I have what I’ve been led to believe is one of the most rare skateboard collections in the world. It’s starts with boards that I began building myself at the age of 7.  Beginning at that tender age I began saving close to every single seminal board I have ever ridden including most of the boards I built myself and all of my pro models.  Over the years people have asked me if I began saving these boards because I knew skateboarding would someday become popular.  The answer is no.  I didn’t have any inkling that skateboarding had any kind of a future or that these boards would somehow be considered rare some day.  I saved these boards because they all represent such a deep part of who I am that to part with any one of them would be like parting with one of my arms or legs. I just couldn’t do it and so I have saved them.  My entire collection which is very deep and which includes boards, wheels, trucks, shirts and stickers and all forms of skateboard memorabilia has been sitting in darkness for close to six decades.  This is the first time any aspect of my collection has seen light.

Most of the images I’ve painted in this show represent different aspects of my personal collection, various angles of historic clay wheels, skate trucks and hand-sawed boards.  Many of my boards are so old now they are beginning to compost, in fact one of them looks as if it were recently excavated out of the ground in Ethiopia.  It’s been an absolute joy painting these images as the process has provided me with a completely new journey to embark on with this equipment which has played such a prominent role in my life.

There are a few images on these walls that are not from my personal collection and these are from the collection of the Skateboard Hall of Fame Museum run by Grandmaster Todd Huber.  Todd has been very generous in supplying me with stunning images from his colossal collection.

I grew up in a town called Mar Vista which is right next to Venice Beach. Early on Mar Vista was a nondescript suburb of west Los Angeles with Venice boulevard running through it and littered generously with thrift stores. These thrift stores were loaded with second hand junk including old roller skates from the 40s and 50s. Myself and a friend, armed with a dollar apiece would enter these stores on a search and rescue mission for old roller-skates. We were looking for skates with the best Chicago wheels and trucks, wheels and trucks that were in good shape with little mileage.  We’d find a pair and take them up to the counter and pay our two bucks.  I’d take the left boot and he’d take the right and then we’d go to my parent’s garage, pop off the rivets and pry the metal baseplates off the leather boots and then with a hack saw cut the baseplates in half and then mount them with scrounged wood screws onto a piece of pine we had sawed into the shape of a small surfboard.  

If you wanted a skateboard back then, this is how you did it.  There was no other way.  There was no such thing as buying a skateboard in a store because there were no stores that carried skateboards and that’s because there were no manufacturers who built skateboards. These were the dark ages of skateboarding from 1966 to 1973 before the birth of the modern urethane skateboard wheel. 

All of these paintings represent that beautiful era.