas.

Where you from?

- England originally, right now I live in San Jose.

(funky music)

[Paul] When The New Deal came out,

the brand was born from a name

that Steve Douglas had some friends in England

who had a skate shop called The New Deal

and he thought it was a great name.

- And he was like, let's just call it New Deal.

I know my friends wouldn't mind if I used that name

and that's what we all want, we want a new deal.

We're all like, "Yeah, we want a new deal, you know,

fuck this, fuck the corporate dragons and," you know,

all this kind of stuff.

[Paul] Andy, literally in a meeting

at a contest in Del Mar

sketched out the logo on a coffee napkin.

I said, "What if this whole concept

was all like just drawn by just kids,

like remedial, you know, kids on the street

that didn't really know how to draw

but just knew they wanted to like fuck the system

and do their own thing."

I said, "Hey, this should be our logo."

And everybody's like, "Okay, cool."

(upbeat music)

- We thought that we had a new way to run a company

where it was like the rider are gonna have the say,

you know, each rider is in charge

of everything on his level.

There's no gonna be no edicts handed down

from some detached company owner guy from above.

And I think that's what, you know

what must have been obviously happening

with Paul through Brad Dorfman.

- So Andy did most of the artwork for the brand.

He did a lot of the artwork

in conjunction of a guy Gorm Boberg from Sweden

and they literally lived at my house.

I lived in the garage on a mattress

and we would just stay up all night and draw.

- Literally Andy would be drawing on one piece of art

and Gorm would be drawing on the other.

And Andy really just set a tone.

Andy Howell was a big influence on me.

In fact I moved to California to work with him.

(upbeat music)

You're in charge.

And so I was like, "I can do my own graphics?"

They're like, "Yeah."

And I think they were bummed on it at, you know,

once I was like, "Here's what I want for my graphic."

They were just like, "Oh, man."

Like, 'cause at the time it wasn't really up to the standard

of the other graphics out there.

They had art departments

and there was dudes who really knew how to draw

and make graphics doing real graphic work

and here I am, some like 18-year-old kid.

(upbeat music)

The ad said, you know, "Buy Ed Templeton's board,

it's the one with the crappy graphics."

'Cause I thought it's gonna stick off

like a sore thumb on the shelf.

It's gonna look so bad.

And I really don't know how it did in the beginning.

I don't think I had a lot of feedback from people.

Ed's product had great success obviously

because Ed was leading the market at that point in time

and winning contests and creating a lot of excitement.

(people cheering)

- New Deal was a whole new deal, it really was.

It was like the best name for a skateboard company

because it just, it flipped everything on its ear.

(funky music)

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] While most of the graphics of this time

were coming from California companies,

kids in New York City took their inspiration

from the streets of New York

and the first all street skating company was born.

SHUT Skateboards was started in 1986

and is still going strong today.

I remember like Rodney and Bruno and Aly

kind of all talking about like,

"We're gonna start a New York City skateboard company."

And I was just like, "That'll never work."

You know, I was like, "It's all about California, man.

Like, this is a California thing."

They don't know what it's like

to go skate in the middle of snow

or like go get chased by bums in a hood.

- They don't know that, man. - They don't know that.

- [Skateboarder] New York had it's own voice

and kids were skateboarders there too

and we didn't have to follow or try to blend in

with what the magazine was saying on the West Coast.

- [Bruno] I quit Dogtown and we started SHUT.

- SHUT was New York City's first skateboard company.

You know, there might've been others

that were started at some point,

but SHUT was the one who actually made some ground

and actually helped put New York City on the map

and New York City being sort of the center of the east coast

and sort of like the mecca for street skating

and street skating was what it was all about.

(upbeat music)

They asked me to go do a board graphic

for the assault vehicle.

I wanted to draw it with like compositions

and stylistic elements

that I know I took from skateboard artists

who came before me.

But at the same time it's like my chops are comic books.

My chops are computer graphics, are cutting up, you know,

pieces of newspaper and taping them together.

My chops are graffiti art, so it just comes out.

(upbeat music)

Eli Gesnar was one of those dudes

who, like, paid attention to, like, everything.

Like, he's a New York City native.

So, like, growing up in New York City

there was so much stuff going on all the time.

He was very in touch with street culture.

(wheels rasping)

- This was kind of at a weird time in skateboarding

where, like, the '80s kind of money bumps

were kind of going away.

We all knew, like, we needed to get the nose longer

on the boards to catch your foot when you ollie.

But the double kick tail,

like, really hadn't been invented yet.

You had the option of either pushing the trucks, you know,

a half an inch up or a half inch down.

(wheels rattling)

- We wanted the board to emulate everything we were about

and have kids understand that

and then have that translate to other areas

of kids who love New York City.

- When it started, there was no, like, pro models.

It wasn't like Powell Peralta and you've got the Mike McGill

and the Steve Caballero and the Tony Hawk.

One of the things that was really cool

about the original SHUT

is the importance of the SHUT posse or the crew.

It was very gang like, you know,

where everybody unanimously, you know,

as a group would be like, "I like that shape,

I like that shape, I like that shape."

And you could, instead of trying

to be like, "This is the the Tony Hawk pro model,"

it was just the assault vehicle.

(upbeat music)

The art was pretty revolutionary.

I mean, I remember when we used to come out

to, like, California, Julien Stranger

and Eric Dressen and them and Natas

would always ask us for SHUT stickers

'cause they were super hyped on it

'cause it was just so like raw east coast,

early graffiti, hip hop style

and it was like what Dogtown was

back then for New York City.

(upbeat music)

- This is back in like the silk screen era.

So I just did it as black and white art

and then it turned into like, "Oh, how do we get the colors

where we want it to go?"

And that turned into a whole thing

about like getting Rubylith

and learning how to cut Rubylith.

Everything was so hard because computers didn't exist

and because it's difficult,

it removes the amount of people doing it.

(upbeat music)

- The graphics are timeless almost, you know what I mean?

They don't speak of an era of New York City

or anything like that.

They just speak of New York City in general.

If you're in a location that's gritty and grimy,

that's exactly what it is, you know,

whether it be uptown or downtown

or Brooklyn or the Bronx, doesn't really matter.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Steve Rocco began his career in the early '80s

as a freestyle skater

and later became the team manager for Vision

where he learned the mechanics of the industry

from the inside out.

In 1985, Steve reinvented himself as a street style skater

and soon realized that street skating

was about to dominate the marketplace.

Soon after, he and John Lucero

formed a short-lived distribution company,

which led to the creation of World Industries.

What started off as a small company

soon exploded when he brought on Marc McKee

to design all the artwork.

(funky music)

- Marc McKee in World Industries as far as like graphics

and just taking it to like a crazy level,

Marc was the king.

Marc was drawing some really cool

little intricate graphics for bikes.

I go, "Wow, what do you charge to draw something?"

"Yeah, well, this one's 50 bucks."

I go, "Well, what would you charge for a skateboard?"

And he goes, "Oh, that'd have to be a lot.

It'd have to be like 100.

We were like, "Yeah, we'll do that."

- At that point, like, I had really stopped skateboarding

for the longest time.

I was working for a BMX guy 'cause I did BMX.

So like that's like extra luck.

Wow, it's like your new company

consists of like Mullet and Mike Vallely.

He's like, you know,

the fucking best street skater at the time.

(upbeat music)

Every time you gave McKee something,

you go, "This is what I, you know, I'm thinking about."

And he came back and and showed it to you.

You were like, "Oh, my god, this is so much better

than what was going on in my brain."

- He was like totally prepped to be a Disney artist.

Like, that's what he was gonna go for, illustrator like,

and Rocco kind of like stole him away from, like, his vision

to be like a illustrator for, like, Disney, you know,

cartoons and stuff.

(upbeat music)

The first graphic I ever gave Marc

was Animal Farm from Mike.

That one board just put us on the map.

It changed skateboarding.

Rodney made this shape

that was just completely revolutionary.

It was like a freestyle board but big

and it had the double kick, which nobody had

because I went down with $6,000 in cash

and bribed the mold maker from Vision

to give us the double kick mold.

So we basically stole it from them

and we came out with the first double kick board.

(upbeat music)

[Narrator] Mike V's Barnyard Deck

not only changed the way tricks could be done,

but it also marked a shift

in the visual language of graphics.

- For as loose as the skateboard industry is,

Powell is a very structured company.

We had a time clock.

You punched in (indistinct) five o'clock.

It was a business that it was ran as such.

[Narrator] Around this time,

Powell Peralta legacy artist, VCJ, was ready to retire.

So Powell put an ad in the magazines

looking for his replacement.

I'm very close to a heart attack,

liver failure or a stroke and I had to leave the company,

but I had to find an artist to replace myself.

So Sean Cliver showed up and I said, "Here, do it."

(skeleton laughing)

- I was extremely nervous when I was hired by Powell.

Sean Cliver's first graphic for Powell

was Ray Barbee's Rag Doll

and you got goosey goosey style of Ray Barbee's

that easy going.

Kinda like VCJ did with the Cab Dragon,

Cliver did the same thing with Ray Barbee's Rag Doll.

Cliver became, you see, a VCJ robot

or he manifested some beautiful stuff

in service to his master.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] The Rag Doll graphic was an immediate success

and proved that Sean was indeed a great replacement for VCJ.

Sean went on to design many other iconic graphics

for Powell Peralta.

(upbeat music)

One of their most valuable assets.

They didn't realize how valuable at the time, Sean Cliver.

- I was laid off and I got a call from Rocco.

He's like, "Come on down."

Like, "Yeah, we want you to work for us."

"Okay, cool."

Then we went down there and it's like a playground.

It wasn't a business.

(skateboarder laughing)

[Skateboarder] Do not try this at home.

- Sean drew the graphic for the Claudia Schiffer board

and that was actually a graphic that Sean drew

and George poo-pooed on, I think.

But Sean really wanted to do it

and he was like, "Can we do this?"

I'm like, "Yeah, just do anything you want.

This is like fun in here."

(funky music)

[Narrator] Sean fit perfectly

into the World Industries aesthetic

and went on to create some of the most infamous boards

of that time.

(funky music)

- Cliver happened to enter it at the end of one era

of skate graphics that are considered classic

by like the old people like me

and the start of the next era

of like the irreverent, angry, rule-breaking,

cease and desisting graphics

that he was right in the center of.

(funky music)

Mark Gonzales came to me one day

and goes, "Look, I wanna do this, I wanna do a company."

And I go, "Fine, let's do it."

And he goes, "I wanna call it Blind."

I'm like, "Why Blind?"

And he goes, "It's the opposite of Vision."

People say it's the opposite of Vision,

but at the time the Talking Heads song "Blind" was popular

and I really liked that song.

I like how he says, "Blind, blind."

♪ Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind ♪

♪ Blind ♪

♪ Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind ♪

[Narrator] Because Mark Gonzales

was such a respected skater at the time,

when he left Vision and started Blind Skateboards,

it became an instant success.

Mark also teamed up with filmmaker Spike Jonze

to create Blind "Video Days,"

which not only showcase mind blowing tricks,

but a visual style and playful tone

that set off a whole new vibe in skateboarding.

(upbeat music)

- Mark, he goes, "I'll do it on one condition,

that we get Jason Lee,"

and Jason was our top, like, amateur

was we were gonna turn pro on the World.

It was really hard for him 'cause I, you know,

I found Jason when he was like 15.

If it wasn't for Jason Lee,

I doubt that I would've done Blind.

♪ Give a little shock, and he raises his hand ♪

I was pretty old there then, you know,

I started to be moving up in age.

He was one of the hot new kids.

We went ahead and did it

and Mark just immediately, you know,

just came up with ideas and graphics

and I would know what kids are gonna buy.

♪ She looks down at me and says ♪

- If I have a gift, it's not because I can draw that well

or a great businessman,

I think it's because I have the mind of a child.

- Rocco's way of having fun, was poking fun at things

and pure humor and humor that a 13-year-old can get.

He hit a nerve with core teenagers, street skater America.

(upbeat music)

Blind released the three spoof boards,

Pears, Tony's and the skull and sword graphic.

- Blind was just trying to stir things up left and right.

No warrant for heavy metal.

I look back on it, it's hilarious

that people were so caught up in it,

in the controversy of it, who cares.

(upbeat music)

I love when World Industries or Steve

would appropriate these very familiar graphics

in society or culture, and the world eyes them in a way

and it was another demonstration

of we're gonna do it our way.

We don't conform.

(funky music)

- Marc was doing the fucked up Blind kids boards

and one of the graphics was Rear End Rudy.

They yelled, "Just looking at the sketches."

I was like, "But you can't really do it, can you?"

Rocco was like, "What do you need if you can't do it?"

(funky music)

- We were just pushing it to the point of insanity.

Nobody can stop us.

- We got a cease and desist letter for the Scientology board

and it had the cover of the L. Ron Hubbard book,

"Dianetics," to which we changed to Colvinetics

for Randy Colvin, whose model it was.

We just eventually made a whole wall

where we just hung our cease and desist letters

like badges of honor, and we got 'em from everybody,

Theodor Geisel, you know, Dr. Seuss, Nintendo, Disney.

They didn't really have any teeth

until Disney actually brought us to federal court.

The judge was super cool.

He was just like, "Why don't you go in that room over there

and talk amongst yourself, see if you can settle something."

We could've gotten away with it

because it was Winnie the Pooh in a disguise,

like he has devil horns.

But all the records that we had to turn over

said Pooh Devil.

"Okay, what do you guys want?"

"We want quarter million."

We go, "We'll give you 50,000."

Da, da, da.

$100,000.

(funky music)

My CEO told me at that time 100 grand.

That was the most expensive graphic we ever did.

That was it.

And that put an end to all copyright infringement

and the good old days were gone.

- At that time, he ruled skate shops with an iron fist.

Hip shops didn't, you know,

didn't wanna carry it.

He typically blackballed them.

And a lot of times they went outta business.

(funky music)

- On some levels, I think that that defined skateboarding

during that period, at least for a lot of people.

And so I thought some of it was funny

and I thought some of it was lame actually, you know.

(funky music)

(upbeat music)

[Narrator] The crazy antics of Rocco

pushed John Lucero to leave the company

and start his own called Lucero Skates,

which later became Black Label Skates

that still exists today.

- So Steve actually bootlegged the first Lucero boards.

He claims he had the right to it.

He had no fucking right to it,

but like I said, I can laugh at it now,

it's all fucking funny.

But at the time, you know, when you're a kid

and you just start the first company,

it meant everything.

And so right off the bat,

of course I spray painted "Kill Rocco" on it.

So that's where the Kill Rocco story comes from.

(upbeat music)

Seriously gonna lose your jobs here.

All you guys.

(upbeat music)

It's rad that World dominated,

but it's never good for anything to dominate

because then it causes kind of like no competition

and no drive.

World started to get really big

and there were a lot of different brands happening with it.

Some of the guys, you know,

that were there riding just weren't happy

with the way things were being done.

(upbeat music)

So Mike Carroll and Rick Howard fronted the Exodus,

they took an entire team's worth of guys.

That was a big hit for Rocco.

It would last about a couple weeks,

it'd fall apart due to this lack of good management

Doesn't really have a chance.

The team's not that hot either.

- But they just wanted to do things their own way.

And so when we started Girl, it was like a fresh slate.

(upbeat music)

The Dark Ages?

I don't know if you wanna call it the Dark Ages,

but I saw life as soon as the Girl dudes quit World.

I like went and made friends with them

'cause I knew that was a break.

- [Narrator] The Girl Exodus from World Industries

was the beginning of the next skater owned companies.

Tony Hawk left Powell Peralta and started Birdhouse.

Chris Pastras left World

and joined forces with Jason Lee from Blind

and formed Stereo Skateboards.

Ed Templeton left The New Deal and started Toy Machine.

Slowly the various brands of World started to disappear

and these new brands took over the market share

and are still going strong today.

Even legendary street skater, Mark Gonzales,

decided to leave his own company, Blind,

and move to Paris to pursue his art career.

- I didn't want to do Blind anymore, you know?

I felt like, not out of touch,

but like all these younger guys,

I felt like a disconnect with them.

(poignant music)

I made like 200 hand painted boards at the time

and I thought this would be, like, something to do

that would be a departure from skateboarding to art.

And I thought I would be a famous artist.

Yeah, I thought I would be like, you know,

like a Keith Haring or like a Basquiat.

Like, I thought like I could leave skateboarding

and be, like, as huge as them.

(intense music)

Of course I was wrong.

And I came back into skateboarding

and started skateboarding.

[Narrator] By the end of the 1990s,

skateboarding took another turn into the mainstream.

ESPN created the Extreme Games

and included skateboarding, motocross, BMX and surfing.

Fueled by the success

of the "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" video game,

skateboarding was once again back in the mainstream

as it had been in the 1980s graphic revolution.

The new online store for used goods, eBay,

also helped the industry get back on top.

Digital retailers served as a place

for collectors to buy and sell.

No longer were these skateboards just for riding,

collectors had recognized the importance

of the artwork and graphics.

(forklift humming)

- We've all been up here for a couple years.

We've moved around a few times, so this'll be fun

to take everything out and see what's in there.

(forklift beeping)

Some of it's good, some of it's garbage,

some of it's shit, some of it's cool.

But it's all art.

(forklift beeping)

Get hot.

(upbeat music)

Never would I had ever thought

that I should have saved a board

and that it would be worth more than it was at that moment.

I wished I would've saved at least one new one

out of every model I ever had.

But to be honest,

I wish I'd saved most of the ones I rode. (laughs)

For proof.

This board right here, this is my original deck,

my original graphic.

I had to buy this off eBay for about two grand.

When I first started on eBay,

and this is 1996, I typed in skateboards

and 17 items came up to search.

Now if you type it in, you get like 20,000 items, a joke.

(funky music)

Right around 2000,

as more and more collectors started coming into the scene,

the prices started to jump up

and soon, you know,

the boards that were going for, you know,

a couple hundred bucks

were now going for 800 bucks, 1,000 bucks.

- It's a million dollars worth of skateboards

on eBay.

[Narrator] As the internet expanded,

so did the sales of iconic skateboards.

Everything from Facebook specialty groups

to Instagram collectors

who are selling and trading everywhere.

I've made, I don't know what it is,

10,000 different graphics over the years.

It's impossible to save them.

But I look back now and go,

"I wish I would've saved this one, that one, that one."

Yeah.

- My world is really all about collecting stuff

that never cost anything or meant anything to anybody.

And I really was in love with skateboarding,

that's why I did it.

I started off collecting used boards

just 'cause they were cheaper.

You could get 'em for 100 bucks or so.

So I had this nice collection

of just like huge used piles on the wall

and it looked all nifty and nice.

And I had this chance

to get a Steve Steadham board in NOS condition.

And once I had that one board,

all the others said they just didn't look right.

(funky music)

- Well, before our first skateboard graphics are there.

You know, I'm a pack rat, a hoarder.

You gotta see my home garage, it's even worse.

But I don't really collect boards.

I just have a bunch of boards.

Plus since I've been making boards for over 20 years,

a lot of it's just samplings of what we have.

(funky music)

There's some great collectors out there.

There's a guy named Dale Smith

and they call him Sausage Man.

He was my rival.

We used to mindfuck each other all the time.

- When I first started collecting these skateboards,

I thought I'd pick up only one or two or five,

went out, started looking, swap meets, thrift stores

and over the 10-year period,

you see just a portion of what I have.

(funky music)

- I figured out that he used to get to the swap meet

at nine o'clock, I'd get there at six o'clock,

walk the whole swap meet

and be home before he even got there.

And then he'd call me on Sunday,

"Hey, there was nothing out there."

I was laughing inside

because I already went and cleaned house

before he even got there.

Like, I did that for a while.

(funky music)

- I have a collection, you know, of some things that I like,

but I think the whole super crazy collector dudes are weird.

(upbeat music)

We did the tallest scalable boards

when we did the design AERIUM ones,

I got the originals that we reproduced them from

and hung those up.

So at first I'd tell you I'm not a collector,

but suddenly I had quite a few boards

(laughing) on the wall.

- There's no way, I don't care who you are,

you'll ever have every skateboard made.

You just can't do it.

It's not possible.

It's a great thing to collect something that there's no end.

(upbeat music)

Most of the serious collectors

don't want to collect reissue 'cause they're spoiled.

They want the the real deal

and there's a lot of people out there

who can't afford to spend 300 bucks on the real deal

and they can buy a reissue for, you know, $69 or $59.

Collecting is consumerism gone awry.

It's just ri-fuckin-diculous, you know, bottom line.

None of us needs all this shit.

The people who are, you know,

buying these things now and hoarding 'em,

that didn't happen in the '80s.

Like, when you're a kid,

you'd managed to scrape together 50 bucks.

You weren't gonna just put the board on your wall,

you were gonna skate it.

(upbeat music)

- Those are the things that enrich your life.

That's why I have them, you know,

it's like I have so much crap,

but it all makes me appreciate life more.

So some things I look at is so awesome.

(upbeat music)

On a level, it's just pack ratting shit.

On another level, there's somehow an appreciation

of the connection between the skater and the skate.

(upbeat music)

We didn't save the boards always

and we just didn't think they would have a life.

But now that the collector thing has come in,

it's really broadened, I think, the skateboard art

and it's created demand for it.

It's brought it into the realm of art

where it's hung on the wall

and it's in museums and gallery shows.

So it's really brought the art out of skateboarding

and into the public view.

(upbeat music)

- That Hosoi board, like, you know that board,

you're like, "Man, I shouldn't have rode it," you're like...

But, you know what, at the end of the day you're like,

"I need a fucking skateboard," and that's what it is.

It's a skateboard.

I needed to go skate, much more important

than I need to like cherish some whatever.

- (upbeat music) - I don't like the idea

of making skateboards so precious, you know,

because they're not made to be precious thing

and they're made to be ridden.

(upbeat music)

Once it's been skated once,

even just the etch from the truck alone,

like, I don't really look at as being keepable.

- I think it becomes more art once it's skated, you know,

like once you skate it,

and then like there's like skate marks on it.

Something about like just a thrash board

and then going on the wall

seems like it's got more behind it.

I actually am so stoked

that people appreciated anything that we did,

that it means something to them

or that they like the art

or it represents a period in their life

that they wanna remember.

I love the fact that people recognize it on that level.

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Rolling into the new millennium,

skateboards have become commonplace in art galleries

and fashion runways.

(upbeat music)

It's been interesting to see

the world accepts skateboarders as artists

in this last 10 years.

In a sense we're always treated as the outcast,

as the not accepted, you know?

So you see the success of someone like Andy Howell,

Ed Templeton or Mark Gonzales, you know,

where in the art world they actually have a position

and they're in the art magazines,

just like they were in the skateboard magazines.

(upbeat music)

You were creative in the beginning

of like being just a skateboarder,

what trick you do, what style you have.

And then it turns into that you are out there,

you're in the street, people can see you, you in the public.

So coming from like, "Let's do a painting on your board,"

to go outside and say, "I do a piece of art

and put it in a gallery on the streets,"

you're already there.

If skateboarding somehow overlaps

and gets considered fine art, so be it.

But to me it's all just drawing.

I don't really have definitions for it as skateboard art

or non-skateboard art.

(upbeat music)

- It's still like fine art versus commercial art.

But the line there is a lot more blurred these days.

- Every young person, every part of youth culture

has been influenced by skateboard graphics in some way.

The first art they see

is Ed Templeton's artwork on skateboards.

So how could that not be real art?

Some of this art will be recognized

on a level that's more meaningful

than just you influenced skate art,

you influenced art in general.

- It's up there with what we call the masters now.

Picasso was crazy, you know,

that when that stuff came out,

people were like, "That's not art."

- Are any of us or them legitimate in the art world?

Not until people want it.

That's what makes it legitimate.

- When you see boards worth millions of dollars,

skateboard art, I think in our lifetime we'll see that.

I think you'll see maybe Olson's board

or maybe Wes's board in a museum

or in a Sotheby's auction house go for that much money.

(upbeat music)

A works value will be measured

on how much emotion it elicits and the uniqueness of it.

And I think people's work like Ed's is unique

and people's work like Gonz does elicit emotion.

This is what's after Warhol.

(upbeat music)

- You can walk in today to the Museum of Modern Art

and buy an Andy Warhol skateboard.

(upbeat music)

- This whole over analyzing the artwork on skateboards

makes no sense to me.

(people laughing)

(upbeat music)

- [Narrator] Most of the skateboard artists

who helped elevate this culture

had no idea that skateboarding or skateboard art simply put,

would become a global phenomenon

from TV commercials to renowned museums all over the world

and even the Olympics.

Skateboard art continues to grow and evolve

just like skateboarding.

(funky music)

I guess I would say the biggest impact

that skateboard graphics have had,

it's not so much direct

in that it's like, "Yeah, that board graphic, you know,

I want that eagle on, you know,

across the side of a building."

I think it's more the mentality

that had the greater impact

and so many amazingly creative people

who have a love for skateboarding from an early age

have gone on to be unbelievable filmmakers

or studio artists or designers in one way or another.

Part of the reason they've gone on to do that

is because of the freedom that they saw in skating

and the lawlessness and kind of the lack of rules.

(funky music)

Skateboarding's old enough now

to where there's generations of skateboarders

that are actually part of society.

Kids that were skating 20 years ago

that are 30 something now

are definitely behind offices and running things.

You gotta realize from a age perspective

where skateboarders are.

The next election or two,

we'll probably have a skateboarder in the White House.

We want to believe

that we're still this really neat set aside industry

that has a lot of creativity and we do,

don't get me wrong, but this has become huge commodity.

So many kids ride skateboards to school,

people ride skateboards to work.

People need skateboards.

I need my skateboard just for my mental health.

There's always been people

from outside of skateboarding

want to come and take something from it, right?

You got recruiters, you got fucking pit juice,

underarm deodorant, you know,

you got all these people

that want to take their action from skateboarding

because they think that's gonna give 'em some credibility.

It's not gonna give 'em any credibility

with someone who's a true skateboarder.

(upbeat music)

There's gonna be skateboard artwork,

there's gonna be unique artwork

done with skateboards by skateboard artists

and there's gonna be production stuff,

which is just, you know, like the garbage

that all these skateboard companies are turning out,

fucking Mickey D. bullshit.

I always loved the art of skateboarding

because it wasn't intimidating.

It didn't seem like you had to be some sort of,

amazing virtuoso artist to make graphics for skateboards,

that just seemed like you could participate

without having to be self-conscious.

Half the battle with art is just doing.

As you do, you get better.

- Maybe that's what my work has been for in the long term,

is to inspire other artists

because that's when I have known my soul,

are those late night hours where I'm at ease

watching a black and white graphic develop.

- Artists that traditionally have a problem

getting exposure,

but skateboarding provides a vehicle

to get the art out into the world onto the streets.

And so it's seen everywhere around the world

and to me that was a tremendous opportunity

to have the work shown.

If I can make money making art,

which is the same exact thing I thought when I was a kid.

If I can make money skateboarding, how great would that be?

And now I'm in the same position as an older person

saying if I can make money selling art or just making art,

that's what I want to do, then that's great.

That's the goal I think, for everybody's life.

It's like make a living doing what you want to do.

- There are a lot of graphics through the years

that I thought were very important

and iconic and inspiring,

but I love that people choose a skateboard

to make a statement.

What other sport has that?

What other activity has that where the tool that you use

can be this art and can be a political statement

or can be a sign of the times.

You know, that just doesn't exist ever anywhere.

(logo clanking)

[Man] Excuse me, sir.

Sir, the general public is kind of curious.

What is the problem with your decision-making process?

And then again...

♪ Hey, what about the kids ♪

♪ What about the kids ♪

♪ (indistinct) ♪

♪ What about the kids ♪

♪ (indistinct) ♪

♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ Hey, hey ♪

♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ Hey, hey ♪

♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ What about the kids ♪ ♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ Hey, hey ♪

♪ What about the kids ♪

♪ (indistinct) ♪

♪ What about the kids ♪

♪ (indistinct) ♪

♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ What about the kids ♪ ♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪

♪ What about the kids ♪ ♪ Hey, hey, hey, hey ♪

(skateboarders chattering indistinctly)

♪ What about the kids ♪

♪ (indistinct) ♪

♪ Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me ♪

♪ Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you ♪

♪ What about the kids, what about the kids ♪

♪ What about the kids ♪

♪ What about the kids, what about the kids ♪

♪ (indistinct) ♪

♪ What about the kids, what about the kids ♪

♪ (indistinct) ♪

♪ What about the kids, what about the kids ♪

(epic music)