Back in 1991 in Blagnac, France, the H Street team came and did a demo. We all got really perplexed when we saw that Danny Way didn’t bring a vert board. Instead what he carried was one of these straight-railed, round-tailed, mini-wheeled (and no riser pads ! The heresy…) setups that hadn’t really reached France yet. “He just switched to street skating,” we thought, right before D.Way dropped on the monstrous vert ramp and killed it like nobody before –two tricks from that day even ended up in Questionable.
With a 20-plus-year-long career , Danny still remembers that board. “I’ve been looking for it for ever,” he regrets, “It’s the one that has the Volkswagen-like “DW” logo on the nose. That shape right there revolutionized all street shapes. There were other people playing with the idea at the time, Tony Hawk had a twin tip board but it looked retarded, it was such a bad shape. But the DW one, I remember shortly after Salman Agah copied my shape, Jeremy Klein copied my shape…” Having said that, Danny still has quite a bunch to pick up from -either from an aunaccessible attic he has to struggle with, or from the various displays on his walls. Here are the five decks he had time to discuss between two exploits.

H-Street Giant Holding Giant (1989)

“I quit Powell cause I never felt they had that big of an agenda for me. I knew what my potential was, and I knew where I was. I was ready to go. I got my first pro-model on H Street six months after I got on, and it was this one. On some boards in these days, you had a say in your graphics.

A local friend from Vista drew this graphic, and there’s another one I drew, it was so bad, it was the stupidest graphic ever, it had a big H Street and a question mark. It took me five minutes to do it. Even though I wanted it to look elementary and that it looked almost like a kid did it.

Anyway, my friend drew this giant holding a giant holding a giant for my board. There was no particular meaning I think, besides maybe that everybody looked like a giant to me then. Or that I was a little kid but I had a giant ego, I saw myself as one of the bigger guys. But I wasn’t. “

Blind OC Bladerunners (1991)
Art by Marc McKee

“I rode for Blind for like a year and a half and this one was one of my two boards, the other one was the Nuke Baby one, the fake Nash board. H Street was going down the tubes, Mike Ternasky and Rocco were buddies and this was a strategic plan, this was just to buy time so we can get Plan B started basically. Eventually I got back on H Street for a few months until we started Plan B.

Anyway, this Bladerunners graphic was going on at the time when mini-trucks were popular, everybody seemed to own a lowered truck like that, and they wore the Oakley blades and that stuff. And in skateboarding we didn’t really think it was that cool so this is kind of a joke. I like this board because Mark Gonzales, Jason Jesse, Ron Chatman, Todd Congeliere and Jason Lee are on it too. It wasn’t just an OC thing, but all these guys are from the OC.”

Plan B 12-gauge (1993)
Art by Spike Jonze

“That’s Sheffey on the board there, that’s in Fallbrook by my old house. We used to go out in the middle of this hill and blow stuff up. Spike Jonze shot this, he had the mannequin head, that was his idea. It’s hard to remember exactly cause at this time period there was always some kind of obscure, crazy thing happening.

He probably just brought the head over and said, ‘we’re gonna shoot a sequence for a board graphic’, and that was it. This is back before naked chicks on boards got really crazy, so this at the time wasn’t really crazy but if you look at it now, you might be like, ‘wow, what is this about?’ with the kid and the shotgun blowing the mannequin’s head away.

I don’t really go out shoot guns that much anymore. I mean, I  like them, I think they’re cool. But I don’t really have the passion anymore, and I don’t have time.”

Plan B Silence Of The Lambs (1994)
Art by Sean Coons

“One of my favorite artists, Sean Coons, drew this water colors graphic at the time The Silence Of The Lambs came out, it was my favorite movie. This board was part of whole series but it was my favorite anyway.

What prompted me to have Hannibal Lecter was, I don’t know, back then I was just kind of in the dark states I think, I was attracted  to things like this, I don’t know why, I mean I ‘m not these days, but when I was a kid it was just personal  things that were going on in my life. I was attracted to the darkness, as you see it from the graphic. It’s not where the Slayer thing came from, I like Slayer and have always enjoyed their music when I skate.”

Alien Workshop Mega (2002)
Art by Mike Hill

“I skated this one for two weeks, everyday. I filmed the whole Mega section in the DC video on it, so I saved the board complete, I never switched the board out, every trick on that video part is on this board. Plus it’s the only mega board I had that looked almost like a regular street board, I was pretty psyched about that too. That board got a lot of action.

I never really changed shapes before or after that one. The Mega shape is something I came out with when I invented the Mega. Paul Schmitt makes my boards, so everybody rides Schmitt boards except Jake I think. Everybody rides my shape, they just go to Schmitt,  ‘I need Danny’s mega boards.’ Nobody is trying to reinvent the Mega board, I got it all figured out, and now everybody has that board.

It’s longer but only 8,8″ wide cause it gotta be relative, the width of a board doesn’t change its stability at all, it’s more about the wheelbase and the trucks’ width. It took a few shapes but I got it all figured out since.”

I had loosely suspected it before. It became really obvious when I started working on curating the board exhibit for that one show in Paris last summer: in 2011, there aren’t that many skateboard graphics that have something to say. I mean, by “newer” artists -which immediately sets asides the Templetons, Eli Gesners, Mike Hills, Todd Francises, Clivers, McKees and Aly Moores of Droorstalgic times past.

Not to tout the expired stale fart trumpet again, but my theme being called Agents Provocateurs -a journey through offensive/political board graphics- I sadly only had a couple names in mind when time came not to make this an all-90s board exhibit. 

Thanks lil Baby Jesus though, there’s still a handful of artists who still carry the maculate torch today. Among the Siebens, the Winston Tsengs (enjoi) and the Whoever-thinks-of-these-sick-Skatementals-concepts, Ben Horton has remained one of my personal faves since he launched $LAVE.  The brilliance of it all, the video, Ben Raybourn : the guy behind it had to be a Midas of sorts, I thought.  Well, he is. But he’ll never admit it. Enjoy his interview below…

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How old are you and when did you start really drawing?
I’m old enough to have a hard time remembering when I started drawing. I think I really got into it when I was about 12 I guess.

How long have you been skating?
About 25 years. You would think I could figure out Back-smiths by now.

What was the first cool drawing of yours you remember liking?
I’m still working on that. So by default, I’ll say it was a volcano I drew when I was 5 years old.

Who were some early influences you had?
When I was young I liked saturday morning cartoons a lot. All the Warner Bros. stuff with Chuck Jones as the director was my favorite as a kid. After that, I started getting into all the usual famous painters from history as well as some modern artists. But as I got older, I began to only like certain aspects of a person’s artwork. I rarely like the piece as a whole.

What was your first “published” drawing/graphic?
Probably, some drawings I did for ads for the skateboard shop I worked at in 1992. Then I worked for Maple skateboards which became Imperial distribution. Later on, I worked for the original Scarecrow(before ABC), Foundation, Black Label, etc.

I occasionally skated with Jamie Thomas when he moved to San Diego. I guess he probably noticed the stuff I did for Foundation because he skated for Toy Machine which is at Tum Yeto. That was back before Zero, around ’94 I guess. I was working on and off in the skate industry. I worked at a screen print shop 2003 when he offered me a job.

How did you get do do $lave?
After working at Black Box for some time, Jamie was kind enough to offer me the opportunity to start a brand through Black Box.

Does it have to be spelt with a dollar sign and not an “S”, by the way?
I guess you can spell it however you want. The official/legal name is, “$LAVE” in all caps.

What’s the meaning behind the name?
It can really be whatever you want. The general idea is that most people are a “slave” to something. Whether it’s substance addiction, television, an occupation, society’s demands, etc. That’s why I used the dollar sign for the “S”. Because money is one of the most influential factors in a society that determines how much freedom a person has or doesn’t have. I realize that “Slavery” typically describes people keeping other people as legal property and forcing them to live a certain way and therefore making them into personal slaves.

But that is only one aspect of the word “slave”. For $LAVE Skateboards it’s about the other side of the word “slave” that refers to people being controlled by or dependent on something or society as a whole. And therefore reminding us to always pay attention to that and to continue to preserve whatever freedoms we have, while striving for more.

My point is, we need to keep an eye on what freedoms we are sacrificing.If we don’t, that line at the airport security area is only going to get longer. And your personal belongings in your bag and your home are going to become more and more public.

Haha, that was a small rant, good thing nobody is reading this!

The central question to me : being an old ’90s fart, there are to me very few graphic artists nowadays that I think are REALLY good. Do you think that’s true?
Well, I can partially agree with your opinion, and I definitely don’t include myself in those few artists. There is a lot of art out there. And personally I don’t like the majority of it. But who am I to say? What’s great is that art is completely subjective. It all comes down to what the individual viewer likes. There’s no right or wrong.

Who are some skate artists from nowadays that you dig?
They’re all good. Everyone’s great.

And non-skate ones ?
I would like to keep this list to myself.

Do you think it’s important for a drawing on skateboard to have a “message” of some sort?
Yes, but I don’t think it’s neccssary. Every graphic doesn’t need to be profound. Some ideas are just silly and meaningless, which is great. Skateboarding should always stay free. It’s an environment/Industry that has few restrictions on graphics and a great place to voice your opinion if you have one.

Who else carries that specificity today?
Chris Johanson, Todd Francis, Ed Templeton, Sean Cliver, etc. I could go on and on, but in general I feel like skateboarding has always been an outlet for artists to do whatever they want.

Does the market care?
You mean the people buying skateboards? Some do and some don’t I guess.

What are some of your own favorite graphics?
Probably the latest series of five boards for $lave called “Positive Series”.  I like the colors and illustration style of this series. They’re also the first Illustration series of graphics I’ve done now that I have 5 Pros on the team.  I also usually like my newer graphics more than my older ones, which is a good thing I guess. It would suck to always be trying to copy some drawing I did in the past.

Lastly… why is there that NRA sticker on your old BMW?
Jon Allie put it on there and I like it. I’m backing some policies of the NRA. That goes back to the freedom crap I was talking about earlier. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

Guy Mariano might have unveiled Steve Rocco’s ultimate secret. “We were all just kids, man,” he reminisces as he relives his journey through Powell, Blind and Girl, “and I feel that Steve himself was just a kid, too.” Only a kid who happens to have made a bit of pocket money.
So why bother with candy when you can actually buy the whole store, then set it on fire just for the laughs? Hence the guns, the death, the sex, all these unknown, therefore fascinating, things for anybody immature enough to get the joke. Dumbo Board aside, (too direct of a jab at his ears size), Guy loved it all. That’s why his graphics have a special place in the Droorstalgic hearts.
When you can actually find them, that is -The only board that Guy currently owns is a Jason Lee “Bowie” deck offered to him by Marc Johnson. But thanks to a cross-continental chain of help, the five images ended up being found.  And Guy could talk about them…

More Guy on The Chrome Ball and on Lodown (Of course it’s all part of a big concerted plan to have all these come out at the same time. You think we’re not professionals?)

Blind Claudia Schiffer (1991)
Art by Sean Cliver

“That one was my first board, so of course you’re gonna be super hyped on it. But the graphic itself was really good. Also, it was at a time when I started to recognize supermodels, from the ad campaigns, whether it’d be Kate Moss on Calvin Klein, or this one who was a Guess model. It was super-special that that board came out in that era.

Also, what added to it was that just me and Jason Lee had that graphic, with just our names that changed. I had been looking up to him for so long, so sharing anything with someone like that, it was super special. I think it did very well, a check might have been $ 5,000 at $2 a board, you know what I mean?”

Blind Accidental Gun Death (1992)
Art by Marc McKee

“Nowadays graphics are more or less a reflection of pros’ personalities, but back then it was more, ‘Our art guys will do stuff’. Still, that Accidental Gun Death board is special to me cause it was very graphic in a time where skateboard graphics had become really kid-friendly and all types of cartoons, they were doing a lot of Dr Seuss, or taking Burger King logos.

I think at that time on the news they might have been talking a lot on the news about kids’ accidental gun deaths or something and how dangerous guns are. It was a bit political. When I saw the board I thought it was pretty harsh but it was cool, man. I’d bring home my new boards and my mom would be like, “Oh that’s cute”, or “Oh that’s cool.”  And when she saw that one, she was just, like, “I don’t like that one.” But she wasn’t that mad.”

Blind High Guy (1992)
Art by Marc McKee

“When I was young I really did like the Garbage Pail Kids. I thought they were really funny. And they turned me and my friends into this little series, putting a little twist on it, making them a little bit heavier, a little bit more raunchy. At that time I wasn’t really messing around with drugs or anything, but I had before with my good friends, so I thought they would have a kick out of it, maybe cause I had smoked weed before. Also, there was a cartoon character of myself on the board, which I was psyched on.

How they assigned each character to each one of us I’m not sure, it was probably rhyme-based a lot. Each one though probably vaguely applied to one of us, like Henry was always jacking off, and Rudy was probably doing the rear-end thing by then, you know what I mean?”

Girl Nudes (1994)
Art by Quique Diaz

“Paulo Diaz’ brother, Quique, was always doing art at their house, his brother and sister were a very artistic family. So he was always painting and we’d watch him paint, saying stuff like, ‘If I ever go pro, I’ll put this one on my board, or that one”. And one day it just happened…

Girl had the in-house artists so they didn’t buy too much art outside, but Quique still go to do at least two of my boards, I’m not sure if he did any other ones for other people, including Paulo. I really loved how this one came out, and how Quique did purposedly sort of a symetrical graphic, cause switchstance skating was the trend then, he didn’t skate but he knew we liked to ride our skateboards backwards. I saw him again last year, he does jewelry now. Beautiful gold necklaces tha look like fish hooks, it’s really cool.”

Girl Old Man Series (1995)
Art by Spike Jonze & Andy Jenkins

“We were coming back from a Japan Tour and we ended up at Girl super early in the morning. Spike had told us that he wanted to do a series of boards with us disguised as old people, he was using make up like that with some Beastie Boys stuff. That’s something Spike always does when he has ideas –applying them to Girl. He’s way more involved in the company than you’d think from seeing him do all these big films.

But anyway, we came in and Spike was already there with two make up artists, he had all the clothes ready. It took the whole day. I remember, my mask was put on early and it had time to dry, but Rick’s was done at the end and it hurt his face when they took it out, that was funny.

So they shot the photos for the boards, and they turned this idea into a skit for a video way later, for a Chocolate video skit. But I wasn’t in it cause I I had removed myself from skateboarding already.

It took me years to realize the value of this kind of board. Who would do that nowadays? Have this idea, and then spend a whole day making it happen? It’s not really the way skate graphics are done anymore, that’s too bad.”

Special thanks : Thorsten Bödeker, Andy Jenkins & Marc McKee

Yeah it has been a minute. My interweb life is a never-ending apology at this point. Actual new stuff coming out soon, most notably silk screen art prints by Sean Cliver and Todd Francis… More info soon. In the meantime:

Ben Schroeder‘s Monrovia house is still the stuff of legends. Until recently, the whole last floor was his and, well, he made it his, big time. Weird skateboards of all sizes all over. Paperwork, memorabilia, skatepark plans, shoes in various states of usage, sculpted or carved skatepark models. A true Ali Baba’s cave, from which he could extract virtually dozens of different skateboards from any given corner. Each one being interesting and having a story to tell. So no, isolating only five wasn’t an easy task but eventually, it did happen. After much debate, “the guy who does eggplants like nobody else” unfolded his carcass of locomotivesque proportions to talk about his five picks, among other souvenirs including how he got kicked out of Dogtown in 1991 (he sent them a letter saying they were turning the company into H Street and that they should rename it H-Town or Dog-Street) and how he earned the nickname “Ben10″ after perfect 10 runs at some 1986 contest. Listen carefully.

Dogtown Big Ben (1988)
Art by Lance Montain & Wes Humpston

I first turned pro for Dogtown in 1987, and around here my local friends were Jeff Grosso, Eric Nash and Lance Mountain, and they were talking, “what should his graphics be?” And Grosso, I think, came up with the idea of the Big Ben clock with the Dogtown feathers behind it. So Lance drew the graphic and Wes Humpston fixed it up. You can’t see much of it now but why I like this one board in particular is because it reminds me of my first trip to Japan, early ’88.

It has the Ascot Park sticker on it, it was one of these amusement parks/skateparks set in crazy forest mountains, they’d give you an ATV and send you up through the forest and all these pros were getting crazy and almost running over each other. Anyway, great trip, I was 18. It’s always brought up in interviews because the 17-hour plane flight there was wild, the Japanese stewardesses couldn’t control us, they were pretty much crying and abandonned this area of the plane. I remember Craig Johnson runing down the aisle, from top of seat to top of seat. A lot of ragers on that trip.

Black Label Dummy (1990)
Art by John Lucero

So this is my first model with Lucero, and it was kind of a cooler thing when it was me, Ricky, Grosso and Lucero, just the four of us skaters and making a company, and Lucero did good art. So I was really happy about that. I was known for taking the hardest slams and keeping skating like nothing, hence the crash test dummy.

But I didn’t take that many then, I slam more nowadays than I used to. I try to do all the stuff without practicing and I’m out of shape, so I still try to pretend that I can do everything that I used to do, but it doesn’t always work out.

What I need to do is swim and stay in shape and skate a lot more. But we’ll see how that works.

Black Label Ben’s Room (1992)
Art by John Lucero

So first, I fractured my right forearm really bad, my bone popped out and I couldn’t skate for six months, so Lucero did a graphic with a handicapped sign. It had nothing to do with the car accident I had, that was another scandalous story, as Black Label kicked me out when I almost died in car accident. Imagine if Antihero kicked out Cardiel, that’s what they did to me. And I had to fight to come back to skateboarding for several years, I’ve been on a hard road.

Anyway yeah, so, following on the public sign thing John made a bathroom sign were instead of “Men” it said “Ben”. Then when I saw the original Girl skateboards logo it made me laugh, I never talked to them about it, I only hung out with them on one of the King Of The Road tours, we had lunch once but that never came up. I think people even forgot about this board. A bunch of these decks said, “BTVC 1991″ on them, me and Grosso had this joke going, “Big Time Vertical Comeback”.

Pocket Pïstols Ben 10 (2007)
Art by Giovanna Withers

My girl Giovanna graduated fine arts from USC and she’s a great artist and does all sorts of great web designs. She did this graphic cause the locomotive is my image now, so this is kind of a modern painting of a train coming right at you.

Cardiel first called me a locomotive in an article he wrote about the Protec Pool Party 2005.

Also, I think they used to call me a trainwreck , I don’t know how to describe my skating but yeah, it is kinda like  trainwreck waiting to happen, it’s not that much the slams it’s just so out of control I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just going pushing ahead.

Homemade Luge
We were seven kids in my family, six boys, and my older brothers Alec and Ted used to go downhill right behind the house we grew up in, that hill is where we all learned skating. They got into luging in the early 90s. And then I built my own luge out of wood for 16 dollars at Home Depot, before getting into aluminium channeling.

All that stuff is out of Home Depot except for the metal. It’s great to have two of these, so me and my friends were able to go out and race each other on weekends. We’d find some good mountain roads with no traffic and hit them at 2 in the morning after going to the clubs.

I mostly like to do roads that have a lot of turns and chicanes and stuff, so you’re sliding around the corners doing 35 instead of going straith and 60 mph. You’re low to the ground so you’re pretty in control. I don’t do it anymore that much but I got a17, 18 years old kids at the local skatepark that I show the ropes to. I wanna get them out to the mountain.

Graphically, Ray Barbee has always been easily recognizable. Rag doll board designs aside, something made him famous before he even turned pro for Powell Peralta, in 1989 : his yellow, unmistakable “RB Control” cap. The one he wore in every mag and video, the one that no skate shop on Earth seemed to ever be able to ever put their hands on -prompting a whole generation of disciples to deface any remotely yellow cap in sight with variously successful renditions of said logo.
There’s a reason behind this much-coveted accessory’s elusiveness, though: “RB Control was a pest control company”, Ray laughs. “A friend gave me this cap right when I started skating, in 7th grade or something.” The amusing episode explained, back to business: straight out of Ray Barbee’s car’s trunk, here are the incredible rubber boy’s five favorite pro-models.

Powell Peralta Ragdoll (1989)
Art by Sean Cliver

I’m pretty sure that this board was Sean Cliver’s first assignment on Powell. It was never going to be a VCJ project, and really the inspiration behind it was the skater that probably had the most influence on my skateboarding, my friend Randy Smith from Sacramento. When he skated, he’d really look like a rag doll, super loose, he looked effortless.

He was so far ahead, even without trying to mimic him I’m sure that inevitably his way to skate affected me. That’s why I thought it’d be cool to have a rag doll for a graphic, from us being into this super loose thing -we all wore beads and had friendship bracelets. I also remember thinking it would be cool to have the doll throw one hand or the other in the air, the cards were added out of filling the void. I wasn’t especially into cards but I’d guess they were here to illustrate, that loose, control thing again. Cliver nailed it right away.

The Firm David and Goliath (1994)
Art by Lance Mountain

I grew up with my grandmother reading a lot of stories from the Bible, like David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, Samson and Delilah. And because I put my faith in Jesus, I had this idea of a modern-day version of David and Goliath. I wanted Goliath to be that Robocop, futuristic kind of thing but have David still be the old-time David. And the thing is, he’s still going to take him out, it doesn’t matter.

Robocop was the first reference point that popped in my head in terms of super-futuristic and armored. Plus it might have been a year where Robocop was happening.

The Firm Madonna (1994)
Artist unknown

I was just digging Madonna at the time, her approach to what she was doing was so much like skateboarding. She came in and just changed the whole industry in her terms, doing things her way. She was punk rock, you know? I just dug that about her. I didn’t agree with a lot of stuff she was doing but I always loved that period of hers.

I just told Lance I wanted her on my board. And he told his artist friend and he came up with that and it was perfect. I didn’t do any other board with Madonna, just that one, I wasn’t that obsessed, I just thought it’d be cool. At the time you’d have a new board every month, you just threw ideas. I like the way he drew it too, and how she’s doing that In Vogue dance, and how she has these cones like the outfit she wore at the time. It’s nothing too deep, but that’s what what was so fun about this time. It started shifting later towards series, and that kinda killed the actual pro’s input in his own graphics.

The Firm Foundation (1995)
Art by Lance Mountain

The Firm was for the longest time out of Lance’s garage, so every rider could directly interact with him. To me, he’s the first one who sort of broke the mold of the VCJ skull thing at Powell’s. I can see why they’d do that before, how it was less random and more coherent, but I really preferred the time where you’d just go and say, “I want a Madonna graphic,” “I want a Robocop version of David and Goliath.” I think new pros don’t get that experience. It’s almost like the skater is weeded out.

Anyway, this one is based on a Bible verse, Matthew 7:24 [reads from pocket Bible]: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.”

So you got the house that stayed, and the one that got blown away because it was built on the sand. It’s a pretty straight forward graphic. It turned out really rad, cause Lance got through that time when he did a board for Joe and keith Gruber that looked almost Disney-esque. This one reminds me of that, but switched up a little bit.

Element Remix (2010)
Art by Sean Cliver

Basically this one is symbolizing my being in skateboarding as long as I’ve been, and the ragdoll is sort of worn now, it’s got holes now and little things coming out. The only difference is the inclusion of a guitar because of my interest in music.

Lance did approach Cliver and asked him if he’d do a board for me, and then once we ended The Firm, it was cool because Ryan Kingman at Element was thinking the same thing. It was a surprise because I didn’t know that Element had approached Sean too. It’s nice to think that things have come sort of full circle.

By the way, the killer McKee retrospective is still up at the HVW8 gallery in LA, until April 10th…

Portraits drawn for the occasion by the ever-awesome Rocco empire teenage runaway Brian Lotti. Go buy a Telegraph board!

What were your first attempts at drawing?
Sean Cliver : Mostly crude copies of John James Audubon bird paintings and Star Wars robots. I couldn’t get the hang of human anatomy yet, so birds and boxy robots were much more easy to draw crappy and somewhat get away with.

Marc McKee: I guess the earliest stuff I was into drawing was probably dinosaurs. I used to be really into dinosaurs, even to the point of memorizing all their names and what they meant, and what geological era they lived in. Also, my dad used to work at a bank and he would bring home all the different bills for me to copy. I would try to copy them in pencil actual size and then trace over the pencil in pen, tying to emulate the engraved look of the note. That was probably around when I was like 6. I think a big part of it was like as a kid I was really impressed about seeing the different denominations, especially the larger notes and the 2-dollar bill, which was rare and had Thomas Jefferson on it who I really liked. Then Star Wars came out I think when I was 8, so from then on it was all about trying to draw X-wing fighters and the Star Wars logo.

When was your first ‘provocative’ drawing that you can remember? Or was it Rocco who forced you for all of them?
SC: Probably a bunch of wide-open beaver shots that I copied directly from looking at my friend’s brother’s porn mag stash. When I was 16 or 17, I was into making small press/mini-comix and tried to contribute some of these naked girl drawings to a zine made by this guy Brad Foster in Texas. For a second there he was confused, because legally he couldn’t sell me the zine, as I wasn’t an adult, but there wasn’t anything that said I couldn’t contribute to it. I think he wound up using one of them that didn’t look exactly like a photo copied out of Hustler.

MMK: In first grade I remember I found a small book on Picasso that my parents had. There were some paintings of naked women in it that I copied and showed to my friends at school. My teacher said something about it to my mom after they had a parent teacher conference or something ‘cause I remember her asking me why I was drawing pictures of naked ladies. I always liked drawing stuff just to try to get a reaction. In junior high we had an art class and for part of the class we had to do calligraphy. So me and my friends wrote all these stupid sayings in calligraphy that were like, “A friend with weed is a friend indeed” and “I don’t go to high school, I go to school high”—stuff like that, all in fancy calligraphy. We put them all up on the wall and thought it was fucking hilarious. Also in that class I remember the teacher asking me take down another one of the drawings I had done that was up on the wall since school was having an open house and all the parents were coming in. The drawing was like a scene from hell with like a bunch of demons tormenting all these people that were naked and covered in blood. By that time listening to Heavy Metal had really started to have an effect on me.

What year did you decide to make a living off drawing/design?
SC: I don’t know if I ever really made the conscious decision to, it just happened. I started doing designs for local punk bands at five or ten bucks a pop in high school. Then a local t-shirt printer/bootlegger, started hiring me to draw up designs and screen-print in the basement. All of this helped fund my commercial art program tuition after I graduated in 1987.

MMK: I guess that would be 1988.

Did you start with skateboard graphics right away?
SC: No, the idea of that seemed somewhat far-fetched—I was living in Wisconsin, which is pretty much the Ukraine when it comes to the California skate scene—so I was went to a tech school in Madison to be a “commercial artist.” I’m not sure where that would’ve led me, but I had a flare for technical design then and probably would’ve ended up doing renderings of nuts and bolts for a machine shop. Maybe marker-comps at an advertising agency, if I was lucky. Luckily, I was luckier than that, and won the great Powell-Peralta art contest in 1988.

MMK: No, the first real steady work I had was in that year when I started doing graphics for this BMX bike company called Bully Bikes. It was started by R.L. Osborn, who was one of the legendary founders of freestyle bike riding, so to me it was like a dream job since up until that time I was really into BMX and freestyle riding. It was through R.L. that I met Steve and Rodney. They were all roommates at the time.

Marc McKee’s entry that earned him the second place in the annual BMX Action Magazine’s drawing contest (1985)

What was your first skateboard graphic and when? For what company?
SC: My first complete graphic of my own design was Ray Barbee’s first board for Powell-Peralta. Prior to that I did some last minute ghost work on one of VCJ’s leftovers for the minimalist Tony Hawk Street model in 1989.

MMK: The first skateboard graphic I ever drew—not for any company, but just for myself—was on this old Variflex Vectra board that my friend gave me back around 1984. The original graphic on the board was this lame 80s pattern that looked like it was out of the movie Tron. I spray-painted the whole board yellow and painted a copy of the first Iron Maiden album cover on the top in black and white and covered it with clear griptape. It was pretty cool except for the fact that I didn’t know that the graphic was supposed to go on the bottom of the board. The first graphic I did for an actual skate company was the Mike Vallely Animal Farm board for World Industries, back in April or May of 1989.

Did it take a few drafts before getting it right? Were you trying to fit in the mold of your predecessor(s) at said company?
SC: I probably would’ve instantly tried to conform to VCJ’s line work (I did just that on my second board design for Steve Saiz), but the ragdoll concept didn’t’ necessarily lend itself to a 15th century woodcut style. So I kind of had to freeball it with my own crude cartoon style. It eventually panned out, although the first sketch was pretty laughable. It probably took three more drafts before it approached the final design.

MMK: Not really, the graphic pretty much ended up looking exactly the way I first drew it— except for one thing…. Originally there were two horses fucking behind the barn in the middle of the graphic. You could just barely see their heads popping out from behind the barn, but you could tell they were doing it doggy-style, and I think the male horse was like sweating with big smile on his face. When we showed the graphic to Mike he told us to take that part out. I completely forgot about that until I read his interview in Sean’s book where he talks about it. The girl horse is still on the graphic, but the male horse is gone. That would be funny to draw the horse back in to show how it used to look….

When did you guys meet each other for the first time?
SC: I think it was in 1990? I used to go down to visit Rocco with Per Welinder, when he worked in the marketing department at Powell. Rocco would take us out on his boat The Guppy and we’d spend the weekend on Catalina Island. I’m pretty sure I first met Marc on one of these trips. Later, in 1991, Marc and I went out to Catalina with JT and Jef Hartsel, when Walter Sims commandeered the boat while Rocco was off in Europe on a skate tour. Rocco later found out about Hartsel and JT being on the boat and flipped out … something about how The Guppy could be impounded if any pot was found onboard.

MMK: Probably around 1989 or 90. I’m pretty sure that I met Cliver before he got fired from Powell and came to work at World, but I can’t really remember.

Were you friends right away?
SC: We got along fine, I think. Similar personality types: quiet, sarcastic, cynical, socially inept, and we could both listen to one Danzig, Metallica, Nirvana, or Led Zeppelin CD for a solid week straight. Certainly made for an easy-going art room that no one else wanted to be in aside from us.

Did you inspire/fuel each other at all in terms of ideas?
SC: It was just a kick in the ass in general to work alongside Marc. He’d already set an incredible bar in terms of graphics for World, Blind, and 101, so I did the best I could to keep up. He by far was the better and more prolific artist, though. Nine times out of ten someone will say they loved the [fill in the blank] board I did, when it was actually done by Marc.

MMK: I think we mostly worked on our own and developed our own ideas. One thing though is when Sean first came to work at World I have to say I definitely felt the heat—I know that sounds dumb, but I guess what I mean is that I knew he was a really good artist and it really hit me that I was no longer the only artist at the company so I better not get too complacent. Like the first graphic he did for us—the Claudia Schiffer graphic for Blind— I was pretty amazed at how he created the finished line art entirely with an X-acto knife on a piece of black photographic paper. No pens or ink or anything. He did the whole thing by cutting into the top black layer of the paper and peeling away the parts to create the white highlights. Another thing I was really kind of blown away by was how he did all of his conceptual sketches in ink. It was like totally different from how I would do everything in pencil at first, with like a million erasures and corrections before I actually got something that looked decent.

What were your first non-PC graphics?
SC: There wasn’t much I’d done at Powell that could be construed as such, aside from the “Liberty and Justice for Some” generic board in 1991. The top graphic was the best on that one; it featured the reproduction of an actual pre-Civil War era slavery handbill. Once I got to World, though, it was probably the 101 Adam McNatt Charles Manson Brown board.

MMK: Probably the Randy Colvin Censorship board was the first. There were some non-PC elements in a lot of the other boards we came out with before that, but I think that was the first board where it was like the main theme. The graphic was of a naked women masturbating that I based off of a Penthouse centerfold. She was also wearing a pearl necklace—I thought that was a nice touch. The boards came in sealed black bags, each with a “warning” sticker that said Warning: Censorship is Weak As Fuck.

Did you have a total freedom on World? Did you ever get a no-no for any graphics there?
SC: Yeah, pretty much. There was really only a “no no” if it sucked balls as an idea, like a lot of the simple logo rip-offs that the riders wanted. Well, aside from the graphic I’d started for Ron Bertino when he got on Blind. It was supposed to feature a “Fresh” Freddy Krueger that was meant to spoof the “horror” and “dope” Plan B graphics of Danny Way and Sal Barbier, respectively, but it soon got blown out of proportion, people thought I was making fun of Mike Ternasky, and the next thing I knew I was getting threatened in the workplace. That was the end of the Fresh Freddy graphic.

MMK: In the early years of the company there was definitely total freedom to do whatever we wanted. During that time there weren’t any graphics that ever got rejected because they were too gnarly. That changed though after a few years, probably around 1993. By that time though Big Brother was fully up and running, so we kind of shifted a lot of the controversial material over into the magazine.

Was there a kind of pride in getting cease and desists at all? Were you, like, counting them?
SC: Marc nabbed most of those back then, but I think Sanrio filed a claim for the Blind Guy Mariano “Bye Bye Kitty” board I did. It was never anything I aspired to, but it was fun to see all the legal mumbo-jumbo they used in those letters.

MMK: Yeah, I guess so. I mean we would put the letters up on the wall after we got them so I guess there definitely was. I don’t think the number of cease and desists were like as much you might you think though since we actually got away with copyright infringement most of the time. Overall I think we probably got around maybe 10 letters at most combined, and that would include the one we got from Nintendo for the Super Mario graphic that Andy Jenkins did. Of the ones for graphics I did, there were letters from Disney, Burger King, Dr. Seuss, and The Church of Scientology. I know Sean got one from Hello Kitty over the graphic he did for Prime, but I don’t really know of any others.

Did Rocco have a say/influence on the topics at all? How about Natas?
SC: Yeah, Rocco would chime in with an idea every now and then, or way to up a graphic in its humor/impact, but I can’t think of any offhand. Natas always had good ideas, like most of the ultra-violent ones I did in 1992 all came from his basic direction: the Gabriel Rodriguez Driller Killer, Eric Koston’s Day at the Zoo, Gabriel’s Penalizer, et al. The only graphic of mine that I can remember Rocco killing was this drawing of a skinless nude woman I started to work on in late 1994. World was beginning to lose its stranglehold on the industry and no longer ruled the shops with an iron fist. So I turned around and sold it to Toy Machine for an Ed Templeton pro model instead.

MMK: Working with Rocco was great since he really wasn’t too hands on with the specific details of the graphics. It was more like he would have ideas and it would be up to us to fill in the details. I’ve worked with a lot of other people over the years and a lot of times working on graphics things can really get bogged down in little details like “what angle the logo is on the board,” or things like that. Steve didn’t really work that way. Most of the graphics we made didn’t even have the company name in the artwork. I think that’s one thing that makes the graphics of that time more like fine art. He was more about developing the main idea and letting it go from there—like for example, “Let’s do a board with a naked chick on it—people will fuckin’ hate it! And from that point it was like “Okay, go!” and the graphic was done start to finish with no meetings or reviews at all during the process. Not even any concept sketches. It was more about the basic idea, and if Steve was stoked on the idea then there really wasn’t any need to see any preliminary sketches or whatever. I think a big part of it was that he was just really fucking stoked about getting the product out there as fast as possible. One of the ways Rocco really got World off the ground was that there was always a big push to have new shit coming out all the time. All of our product runs were relatively small, and stuff that had just come out a few months before he always rushed to replace with new product. That was definitely a new thing in the skateboard industry at that time.

With Natas things were different, but definitely in a good way. Natas is like an artist himself, so in addition to providing us with concepts, he would also have a lot of ideas on how the of graphics would look aesthetically. Another thing, I don’t know if you’ve seen the profile on Natas from On Video, but in one section they show the interior of his parents’ house, and there are just like all these cool pieces of sculpture and artwork everywhere that you can tell just really must have had a huge influence on him when he was growing up. Like working with him, even though we were like only 20 years old at the time, he already had a really broad knowledge of like the whole art world. So he would bring in ideas from that realm, and also from comic books too. I guess one example would be this one graphic that I did for his board for 101 that was of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. It was his idea—the way he described it was like, “I think it’d be funny to draw the photo of the Space Shuttle explosion like a Ray Lichtenstein….” Lichtenstein was one of the leading artists of the Pop Art movement in the 50s and 60s, and he was famous for painting these huge canvases that looked like they were panels from a comic book. One canvas he did showed a fighter jet blowing up another plane, with these huge comic book letters by the explosion spelling out “WHAAM!”  In a way the artwork kind of makes a reference to the brutality of war by showing the scene like a page out of a comic book. That was the idea for the Challenger board, which is basically making fun of how 7 people died tragically with the word “BOOM!” written real big next to the explosion. Fucked up, but also really fucking funny.

Were there pros that were bummed at any of your designs at all?
SC: I think Chico Brenes might have been a bit bummed on his Nude Beach board—with good reason, of course. I mean, what 17-year-old kid would be stoked about having naked old dudes and ladies with saggy boobs and dusty old 70s bushes on the bottom of his pro model skateboard? But that one had to be done. By that time, boards were being run in small amounts of like 300 with only one printing before a new graphic was up, so after a point all the riders really cared about was getting a check to cash to pay for their Honda Civic.

MMK: I originally made the Jason Lee Burger King board for Mike V, and that did not go over well. I guess it goes without saying that Mike would not be down with having that kind of graphic, even though the intention was for it to be ironic since it was well known that he was a vegan. In hindsight I think he was right to turn down the graphic since it’s clearly a salute to cow-eating…. Then, when the ad came out with Jason eating a Whopper in front of Burger King—with a shaved head like Mike had at the time—that definitely came across as a vibe. Not cool.

Another board I did for Mike I know for a fact he has gone on record as saying it was his most hated graphic ever. It was the elephant mini board I did for him directly following the Animal Farm board, and I have to say it’s not one of my favorites either. Maybe it’s not good to dwell on it, but I think it’s obvious looking at the graphic that the baby elephant on the board is intended to symbolize him, and the fact that he’s shown wearing a clown hat and clown make-up makes it pretty fucking outrageous. Also, and I didn’t really notice this until much later, I fucking drew the back truck of the skateboard in the graphic backwards, with the pivot cup towards the inside of the board and the bushings facing the tail. I have to say that is pretty fucking retarded. At least I was able to work together with Mike though on his last graphic for World which came out pretty good. It showed a snake leaving a burning city. I actually went through one major revision of the graphic after I first showed it to Mike. I ended up completely redrawing the lower half with the big snake. On the first version I had a whole bunch of snakes leaving the city instead of just one. Mike explained that there should only be one snake, and that he was the snake. It was his last board before leaving to ride for TV (or was it Blue?) so I think it’s obvious that the burning city was World Industries. It was a pretty good description of World at the time too since shit was really about to hit the fan.

What’s the board that you did that cause the biggest uproar, you think?
SC: For me it was the Blind Claudia Schiffer board, but that’s because it was mainly an insider-industry thing. I’d taken the half-finished idea/artwork for Adam McNatt’s first pro model immediately after I was laid off from Powell-Peralta in 1991 and Rocco convinced me to finish it up for Blind and produce it before Powell had a chance to due to their formal production/marketing schedules. Of course this made for a really awkward time when I ran into George Powell a few months later, and that was the last exchange I had with him up until Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art was released in 2004.

MMK: That would probably be the never completed “Fresh Freddy Krueger” graphic Sean did for Ronnie Bertino for when he was on Blind…. Rocco stopped him from finishing the graphic halfway through since the Plan B riders had seen it and thought it was a diss on Mike Ternasky—which it was pretty much was. I mean it wasn’t specifically a caricature of Mike, but it definitely was making fun of all the “dope” hip-hop style and horror-based graphics that Plan B had been coming out with and that me and Sean thought were ridiculous. There was a lot friction in the company after Mike T. started Plan B with Rocco and Steve’s focus began to shift somewhat from World and Blind to Plan B. I think it was actually the main cause of the Gonz leaving Blind. I specifically remember riding in the backseat of Rocco’s Honda wagon—Sean was sitting shotgun—and Steve yelling at both of us to stop fucking with Mike and Plan B. Ever since it started Plan B was a huge success and at that time, around 1993 or 94 it was what was without a doubt keeping our company in business. So with that one graphic—I’m not sure, but I may have initially suggested the idea to Sean—we could have really fucked ourselves over….

Marc, what was the whole Lynch Mob controversy about? can you talk about today?
MMK: I think that was just a rumor that some of the riders came up with for fun. In the early 90s Ice Cube had a group that he produced called “Da Lench Mob.” I had recently made a graphic for Jovontae Turner for  World that was jokingly called “The Napping Negro.” It was one of a series of graphics on the subject of racial stereotypes. The concept behind the graphic was that it was a piece of racist memorabilia intended as a “collector’s piece” for all the white people that are nostalgic for the past. There was a full-page ad written by Rocco explaining it all that ran in Thrasher magazine. Anyway, even though it was satirical, it was still a pretty offensive image with the fat lips and watermelon and everything, so I guess some of the team riders started a rumor that Ice Cube had seen the graphic, and was going to have the Lench Mob retaliate. Even though it was all made-up, I thought it was an interesting story, so I made a follow-up graphic showing the Lench Mob in front of a group of hanged bodies. That graphic is kind of really over the top, and I’m not sure I would ever do anything like that again.

Was there ever any idea you had that you never dared to actually do? why?
SC: There’s this one idea for a serial killer-oriented board that I keep thinking about doing, but ever since I had a kid of my own I’ve never been able to get it past the sketch stage. Funny the things that can get to you once you have a kid of your own.

MMK: Not really. Well, I guess I kind of stood in the way of having the cover of Lovechild come out the way Steve really wanted. The first draft of the cover had a black man and a white woman holding the baby zebra like it was their kid. The concept was from the song Lovechild by Diana Ross about a mixed race couple, except the song didn’t really talk about them having a zebra as a kid. For some reason I decided I didn’t really want the cover to come out that way, so I took the couple out of the drawing. I think by the time the video came out was after we had released all the board graphics covering all the racial stereotypes, so I guess I was kind of over the whole subject by then.

Recently I’ve been going back and forth about this new graphic that I can’t decide if I’m going to do or not that shows a security guard with a NO SKATEBOARDING sign shoved up his ass. I made a rough sketch of it and I wanted to do it for the last graphic and final graphic I did for World Industries last year (in 2007 another company bought World Industries from Dwindle), but it wasn’t really something that the new owners of World, or any of the riders wanted to come out with.

If it was all to do-over again, what topics would you pick today to provoke? Do you think they are the same than say in 1992?
SC: I don’t know if I ever set out to intentionally do provocative stuff… I just like concepts that make me laugh or would just be funny to actually see printed and produced. Kind of like that Nude Beach board. No kid in his right mind would walk into a skate shop and go, “Yes, THAT’S the board I want to ride!” So the fact that it came out still makes me giggle to this day. But I guess it is fun to press the buttons on social consciousness every once in a while.

MMK: I’m not really sure. I think the difference now is that I really don’t think I’d be able to come out with graphics that are anywhere near as offensive, and also have the best pro skaters of the time want to put their names on any them. I think that was one of the really legendary things about World and all of its sub-brands back in the day. Not only were we putting out extremely controversial graphics, but we had the top skaters putting their names on the boards and riding them. I think it would be hard to have that same combination today. It’s kind of a sign that skateboarding has changed. When World was doing all the crazy shit skateboarding was at a really low point in popularity.

Even Rocco moved away from that approach while he was still actively managing World. After only 2 or 3 short years it was like we couldn’t just keep putting out raw shit with the expectation that shops would buy into it regardless. By then there were just too many other options with all the other new companies that had come into being. Also, I think the riders were getting tired of all the raw shit and wanted to move on to different things.

Who do you think carries the same deliberately provocative artwork in the skateboarding today? Do you think doing a brand the way World used to be would be possible these days?
SC: World broke down so many “taboo” barriers in the early 90s that to do anything in that vein now you tend to get jaded reactions. For instance, soon after Supreme released the two boards that I’d done for them in an intentionally “early 90s” style, another artist in skateboarding—Matt French—posted this up on a skateboard forum: “The 90′s called to say those envelopes have already been pushed.” So it goes. At least I had a finger or two involved with those original pokings. There’s always room for expansion in the provocation department—artists like Banksy are doing just fine—but as for a company like World Industries at it was then? No. Not to romanticize or get poetically nostalgic, but World was just about the most fucked up and fun place imaginable. Very few company owners have the right combination of juvenility, wherewithal, and lack of common business sense to allow something like that to continue, and it’s amazing that Rocco was able to let it go on for as long as it did.

MMK: Definitely Todd Bratrud with the stuff he’s done for Consolidated and Enjoi and Anti-Hero. That stuff has the same vibe as the old World stuff. I guess it would be possible, but the only reason I say that is because I basically think anything is possible. I think it’s extremely unlikely to happen.

If you made it that far, I guess you deserve a little treat : here are two sketches from a Sean Cliver sketchbook that ended up never being used for a French magazine article I did about him in 1999.

The boarding school, Operation Ivy, the chain wallet, his stealth missions with Dan Sturt and even his stance regarding the burger issue: as one of the first street skating celebrities, pretty much every aspect of Matt Hensley’s life has been scrutinized during a career that starts around 1988 and has yet to end, 1993 “retirement models” be damned.
A legend suit that was maybe a few sizes too big for the discreet Vista loc, as his first pro contest shows: “Even if my sponsors signed me up for it,” Matt remembers in his Carlsbad garage adorned with the mandatory pool table, “I didn’t enter it. I was skating skating the course and all of a suddem I got surrounded by Natas, Gonz, every sweet motherfucker I grew up looking up to. It was ovewhelming. When they called my name I was two blocks away smoking a pack of cigarettes. I didn’t enter it.”
Good thing the next ones went better, and that the video days came to the rescue. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be an army of Church-Glass-graphic-tattoed old asses wandering the streets of the globe today. Here are Hensley’s five favorite boards.

[Oh and by the way, I had already pestered Matt with other stuff on my other blog, that no, I think, is not dead. Yet.]

H-Street Vista (1989)
Art by Scott Obradovich

Matt Hensley: “This is my first board but not my first graphic though. My first one was some kind of star, I cant remember what it was. It was some star with a weird script saying “Matt Hensley”. It was okay. It was done by that Italian guy Francesco Albertini, but it didn’t fit for me.

For me, growing up in Vista, it had a really vibrant street skating scene. I figured out you know what, I always wore chain wallets and it might sound cheese-ball but I wanted that street sign, something that represented street, this is what I do. So Obradovich came up with that and it was perfect. It looked exactely like this, I barely made any changes. Maybe I told him to add Vista but this is it.

This kind of graphics were so different at the time, I had a lot of people tell me they loveds it, and a lot of people tell me they didn’t like it, to be honest. But to me, it kinda had the street sensibilty to it.”

H-Street Peace Pole (1989)
Art by Nate Hadden & Scott Obradovich

“We started doing really big demos around that time again, and a lot of kids were now skating, that’s why they did these minis. I used to live in Vista with my friend Nate Hadden, he used to do Assault skateboards and drew this graphic, then it got redone again by Scott Obradovich.

I’m still in touch with Nate, he calls me. I got a story about him. I used to ride for Gullwing, this was when there was an angst SoCal/Norcal you know? So Gullwing was around here and I was riding Gullwing even to the bitter end. To make a long story short, they tried to kick me out of the team and this guy called Gullwing and freaked out on them. To him it was the biggest insult of all time. Wether I told him or not, Nate was acting like my agent, calling people and getting pissed off. But I loved how he’d do it out of caring about me. I just had to do a few apology calls to some people.

Anyway for this graphic he just used the one from my regular board and said he’d make it more rowdy, more punk-rock. You can tell, its’ less perfect. Now it’s an actual street, not just a pole. There’s a curb on this one and it’s painted red, so you can slappy it.”

H-Street King Size (1990)
Art by Francesco Albertini

“King Size, at that point in time, only meant more “king sized nose”. For me, a bird or an eagle feeling represents the symbol of being free and flying.

I liked eagles, I got birds tattoed all over me now, I kinda always had a recurring love for birds so it shows, I had a few boards with tmen on it, there even was a Plan B “Firebird” theme once. I just liked the vibe of it, it looks good.

I’m trying to remember how Francesco Albertini came up with it. Just like the star came about that way, it was something kinda like this, in simplicity. Once I saw this, it looked perfect to me.”

H-Street Church Glass (1991)
Art by “mysterious Colorado dude” & Jeff Klindt

“This board represents a couple different things for me. At the time, I did well in skateboarding and I became, well, relatively known and it kinda freaked my life out for a while. I wasn’t necessarily the happiest guy on the block for a while. And we were doing a demo in Colorado and I met an artist there, we were having some beers, I was a little pissed. So I was talking to him and told him how I wanted to do something that looks like the Minor Threat cover. Down and out. He worked on it but it just was rough, so it got redone by Jeff Klindt.

A lot of people I heard said it had a religious feel, but it’s not for me. I mean, that was part of the sketch, it kind of set a mood, but not a religious one, more of a serious one I guess. And I also think that it comes froma demo in Glasgow Scotland, where we did a demo in a church. Beautiful church, I remember being there and skating under that crazy light and it felt cool. Again, I don’t mean that God came and touched me, but it just felt… important, almost. And those two things came together. Again, it’s simple. It was rebelling against the old-time in skateboarding where everything was almost like a tattoo. I liked all my graphics to be iconic, almost like a stamp.”

Plan B Retirement model (1993)
Art by Carl Hyndman / Photos by Niko Achtipes

“This collage is a good glimpse of where I was in life at the time: skating every day, playing guitar, partying probably way more than I should be. It just makes me laugh. You see on some of the photos, this is my backyard, there’s a cracked window cause a bunch of Nazis came to my house and tried to fight our whole crew, cause I was part of a scooter club called The Upsetters.

So these Nazis came to my house cause we had put a windshield out on their car. And you can see on the floor a bunch of scooter parts, we were always working on scooters. Also on there you can see my roommate Jason, my best friend in the world, the Upsetters logo, a sign stating where I’m from, also the sink where I shaved peoples’ heads. It’s kind of the perfect “feeling” board for me.”

Powell Peralta Yellow man (1991)
Art by Sean Cliver

“Basically the Powell guys sent me 7 or 8 ideas that Cliver had just kinda sketched up. There was one that had a guy with a ball and chain, another one was an angel with wings or something. This one was pretty random too but I was stoked on it. Whoever sent them said, ‘we want something that’s powerful and these look powerful to us.’

You can look at it and can interpret it in a million ways. Years later, me and Cab were signing autographs during a Warp Tour and this guys comes up,  ‘Look, I got your graphics tattoed on my back, I want to show you.’ I was like, ‘Wow’, but then he pulls his shirt all the way to the top, he had ‘White Power’ tattoed from shoulder to shoulder. I guess I had tattoos and shaved head so he thought I was a skinhead or something. I was so bummed. I went from really stoked to, like, ‘kook’.

When I looked at that graphic, I didn’t see it this way but he did, that was his interpretation. I still think it’s one of the coolest graphics I’ve ever had.”

Stereo Portraits (1996)
Art by Todd Francis

“I had different pro models but this team one, just looking at all of them it reminds me why I rode for Stereo. It was a cool team to ride for, everyone got along really good, the videos were good. The characters were pretty dead on, I guess they just had random photos and the artist just looked at the faces on the different photos and came up with it.

It reminds me of going to SF, two or three times a year, I’d stay at Max’s house and skate his ramp, where a lot of the footage in A Visual Sound was shot.”

Toy Machine table (1997)
Art by Ed Templeton

“Ed Templeton was always like, ‘Wow, you drink so much coffee.’ Ed is like a health freak, he doesn’t eat meat, he’s vegan. I was the exact opposite, I drink like eight or nine cups of coffee a day cause since I was 5 years-old, my grandma would make coffee for all her grandkids and pancakes in the morning.

Anyway, Ed was like, ‘I’m gonna come up with a caffeine-themed board.’ Ironically I’m looking right now on my wall, there’s like three graphics from Toy Machine, two of them are coffee-related, one of them is a guy walking into a meat market with slabs of human pieces of meat, I guess obviously cause I’m not a vegetarian.”

Toy Machine Ace of Spades (1997)
Art by Ed Templeton

“I play black jack, I play poker and stuff, so Ed wanted to come up with a gambling graphic. Plus as a little kid I was always doing stuff for bets. There were a million of them. One of the early ones, in Saint Petersburg I swam a mile accross this bay for 15 bucks. When I look at the wall I have, maybe 8 of the graphics I had over the course of my career had to do with fishing, maybe five or six have to do with coffee, four or five have to do with chess or gambling.”

Ed Templeton : “It was a skull I got from some guy I knew at a tattoo shop, it was laying around and I asked if I could take it. I used it for something else before, then I adapted it in Illustrator into the spade and club symbols for Mike’s graphic. I have seen the exact skull, no doubt, taken from Toy Machine in so many other uses -and to think it all came from a tattoo artist’s scraps!”

Santa Cruz Fisherman (2004)
Art by Lee Charron

“This graphic came from a drawing in The Saint Petersburg Times, the local newspaper here. It was a tiny black-and-white sketch of an old man fishing in the Carribean. I cut it out and put it on my refrigerator for months. I loved it cause I grew up fishing.

Where I live now is two blocks from the water, I fish five days a week, so when Santa Cruz asked if I had any idea for a new graphic, I said I wanted to use that photo somehow. So I sent it in and they just changed it a little, so they couldn’t get sued or whatever, and then they added color to it.”

And here’s the resulting board, with its “Africanized” baby, taken from Tim’s personal collection. Thanks Tim !

I thought that was funny as it is, but couldn’t help sending Tim’s evidence to Marc McKee, as I know he’s quite found of this kind of memorabilia. In the meantime he said, he had dug out the long-lost Penthouse centerfold spread that he drew his infamous “Censorship is Weak as Fuck” Randy Colvin board from, back in 1990…
Ladies and gents, here its is. Or, just gents, actually. Note the presence of the pearl necklace on both images, and adjust the jokes accordingly. Thanks, Marc!