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Five Skateboard Books Worth Your Time: An Antidote to Instagram

“Too much content.”  We hear it all the time because it’s true.  In 2019, being a serious fan of skateboarding has come to require wandering through an endless muddle of web clips, SLAP threads, Instagram scrolling, and the occasional magazine.  It’s all enough to leave one with the uneasy feeling that the content itself, good or bad, might not even matter anymore – it’s all just something else to forget in a great mental wash.

Books, however, are different.  They have a physical weight and permanence that is impossible to replicate elsewhere.  By their very nature, they are something more serious, something that demands your respect.  The experiences of seeing the same photo in a magazine as in a large, glossy-paged book are incomparable – books are simply too powerful.

Of course, here’s the thing.  Books are published rarely, and you may learn of them only briefly in a news blip on Transworld or Thrasher, never to be heard from again – no matter how much toil and struggle it took the author to crank one out.  What follows are a few that you may have missed over the years that are decidedly worth it. Also, remember – yes, they are going to cost more than you might like to spend, but making a book is not cheap, and each often represents a tremendous amount of work on behalf of a fellow skater looking to preserve and celebrate our culture.  That’s well worth our money.

*Note: Before we dive in, let’s clarify first what this list is not.  It is not the only books about skateboarding that are worth reading.  Neither are these ranked in any order – assume that each is as good as the next, just different.  Finally, this is not a “five best” list. Of course, these are some of the best, but there are notable exceptions.  So, if your favorite book or even your book was left out, then just hang tight – hopefully we can do a round 2.

1. No Skateboarding, by Mathias Fennetaux (2011)

Where to buy: keep an eye on eBay (maybe don’t hit up Amazon, where some dude is trying to sell a copy for 860 bucks)

Follow the author: @fnto

So, let’s say you were from Paris, worked at a French skate mag, and your only contact in the U.S. was a friend who worked at a skate shop in San Diego.  Let’s then also say that you had this hairbrained idea, “why not try to meet (and shoot portraits of) all the key figures that shaped and influenced my generation of skateboarders?”  Well, if you’re most of us, you would probably dismiss this idea as kind of stupid because a) you don’t know any of them, b) you live in France, and, oh let’s not forget, c) you don’t actually really even speak English.  Most of us, clearly, are not Mathias Fennetaux.

Stupid be damned.  Mathias spent the next ten years (and his own money and vacation time, it should be mentioned) flying to California, where he cold called the most famous names in skateboarding to see if they would, y’know, mind letting a complete stranger take their portrait.  Since that clearly wasn’t challenging enough, Mathias also decided to shoot the entire project on film – as he says, “no digital, no second chance, no way of checking my negatives”.

What he came up with is incredible – 70 skateboarding icons who agreed.  And, mind you, I don’t use the word “icons” lightly. Ranging from Paul Rodriguez to Heath Kirchart (imagine that photo request) to Julien Stranger to each of the original Bones Brigade members (that’s McGill’s shadow on the cover) – it’s all here.

It should be noted that Mathias shot each photo outside of a studio, and many of the stories that accompany them are perhaps as impressive as the photos themselves.  Sneaking past security with a long-haired Koston to the middle of Hollywood Boulevard, kept free of traffic that night for the Oscars. Fighting his way through throngs of fans surrounding Stevie Williams at ASR to introduce himself (Stevie was down, by the way).  Or my favorite, the impeccable photo of Tom Penny at a cafe in 2004, miraculously the only photo unspoiled by a wayward X-Ray at airport security.

Fennetaux’s book is impressive both as a collection of our heroes and a time capsule of a ten-year period of our history.  However, it is perhaps even more impressive as non-cliche proof of the power of tenacity to achieving our dreams. If Mathias could pull this project together against these odds, then if you set your mind to it, what might you be able to accomplish?

2. LOVE, by Jonathan Rentschler (2017)

Where to buy: Paradigm Publishing

Follow the author: @eurojon

LOVE Park’s story has been told time and time again.  If you’re old enough, then you remember the moments when you realized that you were witnessing something special.  My guess is that even to the younger set, the cultural memory of LOVE Park still looms large.  Rentschler’s book is unconcerned with retelling this story. Rather, as Mark Suciu writes in the introduction, to thumb the pages of LOVE is to “hold the book of a pallbearer” – one carrying the dying embers of one of skateboarding’s most sacred places.

The words stop here, and, over the course of the next 150 pages, Rentschler’s photos document the final days at LOVE.  A testament to the power of black and white photography, the book compellingly draws the story of community of skateboarders defined by their grit and tenacity – a group shoveling snow, a filmer finding an angle atop a resting bulldozer, skaters determinedly pushing past piles of rubble – even when faced with the inevitable end.

In short, the book is both beautiful and beautifully told.  At the end of both the book and the era, perhaps the appropriate lingering image is the chilling juxtaposition of the park before and after the removal of Robert Indiana’s iconic “LOVE” sign, the empty reflection hanging weighty over the plaza.  Maybe it is simply incredible skateboarding, such as (insert skater’s name here)’s kicker assisted nosegrind, perfectly poised atop a chunky planter.  However, I suspect that I will think on the perfectly out-of-focus photo of the crowd of skateboarders in the fountain, huddled together for camaraderie and warmth against the impending darkness, as they drift forever into the night.

3. Made for Skate: The Illustrated History of Skateboard Footwear, by Jurgen Blumlein, Dirk Vogel, and Daniel Schmid (2010)

Where to buy: check the used section on Amazon; this book also pops up on eBay sometimes at an affordable price

Follow the author: @skateboardmuseum

With the wave of shoe nostalgia hitting skateboarding these days, it’s hard not to think that this is a book whose time has arrived.  Even the casual shoe enthusiast will have a hard time not getting giddy over what the guys at Stuttgart, Germany’s Skateboard Museum have put together.

For over 400 pages, Made for Skate traces the development of skateboarding shoes from the ‘50s through the late 2000s – all told from the perspective of skateboarders.  In glorious high-resolution photos and ad scans (back stories included), man, is it all here. The obscure – an ‘80s Steve Van Doren going all in on a failed brand called “Awesome Shoes”.  The iconic – the advent of the eS Koston 1 (with commentary from P-Rod). The unfortunate – who could forget Converse in the ‘90s (Guy was their first rider?!)? The holy-shit-I-forgot-about-that – Jeremy Klein getting ninja kicked in the face for Hook-Ups Shoes ads.  The culture wars – the vegan Sheep shoes vs. the Rocco-backed Duffs.  The long forgotten – Wilson’s skate shoe from the ‘70s (that pretty well resembles an actual tennis ball).  And the just plain unforgettable – Smolik Athletic Gear, anyone?

From Rodney’s personally duct-taped shoes to a Fred Gall pro model, really though, it’s all here.  After all, when a book has a photo of the D3 on the contents page, can there be any doubt that you’ve come to the right place?

4. Heaven, by Dennis McGrath (2015)

Where to buy: eBay, player

Follow the author: dennis_mcgrath

When most folks think of the Alien Workshop, the first thing to come to mind is probably Dill and AVE.  Next, perhaps they think on Kalis or Dyrdek or, maybe, what a masterpiece the entire Photosynthesis video really was.  And while I think on those things as well, my thoughts always turn first to Lennie Kirk. In case you don’t know, Lennie is the guy who held down last part in the Workshop’s second video, Time Code (1997).  For those who do know, it goes without saying that there has never been anyone else like Lennie – both in terms of natural skill and charisma on the board, and, well, that infamous dumpster slam to the head and the subsequent conversion to a fire-and-brimstone breed of Christianity.  Then, of course, there were the arrests that followed – on charges ranging from robbery to domestic violence – all in the name of Jesus. It’s an eerie, sad, and ultimately fascinating tale of natural ability mixed heavily with mental illness.

Dennis McGrath happened to be there for much of it, and after almost 20 years of photos and correspondence with Lennie, he gave us this photobiography.  I admit that I first opened the book with a measure of trepidation. Lennie’s influence on me was real, as I suspect that it was for many of us in the late-90’s set.  After all, it takes no courage to sensationalize, particularly when the story is as tabloid-ready as Lennie’s, but to McGrath’s considerable credit, Heaven is much more.  It never stoops to the simplified tellings of Lennie’s legacy – the cautionary tale, the indictment, the ill-disguised laugh at someone else’s expense.  Composed with decided control of art direction and photography, McGrath’s story is the one that deserves to be passed down in the annals of skateboarding – one told with compassion, as perhaps only a friend could, and somber respect as he acknowledges the troubled legacy of one of our most memorable fallen heroes.

5. Dirt Ollies: A Skateboard Trip to Mongolia (2007)

Where to buy: Amazon, AbeBooks, keep an eye out while there are still a few floating around

Follow the authors: Merkt Basile (design), Scott Bourne (text), Alexander Basile (photo), Bertrand Trichet (photo), Pontus Alv (photo)

I have long been fascinated with Mongolia: beautiful landscape, world’s lowest population density, throat singing, falconry, and, you know, that whole Genghis Khan thing.  The list goes on.  Still, if I’m being realistic, Mongolia probably fits firmly into my would-love-to-go-one-day/probably-never-actually-will category.  Of course, there are those who are far less timid. Enter this crew in 2004.

The premise here is incredible: seeing a photo of a bizarre, behemoth of a skatepark in Ulaanbaatar (capital city of Mongolia), a bunch of guys convinced Carhartt to help foot the bill for a trip to skate it – only to find, after traveling halfway across the world, that the park had been leveled three weeks earlier.  Still, they appear to have had the right attitude: exploring the city, throwing a demo in front of the national parliament building, running a project with a rural school, and wandering the Gobi desert. It’s a mixture of skateboarding, landscapes, and people met along the way in an altogether foreign and less documented part of the world.

The book isn’t perfect (the diary prose was a little heavy handed for my taste, even though I am a serious fan of Bourne’s skating), but the photography is on point, the crew includes some of skateboarding’s well-known eccentrics and cult heroes (Scott Bourne, Kenny Reed [surprise], Pontus Alv, and even a young Chris Pfanner), and the story is archetypal gold – a group of friends headed into the unknown, skateboards in the trunk, to see what adventures they can muster.