Jason Black

Fixed gear fanatic Massan Fluker rides with an angel on his shoulder.

Massan Fluker rides like he’s got a death wish. The 31-year old fixee flyer bombs down steep hills, outmaneuvers city buses and snakes through bumper-to-bumper traffic with ease. It’s clear he’s got a passion for pedaling that sometimes puts him in harms way.

Recently, he put his own life and limb to the test by bombing the treacherous Berkeley Hills. As the story goes, he went up there at the crack of dawn around 6 a.m. and filmed a few establishing shots at the top. Then he and the cameraman set-up the hood-mount and took a few runs to test out his gear.

Captured online for all to see, the final footage of that fateful ride is unbelievable. At one point, Fluker actually climbs up on the seat and sticks his trailing foot off to use as a brake on the back tire: “It was definitely one of the fastest runs I’d ever done,” he recalls of the do-or-die decent. “I’m really grateful that we got it on film because I don’t think I’ll be doing that on a track bike anytime soon. I want to go back on my road bike and see how much more speed I can get.”

Since he’s been riding his whole life, this Bay Area native makes impossible rides like this insane down Centennial look basic. But, as he points out, he first climbed aboard a track bike about 11 years ago. And, from there, he’s never hopped off. “Growing up in San Francisco put me onto track bikes. Once I realized what it was and that it wasn’t so easy to just ‘pick up’, it made me want to get one more. Track bikes are really elegant machines, so I was also attracted to the bike, not just the riding.”

As you’d expect, the Bay Area fixed gear scene has changed greatly over the years. Like most groups, it began as a hardcore bike messenger town and, in recent years, has blossomed into all facets of modern ride culture: hill bombing, distance, freestyle, and beyond. “The entire fixed gear scene has evolved greatly as a whole. More people are riding bikes because more people are exposed to it.”

He adds: “My favorite style of riding is simply ‘riding bikes.’”

Recently, Fluker made the move from his hometown of San Francisco to Brooklyn to ride more and focus on his own photography. Actually, when we spoke, he had just got back from a collaboration art opening of his work with a friend over in Japan. So, in his mind, how do the East Coast and West Coast scenes compare?

“There’s way more people in New York compared to San Francisco. As a result, there’s also way more cyclists in Manhattan. In San Francisco, the community is small but strong. In New York, there are four or five communities in one.”

Strangely enough, when he’s not riding, Fluker enjoys walking around the city and taking it all in. It’s his way to relax and recharge. “A cup of coffee and an Apple iPod with good walking shoes can make for a great day, especially in New York.”

Creatively, he’s inspired by everything around him: the city, photography, movies, and friends. And, of course, he is continually inspired and passionate about expressing himself through riding: “I don’t really think about it that much, but if I were to stop riding, it would be a total change of lifestyle. I’m just used to doing what I’ve been doing. I still love it.”

Life is a wild ride. So what’s it like to ride along with him through the mean streets of the city at midnight? That’s simple.

“I like to lurk.”

You have yours. I have mine. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Fleet Foxes — Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)
2. Bon Iver — Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)
3. Iron & Wine — Kiss Each Other Clean (Warner Bros.)
4. PJ Harvey — Let England Shake (Vagrant)
5. Atlas Sound — Parallax (4AD)
6. Toro Y Moi — Underneath the Pine (Carpark)
7. Radiohead — The King of Limbs (Ticker Tape)
8. Feist — Metals (Polydor)
9. Adele — 21 (XL)
10. The Black Keys — El Camino (Nonesuch)

Scott Caan thrives on pushing boundaries on land and sea.

There’s no denying it. Scott Caan is a charismatic guy. Even now, at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning, his one day a week off from the daily rigors of shooting the second season of Hawaii Five-O, he’s on. Lounging on the lanai of his two-story, Mediterranean-style white stucco house nestled on the slopes of Diamond Head, he’s chatting about wrapping up the eighth and final season of Entourage, the HBO show about making it big in Hollywood.

At 35, Caan should know a thing or two about Hollywood. He’s lived around the entertainment industry his whole life. It’s the family business. Acting is in his blood. And, if you’ve seen him in such notable films as the Ocean’s Trilogy and Gone in Sixty Seconds, you know it’s true. He’s good. Real good.

But, somehow, he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable claiming himself as a bona fide movie star. He refers to “the arts” sarcastically, not pretentiously. And he’s seemingly more at ease with being seen as a regular guy from the neighborhood that can act then a back lot big shot. Beyond acting, he enjoys a variety of personal interests like surfing, skating, bikes and hip-hop, as well as screen writing and photography, which he discovered later on in life.

Growing up in LA, he admits to having tough times at home. It was an unconventional upbringing with mom and dad, Sheila Ryan and James Caan. So, at 13, he ended up connecting with some local kids he looked up to and wanted to emulate. “I hung out with kids that I thought were interesting, and they just happened to be hoodlums, B-boys, criminals, skaters and surfers.”

During his teen years in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, surfing and skating was on the rise. But it wasn’t cool or commercial yet. In fact, it was mainly for kids from broken homes, derelicts and dropouts who wanted to feel like they belonged. Somewhere. Anywhere.

“Back then, it was punk to surf and skate,” affirms Caan. “It was its own little culture. Today, six-year-old girls from [Brentwood] get surfboards for their birthdays. It’s not like it used to be.

“Now, skateboarding is so blown out. Surfing is so blown out. Hip-hop is so blown out. It’s a whole different thing. When I was a kid, those were the kind of things you did when you wanted to be anti-establishment. It was your way of saying, ‘Fuck you.’ And I definitely fell into that category.”

At the time, Caan recalls that dad was not amused. “My dad was an athlete, and I always played sports when I was younger. Then, when I started surfing, skating, and dancing, my dad was like, ‘What are you doing? You don’t skateboard, there’s no team. You don’t surf, there’s no team. You guys just hang out on the beach.’”

But Caan remembers being instantly drawn to it. He felt like he’d found something that suited him. It was his. “I think that it was a combination of being a kid and the people I looked up to, and the people I wanted to be like. I was always an athlete, so I felt like that was the way to go. Also, I wanted to skate and surf, because it was something you did your own way. It was creative self-expression. There are no stats in surfing and skating.”

Even though he didn’t understand it, Caan is quick to point out that his dad always tried to be supportive of his son’s alternative interests. “My dad, from when I was a kid, was always like, ‘If you’re going to do something, be fucking good at it. Get after it.’”

And, over the course of his life, that’s exactly what Caan’s done. In the process, he’s taken risks, pushed his own limits and tackled new challenges. He admits to continually staying busy in order to keep himself sane. He hates being bored.

“I hate simple, the same shit every day. I can’t imagine how I ended up on a T.V. show. You know? Talk about repetitive.”

Early on, one thing Caan discovered he had a passion for was rapping alongside Alan Maman (aka The Alchemist). The boys met and hung out even though they went to different schools. Caan was also friends with Maman’s older brother. They all had similar interests in graffiti writing and B-boying. So Caan and Maman got together one day and hatched a plan. “When I met Alan, I was like, ‘Fuck man, let’s try to make a group.’ He said, ‘All right, let’s try it.’”

So they started writing rhymes together. After a bit, they felt like they had a routine and were ready to cut a demo. Through a mutual friend, Mike Perretta, better known as Evidence from Dilated Peoples, the guys hooked up with a producer willing to help them out, Quincy Jones Jr. Caan and Maman worked tirelessly with him at his studio, ultimately polishing up their demo, and Jones Jr. started shopping it around.

After a chance meeting, Ice Cube was interested and wanted to sign the guys to his label. “I’m in ninth grade and I’m sitting in Ice Cube’s office, and [NWA’s] first album, Straight Outta Compton, was my bible. I was like, ‘This is the fucking coolest thing ever.’” But Caan also remembers that things didn’t quite go according to plan.

The two met with Ice Cube about the possibility of working together. Caan was ecstatic. But Maman wasn’t convinced. “Then I remember Alan said, ‘I don’t like this shit. I’m not a hood. I’m from Beverly Hills. You’re going to put me in a hoodie and have me talk about 40 ounces and shit. That ain’t me.’ I was like, ‘Well, who gives a fuck what we’re doing. Let’s go.’ But Alan talked me out of it.”

He was like, ‘No, man. Come on, let’s keep it real.’ And I’m like, ‘Fuck, ok, let’s keep it real.’”

But their luck turned when they coincidentally met B-Real from Cypress Hill. Instantly, the guys hit it off. They had a lot in common and knew a bunch of the same Venice locals. It felt right. And most importantly, B-Real insisted that they maintain their own identity. The Whooliganz, as they were known, were on their way. “Next thing I know, I’m 16 and on tour with Cypress Hill and House of Pain,” says Caan. “It’s still the best time of my life. They were like family. They took care of us.”

While they were over in Europe as roadies, they were slated to perform their first debut single, “Put Your Handz Up” on a talk show in London called “The Word.” Caan describes it as the English version of David Letterman. But the label wanted them to change up their sound to be less like late-’80s hip-hop and more like early ‘90s house music that was emerging at the time. Instead, the guys ditched the show and went to Amsterdam for the weekend. “On Thursday night, we got on a flight to Amsterdam, and didn’t even tell anybody. We just bounced. Alan, Seth Binzer, the lead singer of Crazy Town and I went and just wild out for four days, flew straight home, and when we got home they were like, ‘You’ve been dropped from your record label.’”

That was that. Finished. Finito. From there, Maman opted to plunge behind the scenes and pursue his interest in making beats. He’s gone on to become an accomplished hip-hop producer in his own right, working with the likes of Nas, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Ghostface Killah and Snoop Dogg. He’s also continued to support old friends producing for Dilated Peoples, Cypress Hill, Everlast (formerly of House of Pain) and even Crazy Town. Currently, he’s signed to Shady Records and working with Eminem as his DJ.

For his part, Caan had no idea what to do next until he got a call — pure luck — about a movie audition for 1995’s A Boy Called Hate. At the time, he had no desire to give up on his lofty hip-hop dreams. But fate had other ideas, and this part was too intriguing to pass up. The story centers on a kid who gets out of juvenile hall and shoots somebody. He goes on a road trip on his motorcycle with a girl, runs away from the law, and ends up saving her from being raped.

Caan decided to go for it. “Fuck it, I’m James Dean,” he says.

He auditioned a couple of times and finally got the part, beating out a teenage Joaquin Phoenix. While on set, he had an epiphany. “When I was on that movie, I didn’t know if I wanted to be an actor, the guy holding a light, if I wanted to push the dolly, if I wanted to shoot or if I wanted to write it. I was just like, ‘This is home. Whatever this is, whoever these people are, this group of misfits, from the grips to the writers.’ They seemed like my kind of people. I knew that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

From the start, he was hooked on the creative process of filmmaking. “I was really into this mix of humans to make one thing. Everybody’s doing something different to make this one thing, and the whole process, I really fell for that big time. I was like, ‘Oh, ok, this is it.’ I still don’t know what the fuck I want to do, but I know I’m in the right world.”

Immediately upon wrapping the movie, he signed up with Playhouse West, a theatre group in North Hollywood that Caan’s mom had studied at years earlier. He wanted to explore what acting was all about. And he wanted to make sure he learned it the right way. His father’s advice about “getting after it” was ringing in his ears.

While there, he wrote small scenes for himself and others using a pencil and paper. Finally, on the urging of a friend, he decided to buy a computer and capture a few. Caan and his acting buddies ran some of these homespun scenes by Robert Carnegie, the lead acting coach and mentor of Playhouse West. He liked what he heard and urged Caan to keep going: “Write more.”

“So I started writing plays,” says Caan, excited and inspired. “Every Thursday, my mission — there are a bunch of classes at Playhouse West, but Thursday night was the elite class, where you were if you had been there for a couple years, and you hadn’t gotten kicked out, or you hadn’t cried too many times because you were abused, Thursday night was ‘the space.’ It was a lot of good people like Val [Lauren], James Franco, Ashley Judd, Mark Pellegrino, and I. It was a really good group of actors. Every Thursday night, you showed up to battle, and ‘Who’s going to kill it tonight?’ So, my goal was to write something for every Thursday night. I would piece it together, and then we started putting up plays.”

Sparked by this experience, Caan was hungry to expand their weekend audience from 150 each night with Friday, Saturday and Sunday performances to 150,000. The only way to do that, he reasoned, was to write a movie.

So he fired up his laptop and got to work. During that period, he banged out a couple of scripts. Some of them sold. Some of them didn’t. But one stood out. It was the script that became 2003’s Dallas 362. It was a movie Caan wrote in only three weeks but he contends was a big turning point for him. It had to be. It was a movie he wrote, starred and even made his directorial debut in. He was in total control from the start.

“I thought, ‘Fuck, if I’m going to make a movie, and I’m going to be the director, I want to write it in a way that I know it’s not going to drive me crazy, and I’ll be able to do it all.’ So I literally wrote this script in 20 days. I was like, ‘Here it is.’ And the producer, who had seen one of my plays and read a few of my scripts said, ‘Let’s go.’ He had already raised the million dollars to make it. I couldn’t have been more confident in my life, because I wrote it knowing that I was going to have to shoot it. I knew every shot. I was so prepared.”

Due to past movie-making experiences, he also knew exactly what kind of director he wanted to be; the kind that knew what they were doing. “I had been in a lot of movies, and I noticed the best directors were the ones that would walk into a room and go, ‘All right. This is what we’re doing.’ Then I saw other directors that would come and bite their nails and go, ‘Ok, what do you think? What should we do here?’ I decided, ‘Those guys suck, and these guys don’t.’ I knew exactly what every frame of this movie was supposed to be.”

“If someone asked me a question, I was like, ‘This, this, and this.’ The producers were like, ‘Wow, man, you’re going to be a great director.’ I hadn’t even done anything. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to be a good director one day. It just meant that I was on top of my shit.”

“Still, that movie specifically, there’s a ton of stuff I would have done differently, but I’m super proud of it. I’m super proud of doing everything, and it gave me the confidence to be able to say, ‘Oh, I can totally do this.’ I think that’s a huge thing. I think there are so many people that are talented, but there is part of them that says, ‘You can’t do that.’ The most successful people have a combination of things, and obviously, talent is one of them. But a huge part of it is the confidence to go, ‘Ok, I can do this.’”

Talent is golden. But confidence is king. In that respect, Caan admires another ‘80s rapper who’s transformed himself into a credible actor, a producer and now, a big time show runner: Mark Wahlberg. They worked together on Entourage. “He’s a good actor. But look at what he’s done. He’s not Lawrence Olivier, but the dude is like, ‘I can do anything. I can produce this. I can make these shows. I can put these people together. Yes, I’m an actor, and I can show up and hold the gun, and everybody’s impressed by me.’ But he’s a smart dude who says, ‘I can do this, this, and this. Don’t dare me that I can’t make a billion dollars next year. I’ll rap. I’ll be an underwear model. I don’t give a shit.’”

He also has similar praise for another well-known colleague who Caan collaborated with on Ocean’s. “Look at George Clooney, too. He’s a talented dude, but he’s also like, ‘What can’t I do? I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.’ I guarantee that there are a lot of people out there who can do that as well, but a big thing is being able to say, ‘No. I envision this for myself, and I can really do this, that, and the other.’”

Caan admires their bravado and seems well on his way to emulating their example with his own string of upcoming projects in the development pipeline. He hints that one is teaming up with his dad.

His accomplishments on Dallas gave Caan the confidence to branch out and test himself creatively. After the movie wrapped, he discovered that he had a passion for photography. It all came about through working with Phil Parmet, his director of photography. During the movie the two became friends and Parmet taught Caan how to handle a camera.

“I’d gotten a camera that year as a gift,” remembers Caan. “He said, ‘I used to shoot with this camera.’ So he taught me about shutter speeds, f-stops, composition, and why he shoots the way he shoots. The preparation for that movie was like school for me. By the time the movie started shooting, in that two-month period, I went from not even wanting to pay attention to cameras, to, ‘Phil, I think, can we be here instead?’ He would smile, and he saw that I’d gotten the bug.”

Smiling, Caan recalls becoming totally obsessed with clicking away and capturing the moment. “I was shooting and shooting. I was taking more pictures than anything else. I wanted to travel to shoot photos. Someone said, ‘Let’s have a birthday party for you this year.’ I’m like, ‘All right, well, I’m going to show some of these photos that I shot.’”

And that’s exactly what he did. In 2004, he did a one-man show for his birthday at his friend’s menswear store called Kingsbury in LA. For his debut, he only showed ten prints. But a few of them sold and that inspired him to keep shooting. Next year, he returned with 20 prints. He did it for five years in a row. Shoot. Print. Show. Repeat. His goal, every year, was to come up with a bigger and better show of new photographs. Finally, in 2009, he collected his best images together in a coffee table book called Scott Caan Photographs Vol. 1.

“The last party I had was the book opening on my birthday,” he says proudly. “I haven’t really shot any photos in about a year and a half, but it’s because I’m on this show.”

The secret to his obsession with photography lies in its purity and its permanence. “To me, photography is one of my favorite things because I don’t give a shit about what it’s supposed to look like. When you write something, 30 people are going to give you their opinions, and then you have to rewrite it. You direct something and everybody has an opinion. You produce something, it’s even worse. As an actor, you have a director telling you how to do it. Me, and that thing [the camera], we’re just out there doing it. If I see a photo, and I like the way it looks, I’m going to print it.

“Then, of course, someone goes, ‘Oh, I like this one. I don’t like this one.’ But they don’t change. You can’t change a photo. It’s like, ‘That’s what I took. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry.’”

Then the conversation swerves toward motorcycles, a love affair Caan’s had since his rebellious teenage years riding dirt bikes. And let’s face it. Who doesn’t love to look cool like James Dean or Paul Newman blazing down the highway? “If I really loved bikes, then I should get a Ducati and do 120 around turns. But I like doing a burnout with a suicide shift and doing beelines through traffic because it makes me feel like I’m Dallas from The Outsiders. Those are just the kind of people I looked up to.”

At the moment, Caan’s cherished 1960 Panhead, a bike he’s had for six years, is in the shop. Another buddy from high school, Yaniv Evan from Powerplant Choppers, is working on it and fixing his brakes.

Chuckling, Caan launches into the ongoing repair saga that is this bike. “I called him up, ‘Yaniv, this back brake doesn’t work.’ The front brake is irrelevant. It’s a suicide shift with a back brake that’s not working. ‘It’s a death trap.’

“He said, ‘Well, what do you mean they don’t work?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m telling you, the rear brake does not work.’ He said, ‘All right.’ So, I drive the bike over to him.

Then I get a phone call that night at 1 a.m. ‘What’s up, dude?’ He said, ‘I’m in the hospital.’ ‘What happened?’ I said. ‘I crashed your bike. The fucking brakes don’t work.’

“But he wasn’t kidding,” Caan says, pausing for comedic effect. “It was as if he was giving me new information that I didn’t know about.”

Like his passion for vintage bikes, Caan also has the same fascination with surfing. He enjoys riding all kinds of exotic, one-of-a-kind boards. Sometimes, it’s just to get a reaction in the water. “I ride Alaia, and weird boards all the time. I love the feeling, but I also love people going, ‘Holy shit. He’s riding a piece of wood.’ There’s something about the show-off side of surfing and skating. It’s not as fun if someone didn’t see you do it.”


Later, we round up the troops, including his girlfriend, grab some surfboards from his storage unit in the garage, and walk a few blocks down to the beach. On the way to Tongs, a local surf break, a car driving by slows to a crawl, obviously recognizing the actor. A camera pops out on the driver’s side and starts taking photos while the passenger yells out, “We love you, man.”

“Thanks,” says Caan, turning around. He graciously stops on the sidewalk and poses for a few candid shots with his Alaia, a traditional Hawaiian wooden surfboard in one hand and a casual shaka in the other. He’s polite, giving them a story and a memory to share with friends and neighbors. After a minute or so, he walks on.

“You’re one of us,” gushes the guy from the car, encouraged by Caan’s graciousness. He’s referring to the fact that because of the show, locals here on the islands have claimed Caan as one of their own. He’s now a member of the ohana in the same way original Five-0 actors Jack Lord and James MacArthur were before him.

“God bless,” Caan calls back as the car speeds off. He hangs a left down the public access alleyway towards the surf. At the end, he jumps into the water and paddles out toward the outer reef break and the clear blue horizon.

Geoff McFetridge and Yong-Ki Chang create skate dreams with Solitary Arts.

Suite 203: The square, brushed-metal sign on the door says, “Solitary Arts.” This must be the place.

Stepping inside S.A. HQ is like entering a skateboarder’s Fortress of Solitude. Colorful boards hang in a row on the whitewashed wall. Piles of black and white printed T-shirts, Solitary Arts logo stickers and boatloads of skateboard memorabilia are strewn about. In the back, there’s a small workshop for building boards and filling incoming orders. It also serves as a chill, well-lit space where Yong-Ki Chang, one half of S.A.’s dynamic duo, dreams up new designs and tests out new shapes.

After coming back from a regular morning session at Pacifica Skatepark, he’s sitting quietly at his computer banging out emails while music plays in the background. He’s in the midst of making arrangements for S.A. to join an upcoming artist showcase in Los Angeles. Pulling away from pressing biz, we dive into the formation of the brand.

In 2005, Chang was inspired by a T-shirt graphic by artist Geoff McFetridge, which boasted the words “The Solitary Arts.” It was an idea McFetridge had created in 2000 as a poster for an art show, a concept derived from the amount of time he was spending drawing and creating as well as the things he did for fun: surfing, skating and bike riding.

Inspired by this artwork, Chang decided to build an entire skate brand around this concept of “solo creation,” so he sat down and developed a business plan. He also designed his first board, Big Red, inspired by a red, plastic ’70s-style cruiser he bought right out of someone’s garage. Finally, with plan in hand and a strong sense of purpose, he reached out to the artist to get his blessing. Later, the two pow-wowed in LA.

“In the beginning, I wanted to get Geoff’s approval on what I was doing,” recalls Chang. “It was important for me to get his OK. To my surprise, instead of just saying ‘Yeah man, go for it,’ he wanted to create a partnership and do it together.”

Fortuitously enough, McFetridge had been itching to start his own skate brand. “So we started talking and Yong-Ki had good ideas. He also knew everything about board design, and the business aspects of running a skate company that I had no clue about. It was a good fit.”

From the start, it was a genuine partnership. Chang, in San Francisco, handled all the product sourcing and day-to-day business while McFetridge, in LA, handled all the graphics.

For the newly born company, the first task on their to-do list was to develop a logo. This is always a daunting endeavor, but especially within skateboarding brands where there are a multitude of classics: the Independent Trucks’ cross and the Girl Skateboards’ feminine symbol, to name a few. They designed and piloted many, but only one made the final cut: the waning moon.

“That logo really stuck,” opines McFetridge. “My friend calls it ‘moon and pizza,’ which I think is great. Actually, it’s a moon with a little armless character on his chin. The logo felt quiet and dreamlike. The little guy is night surfing, riding on the moon. It’s very graphic while maintaining an ethereal quality.”

Chang wholeheartedly agrees: “I make stickers of everything we do. Stickers are a huge part of skateboarding and a perfect test for any artwork. And, in everything we were doing, the waning moon continually rose to the top.”

“Solitary Arts is about re-thinking skateboarding,” continues McFetridge. “We don’t want to be outsiders really to skateboarding, but maybe we are like when skateboarding dreams. If skating is the day, then we are the night.”

He’s right. Through its logo and the vibe of the brand as a whole, Solitary Arts has a certain whimsical, dreamlike air to it reminiscent of popular children’s nighttime stories like Goodnight Moon or Where the Wild Things Are. And it’s all by design, perhaps because 40-year-old McFetridge, who has been skating since he was 13, has kids.
So how did the concept behind the brand come about?

“As an artist, you have to self-critique. I’m always trying to gain perspective on what I am doing. For S.A., I just applied this technique to looking at skateboarding. The surprising thing is that I didn’t see anyone else looking at things in this same way.”

Instead of focusing on the technical side of skateboarding, where you can easily get consumed by progression and endlessly learning trick after trick (otherwise, you’re not participating in real skateboarding), the S.A. brand is content with gliding and carving down the street. McFetridge’s mantra is simple: “Sliding over concrete is AMAZING.” This stylish perspective is counter-intuitive to the “all lip, no flat bottom” way that modern skateboarding is seen today. “But what about everything else?” he asks.

In essence, S.A. is a re-exploration of the ’70s sidewalk-surfing roots of skateboarding. And that’s just the way the guys like it.

Now, with logo in hand and a few years of experience under their belts, they have an entire product line in their arsenal, including boards, wheels, T-shirts and, of course, plenty of stickers. Alongside the original Big Red are two more freewheelin’ models: the mini-cruiser Pocket Horn and the longer, pointy-nosed Piano Pinner. Along the way, S.A. has even done a few board collaborations with Girl and Undefeated. But Chang remains ever-vigilant and super protective of the brand he’s built alongside McFetridge. There won’t be a full-sized street model anytime soon.

“It’s all about maintaining a niche market. We’re dedicated to producing a quality, handmade board, and everything we do is made right here in California. We’re proud of that. For most, a skateboard is the only piece of commercial art they can afford, so we try to make it worthwhile.”

The ongoing, dreamlike, sidewalk-surfing art project that is Solitary Arts is also a good way for McFetridge to simplify and then amplify his ideas through basic black and white graphics. And, like skateboarding, the ideas just flow.

“The ideas behind S.A. are so clear to me that I draw things all the time that just scream out S.A. They just sort of leak out. Because, really, when I talk about S.A., I’m really talking about creativity, and much of my work has been always been about creativity. To me, creativity and skateboarding are interchangeable. I guess that’s a central idea of S.A.”

Chang concurs: “I think it’s been good to harness Geoff’s work in skateboarding while, at the same time, it gives him a real commercial outlet. For many fans, it’s their entryway into his work.”

Through his studio, Champion Graphics, McFetridge has maintained a successful career as a commercial artist working on notable brands like Nike, Pepsi, MTV, Stussy, Chocolate Skateboards, Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records and many others. At the moment, he’s even doing some work for Bushmill’s Whiskey. But his S.A. graphics will always be his most pure and personal work, closest to his heart.

The next stage in the brand’s evolution is sponsoring team riders and developing prototype models for them. And, in classic S.A. fashion, instead of promoting a few young guns, Chang and McFetridge opted to pick up two experienced pros who are in their 40s: Jef Hartsel from Honolulu, Hawaii and Venice Beach, California, and Bob Lake from Virgina Beach, Virginia. As McFetridge explains, it’s been a real creative challenge to create graphics for these skateboarding icons.

“Everything sort of goes out the window when you are dealing with guys like that. It is hard to do work that lives up to the depth of an individual. And those are some exceptional dudes.”

So far, Chang is stoked with the results. “I think it’s important to push people, even Geoff,” he says. “It’s always the best way to get great work.”

Looking to the future, the guys will keep stretching, pushing themselves, the brand and skateboarding as a whole, in new directions. Fulfilling their dreams.

“I’m an idealistic person,” says McFetridge. “I’m always trying to make my life better and part of that is making my art and my life one. On the flip side, inevitably, as my life changes, my art changes too.”

And Solitary Arts rolls on.

Greg “Pnut” Galinsky’s boundless creative energy keeps going. And going. And going.

Greg Galinsky is a total blur as he moves around his subterranean basement studio in San Francisco’s Lower Haight district. He’s gabbing on the phone, signing his “Pnut” moniker to a few small pieces and gesturing for me to grab a seat, all in one fluid motion. He can’t stand still, constantly swirling around his tight, dark, bomb shelter-like space as if he’s a possessed Energizer bunny with a Cheshire Cat smile stretched across his face.

Once my eyes adjust to the lone light bulb flickering in the ceiling, I’m not surprised to find artwork close by. Actually, it’s everywhere. There’s a large, square, muted blue and white canvas piece pinned up on the wall. It looks done, although he contends he’s still toying with it. Always adding to. Always subtracting from. There’s also a blood-red Cuba-inspired windowpane on another wall from a past exhibit, complete with Latin religious candles, an empty Maker’s Mark bottle and plastic beads. There are pieces with tropical ocean motifs like wide-eyed tiki-heads, swaying palm trees and rolling ocean waves strewn about. And, lined up along the floor like soldiers, are stacks and stacks of more found windows. Each one offers up a different painted musical instrument: a trumpet, a drum and a guitar from a recent series he did.

Out in the warm sunlight of a rare clear-blue August day in the City, we stroll down the street to a café, grab a cup of coffee and dive headlong into the past.

“Skating is all about style and I’ve tried to bring that vibe into my work and into the art world,” he says while slurping his murk and sucking down heaters.

That’s not surprising when you consider that Galinsky was born in Santa Monica, California and raised in Venice by his Burmese mom and Lithuanian dad. At that time during the mid-’70s, it was ground zero for classic Dogtown and Z-Boys riders like Tony Alva, Stacey Peralta, Jay Adams and the rest of the Zephyr crew. Those guys, and their pioneering hardcore skate style, influenced him from day one.

“Growing up, we wore Levi’s, Vans and a crisp white t-shirt like it was a uniform,” he recalls. “That’s just what you wore.” It’s a look (and an aesthetic) he still swears by today.

Yet even before he joined up with the Dogtown gang to carve up empty kidney pools all over the Westside, his original inspiration to skate and create came from his parents. Early on, his dad shared his love of surfing, skating and photography while his mom shared her love of clothes thanks to a longtime career in high-end fashion. As he’s fond of saying: “Dad taught me about self-expression. Mom taught me about fashion.”

Then, at 6 years old, right around the time his dad picked out his first skateboard at the Zephr Skate Shop in Santa Monica, Galinsky started drawing. And drawing. And drawing. As he recalls, he didn’t really want to do anything else. Obviously, along the way, he was heavily influenced by the things he loved most in the world like skateboarding, surfing and living near the Pacific Ocean. Like his father, self-expression was certainly coursing through in his blood.

At 19, Galinsky entered Otis Parson School of Design to begin his formal artistic training. But he ended up leaving just three months later to pursue his dream of creating art and manufacturing his own signature clothing line.

After moving up to San Francisco in the early ’90s to focus on his craft and furthering his own creative endeavors, Galinsky launched Junkies, a streetwear collection he produced with WSTRNCV’s Imani Lanier. Named after junk yards and junk collecting, not for William S. Burroughs-style heroin-chic drug addicts, the initial response to Junkies was positive and the orders poured in. Unfortunately, after a few successful seasons, it faltered. Speaking about cutting his teeth during that early part of his career, Galinsky has some fond memories: “I felt like this was a perfect place to live and work and be creative. There were so many talented people here in the City doing cool shit and I just wanted to be a part of it.”

In the aftermath of Junkies, Galinsky redoubled his efforts to develop his own fluid style of artwork, and he’s been churning out quality ever since. From skating, he learned to “always be practicing so you can develop your own style.” It’s what continually drives him forward.

And it shows. You can see Galinsky’s playful, energetic personality coming through in his work. Over the years, he’s mastered a number of different mediums including paintings on canvas, large-scale murals, product collaborations, textiles and applications on industrial design. But, strangely enough, his most unusual (and awesome) canvas to date was painting a Playboy playmate for a magazine editorial shoot. “Women have beautiful lines,” he contends with a sly glance.

Along the way, he’s collaborated with a host of quality action-sports brands that understand and appreciate his unique laid-back, skate-centric West Coast point-of-view, including Alva, Levi’s, Vans, O’Neill Surfboards, Stussy, Volcom, FTC Skateboards and Western Edition Skateboards. And he’s always stoked to work with everyone.

In addition to his ample surfing and skating roots that admittedly are “a huge inspiration” to him, Galinksy also draws on more established artistic movement touchstones in his work. They include mid-’50s Blue Note album cover artwork designed by artist Reid Miles (who was in turn influenced by the Bauhaus school of design) and the cubist master himself, Pablo Picasso, whose work taught him that you can always “paint outside the lines.”

And he often does exactly that, playing with the positive and negative elements of his creations like the back and forth surging for speed in a skate-able pool. You can clearly see this interplay of artistic styles throughout Galinsky’s work. When asked about his fascination with taking warm primary colors like blue and green and transforming them into his preferred muted palette of turquoise, aquamarine, teal, sea green, asparagus and pine, he responds, “Well, I love gazing out at the ocean and reproducing those distinctive colors in the studio,” he says. “Plus, I’m colorblind. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between black, brown and blue.”

Craziness. But colorblind be damned, there’s no stopping Galinksy and his unabashed love of color theory. Next up for him are a bunch of shows: one a private installation alongside skate legend Steve Caballero here in the City, and another a hip-and-cool one-man show at The Camp in Costa Mesa, CA.

Ultimately, Galinksy remains humble and super grateful to be where he’s at, doing exactly what he loves most in life and making a real living doing it. What more could an old-school skate kid from Venice ask for?

“Always believe in yourself and never give up,” he says, blowing smoke rings while polishing off his java. “Just do what you love and the rest will come.”

David Watkins breathes new life into vintage style with Goodbye Heart.

“I think guys love to collect,” opines vintage menswear purveyor David Watkins, speaking from his San Francisco-based showroom studio. “When I was a kid I had a rock collection, a stamp collection and a baseball card collection to name a few. As my interests changed, so did my collecting habits. Now I’m proud to say that I have a collection of rare vintage clothing.”
    Goodbye Heart is just that, a rare vintage collection love child of Watkins and his wife Amanda Hughes-Watkins that specializes in rare leather garments, vintage designer suiting and of-the-moment vintage silhouettes. Together, they pride themselves in showcasing signature items including ’60s and ’70s boutique leather jackets like East West Musical Instruments pieces, various handcrafted leather items, oversized bags and ’70s rock ’n’ roll t-shirts. Clearly, Watkins’ desire to collect heritage drives him and it’s a labor of love that started back in the late ’90s while he was attending Chico State in Northern California.
    “I noticed that Levi’s jeans and vintage t-shirts were selling for crazy prices,” he recalls. “So I started hunting them down and selling them as a part time job. When I graduated, I moved down to San Francisco and jumped into it full-time. Around that time, the market was changing and inventory was getting more difficult to find. I had to start branching out.
    When I first met my wife in 2004, she helped open my eyes to a broader spectrum of vintage, introducing me to classic vintage designer pieces to look for, and inspired me to expand my personal aesthetic.”
    And, from there, Goodbye Heart was born in 2008. Today, the majority of their business is by private appointment but you can also browse their beguiling wares online. Yet, this leads to the obvious question, what are you looking for when you’re out hunting? Go on. Spill it. “I’m always looking for unique pieces. My personal aesthetic tends to lean towards vintage Americana, rock ’n’ roll, custom leather pieces, oversized canvas and leather bags, pre-’70s denim, motorcycle related items, one-of-a-kind pieces and anything with unusual wear.”
    As you’d imagine, he’s unearthed many memorable treasures over the years. A few big finds stand out. The first being six pairs of Levi’s jeans from the early 1930s through WWII. They were all reclaimed from the same owner with amazing wear from years of use out on a ranch. Also, in the last year, he purchased a huge lot of dead stock boots, jeans, pants and shirts from a long shuttered work wear store that had opened in the early 1930s.
    But there’s one beloved item that especially stands out in his memory. And it involves the courtship of his wife. “I remember an East West Musical Instruments leather jacket I found in my wife’s closet when we were first dating. She was putting together a pile of stuff to sell and tossed it into the pile. I told her I could easily sell it and she’d have plenty of money for something else. She agreed and it sold in 24 hours. Instead of getting something for herself, she surprised me and used the money to fly us to Europe. We had only been dating a few weeks at the time and that’s when I knew she was a keeper. And now we’re married with a beautiful three year-old daughter named Luella. So that’s definitely my all-time best find.”
    When he speaks about the thrill of the hunt, you can sense Watkins’ eyes light up. He loves it. And this passion for collecting drives him to roam to all sorts of out-of-the-way, untouched barns in West Coast towns like Yuba City, Grass Valley, Palm Springs, Novato, Portland, and a few others that no one’s ever heard of. Upon arrival, he connects with random strangers, digs for cool stuff and relishes the adventure every step of the way. “What keeps me going is that every day is something new. Everyday is its own treasure hunt. I’ve been doing it long enough that sometimes I’ll get a sense that I’m going to find something that day, something unusual, and I actually do. It’s amazing. And I do a lot of hunting for other people too. Many of my clients have a hit list of what they’re looking for and it’s a cool challenge for me to find them all.”
    Clientele-wise, Goodbye Heart mostly caters to the Japanese market, vintage shop owners who have an incredible appreciation for Americana. He concedes that without their undying support it would be a very different business. But, over the years, he’s also built some lasting relationships with designers of major retail brands, stylists and collectors. Apparently, one-of-a-kind never goes out of style. “Our customers are guys who know that if they’re looking for something that no one else has we probably have it. They enjoy the history, the detailing, and the quality of a genuine vintage piece. If you’re wearing something of ours, chances are you aren’t going to run into someone else wearing that same piece.”
    Here he makes an important distinction between vintage wear and items with historical significance. He considers anything pre-1970s as vintage. On the other hand, items with historical significance can be anything from a baseball uniform worn by Willie Mays to a leather jacket worn by Amelia Earhart. And, of course, inspirational design pieces can span both of these categories potentially. As he explains, it all depends on the eye of the beholder, the modern designer. Watkins also acknowledges that current designers are influenced by vintage all the time. It’s their stock in trade for collection inspiration. Over the past few years, he’s noticed that plenty of famous designers including Tom Ford, Levi’s, Balenciaga, and most recently, Miu Miu have mined inspiration from the past by copying a classic East West Leather Instruments jacket. “It’s so funny because I sell the originals,” he says.
    Personally, Watkins is most inspired to share his very specific style aesthetic with others, one that’s defined by quality and collectability. Case in point is his most recent acquisition. “I recently purchased a late 1800s-early 1900s work shirt that’s completely shredded, dirty and completely unwearable. It’s quite possibly the only one in existence and that’s what gives it its value. A modern designer could be inspired by the wear, the cut, the label, the color of the shirt and so on.”
    So what would you consider to be the holy grail of vintage? “For me, the holy grail would have to be a pre-1900s pair of Levi’s jeans. Finding a pair of pre-1950s jeans out in the wild is becoming rarer everyday, and with each decade you go back to, it’s exponentially more difficult to find. Before the ’50s, jeans weren’t a part of fashion. They were purely functional, worn and repaired until they were beyond repair, and then they were thrown out or burned in a trash bin.”
    Currently, Watkins’ must-find summer hit list includes authentic work wear and boots in addition to the usual signature items that gave Goodbye Heart its avid following. “Right now, I’m looking for large leather and canvas bags, backpacks, mountaineering and engineer boots, things that can be worn on a hike in the hills or in the city.
    Year round, I’m always looking for East West leather pieces, vintage motorcycle wear, and pre-1970s denim. I’m also a big fan of outerwear. I always buy that year round as well and put it away until the fall.”
    Smart move. Looking forward to this year’s fall season and beyond, Watkins believes that vintage work wear as a trend will remain strong. He explains: “I see British vintage pieces becoming more collectible and inspirational, especially Belstaff, Lewis Leathers and Barbour. Beyond 2011, it’s hard to say. I think classic vintage from heritage brands will always be collectible such as Levi’s, LL Bean, Filson, and the like. Dead stock pieces are getting harder and harder to find so I only see those becoming more collectible and valuable over time.”

Over the past few years, Watkins has been toying with the idea of opening his own retail store in San Francisco. They’re just holding out for the ideal perfect spot. In the near future, they’re also planning a cross-country shopping adventure because what’s more truly Americana than an old fashioned road-trip.
    No matter what the future holds for Watkins, his family and Goodbye Heart, he’s humbly excited by the possibilities of what’s waiting for him out there on the horizon. “I’m always looking for the next big score and I hope that I continue to be lucky, constantly evolving and learning something new every day. I’ve enjoyed the freedom that this path has afforded me and I’m lucky to have a very supportive wife and daughter who enjoy treasure hunting with me.”
    Happy hunting.

Capistrano Beach’s Gato Heroi crafts quality boards that stand the test of time.

“We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication — a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.” —Ken Garland, First Things First Manifesto, 1964

Robin G. Kegel, the founder and patron saint of enigmatic Southern California surf brand Gato Heroi, is a relic, an artist creating wave-riding masterpieces in the wrong era. He loves Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” on vinyl. He adores clean mid-century modern furniture and graphic design. By rights, he should have been living and working and surfing in the ’50s and ’60s. But he’s not.

Instead, he’s doing it here and now.

As an insane surfer and in-demand longboard shaper, the lanky, dirty-blond twenty-eight year old traverses the globe and shapes custom boards in between marathon sessions in France, Japan, Italy, Morocco and Australia. He has a select clientele that’s grown up with him. They know his distinct mark of quality and craftsmanship and are willing to pay the price for it. And they want Robbie to shape them one of his limited-edition boards with intriguing monikers like Smooth Operator, Slave for Soup, Daily Driver and Gremlin.

And the reason is plain and simple: Robbie is a surfboard-shaping genius. Just don’t be surprised to find fresh wax on your custom, newly finished Gato Heroi from the shaper himself test-driving it for “reference.” Odds are, he’s ridden it.

“Basically, my surfboards are designed for on top of the water and trying to plane on the surface of the water as much as possible,” says Larry White, Gato’s general manager and one of Robbie’s closest confidants. “Robbie’s boards are completely counterintuitive to the way I do it. His boards have virtually no flat surfaces whatsoever. It’s concave and rounded all over in various dimensions. It’s curved from nose to tail. His designs are more like a porpoise. When a porpoise rides a wave, it’s using the energy in the water to propel forward. It’s the wave form itself, whereas my boards are sitting on top of that form and not being integrated into it. It’s really caused me to think a lot about how surfboards work.”

Since 2007, Gato Heroi’s retro-modern point of view has caused quite a stir in the industry. Even the name itself is inspired retro, chosen for Robbie’s unabashed love of a few famous cats: Mickey “Da Cat” Dora, the iconic ’60s Malibu surfer, and Leonardo “Gato” Berieri, the Argentinean-born ’60s tenor sax player. “Heroi” means “hero,” so it became “Cat Hero” in Portuguese.

The company philosophy is simple: Handmade products. Limited production. High-quality materials. “We don’t mass-produce anything,” laughs White. “If you want a T-shirt that we made last year, somebody else is probably making it now.”

As for Robbie’s designs, they also draw inspiration from an era gone by. White recalls the first time he met with Robbie to work on web design for Gato’s previous incarnation, Crème, in 2005. He drove over to Robbie’s place on Sepulveda in Capistrano Beach, opened the door, and instantly stepped back in time. The apartment was laid out with mint-condition ’50s modern furniture, and cool jazz was playing on the hi-fi stereo. The two went into his office area and Robbie said, “This is the kind of stuff I like,” and handed White a hardcover book on 1930s Penguin book-cover design.

“There’s a guy named Jan Tschichold, the typographer for Penguin at the time, who’s one of my personal heroes,” says White. “So I’m thinking, ‘This is the son I never had.’”

He continues: “He just has a really strong understanding of design and it’s all essentially self-taught. He knows what he likes. And he had a strong sense that the commercialization of surfing is fundamentally not what surfing’s about. It’s not about a cool logo; it’s about riding waves.”

As you’d imagine, Gato Heroi’s strong design aesthetic is based in mid-century modern, but with a twist—a raw, deconstructed vibe. Traditionally, in surfboard manufacturing, you want the fiberglass fabric to disappear so that it looks like the object itself. Not so with a Gato board.

In quintessential Robbie fashion, he favors going against the grain and puts his own craftsmanship on display. “In a sense, he wants to embrace the materials, the construction,” says White. “Traditionally, when you do color work, you’d be very careful to trim off the edges. Instead, he started doing a free lap where you let the pieces of cloth wrap around naturally. So you can see the material and the way it’s made. That’s Robbie.”

Based on the steady word-of-mouth success of its boards, the team has expanded into a core surf line including wetsuits, T-shirts, backpacks and board bags. Essentially, everything a surfer (like Robbie) would need to circle the globe. Along the way, they’ve done collaborations with Paul Frank for a show at Huntington Art Center as well as an art installation for a gallery in Santa Ana about the monetization of surfing and how the industry is driven by mega-success.

As a whole, Gato Heroi is a surfboard company that’s not only a huge creative outlet for its team – it is pushing the creativity of surfing as a whole. Robbie is its talisman. Handcrafting quality products for a global surf citizenry is its future. And it acts as a beacon to remind the surf industry that passion, not capitalism, is its foundation and its promise.

“You might think of it as a rushing stream with a rock in the middle that’s causing a diversion and changing the direction of the stream. That’s how I see us.”

And it’s beautiful.

Stereo Skateboards’ co-captain Chris Pastras loves cool jazz—and has a green thumb.

Normally, Chris Pastras (aka Dune) is a goofball but not today. Today, he’s all business. It’s Monday morning at 11 a.m. at his home in Echo Park, LA and he’s just signed up-and-coming pro skater Kyle Leeper to Stereo (from Black Label). And the skate industry’s a buzz with the news. (You can see why from his intro video; his raw, powerful, commanding style recalls the street skating of Natas Kaupas circa 1988.) He’s blowing up with calls and emails and texts as the word gets out like fresh chum splashing in the water. He keeps getting pulled off of our phone call and sucked into commenting on his newest team signing. Skateboarding, it seems, is hungry for more.

“Well, Kyle’s name has been floating around as a potential rider for some time,” opines Pastras with this chaotic feeding frenzy breaking out all around him. “I dig the way he skates and he has his own creative deal. It’s just that this time around the timing was right with our distribution deal with Antics going through, and with us having things in place to support new riders. I think Kyle’s exciting in that he really brings his own style, deal, and flavor to skateboarding. So, to me, I think it’s exciting for not only Stereo, but for skateboarding as a whole.”

Kind words. High praise. But Pastras is a man who knows a thing or two about finding and fostering budding skate talent. He himself has been riding his whole life. Early on, while growing up in Metuchen, NJ, his brother Rodney (who owns Shut Skates in NYC) was a big influence turning him on to skateboarding, as well as punk and alternative music. As he recalls, his bro was always bringing home old Skateboarder and Thrasher magazines, and even the first Bones Brigade video. These initial influences made a genuine impact on young Pastras. By age seven, he was hooked on skating and has been rolling ever since.

Then, like most skaters who fall headlong into the sport, Pastras got lured out to California by the endless summer lifestyle that he saw captured in the pages of Skateboarder. “I first started coming out here with Mike Vallely on skate trips when I was 14 or so. Before that, my dad moved to LA when I was 12 so that was my first real trip. But basically, I moved out the day I graduated from high school. I had two choices; it was either going to college and work at McDonalds or couch surf and ride my skateboard every day in California. I chose the latter.”

Once he migrated westward, he continued skating regularly with Vallely who eventually, got Pastras a part in Rubbish Heap, World Industries’ 1989 skate video and ultimately, onto the team. At the time, Steve Rocco’s team boasted a full roster of talented skaters including Jeremy Klein, Ron Chatman, Randy Colvin, Jef Hartsel, Jesse Martinez, Rodney Mullen, Pastras and Vallely. That period is also memorable because it’s when Pastras first met his partner-in-crime and future business partner, Jason Lee who was riding for Mark Gonzales’s Blind at the time. “We were touring around together and became friends. Everyone on those trips was listening to hip-hop and shopping at the mall, and we were listening to jazz and blues and asking to get dropped off at thrift stores. We always shared a similar taste and aesthetic, so it was just natural and morphed into us doing a company together over time.” 

That nascent company, launched in 1991, was called Blue Skateboards, a precursor to what would ultimately become their current venture, Stereo. “For Blue, I had started shopping for old records for logo and graphic ideas, so Blue had a lot of the same inspirations. While we were doing it, we got approached by Jim Thiebaud and Tommy Guerrero to do a brand with Deluxe; it was pretty much a no-brainer since those guys where and still are our heroes.”  

Along the way, like most creatively inclined people, music has always been a driving force and artistic influence in Pastras’ life. That inspiration, sourced from classic jazz and blues artists like Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, Billie Holiday, Howlin’ Wolf, and Bo Diddley, came through loud and clear during the creation of Blue and Stereo’s graphic identity that still exists today. “We found ourselves referencing a bunch of old jazz records…going to the bargain bin at record stores and digging for inspiration. Then, in 1991, the Blue Note art book came out. It was mostly just a graphics thing. But we also pulled the music into what we were doing as well.” 

Then, in 2000, Stereo went on hiatus as its two founders and co-captains branched out and explored other avenues. Lee dove into acting and Pastras went out on the road. “Yeah, Deluxe and Stereo parted ways, no bad vibes. It just was what it was. I really didn’t want to see the brand end, so I began trying to figure out if and how I could bring it back. Jason was focused on his acting, and I went to school and later worked with Osiris shoes and traveled with them. I got to travel for about two years straight with them and really wanted to dive back into the brand. But ideally, I wanted to do it with Jason. Then, in 2002-2003, when Jason started skating again, he got re-inspired so it was only logical for the original founders to bring it back.”  

In addition to building a viable skate brand, the duo have also gotten involved in clothing, namely a sportswear line called WeAretheSuperlativeConspiracy. Initially, they joined up with WeSC (formerly WE) in 2001. “Our driver on one of the European Osiris tours worked at a WE shop, and I was constantly complimenting his clothes. The stuff looked nothing like “skate” gear: sick sweaters, military jackets and button-ups, way before any skate brand was doing that stuff well at all. So he told Greger Hagelin, the owner that I loved the stuff, and he asked me to be the first global WeSC Activist (rider), which I gladly agreed to. Then, Jason saw my clothes and had the same reaction, ‘Wow, what great clothes! Those don’t look like they come from a skate brand!’ and he came aboard as well. Since then, we’ve been helping them create a network of artists, skaters and musicians. It’s one big happy family. It’s awesome.” 

Beyond his astute business acumen, Pastras has also always had a creative side stemming from his parents early influence. Since they were both teachers, educated and cultural, they turned him onto art and music at a really young age. At age three, he started drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil and carried on with it throughout high school. So both art and skating have played a prominent role throughout his life. “As I got older, I became more influenced by artists within skateboarding like Mark Gonzales, Neil Blender and Nautas Kaupas. Then, I learned about a whole new generation of things from being around the Deluxe art department in San Francisco, and that experience influenced me graphically.

I guess you could say that I’ve always had a creative approach to life. I owe that once again to my parents being supportive, educated, and creative.”

Today, beyond the massive body of music-inspired design work he’s done for Stereo over the years, he’s most proud of his large-scale murals. A few notable commissions include one at Paul Rodriguez’s skate park for Mountain Dew depicting the Watts Towers and another at the California African American Museum of a Brooklyn Bridge tower. “There’s something overwhelming about taking on a large scale mural and I’m always under a huge time crunch. So, when it all comes together, I always feel like I’ve tackled a real giant.”

During his downtime, he enjoys kicking back at home with his two dogs Wizard, a Doberman/Black Lab and Mingus, a Husky/Malamute/German Shepherd mix, sucking down a few cold PBRs and gardening in his backyard. To him, there’s nothing more relaxing or rewarding. “I have a yard so gardening’s a hobby of mine. I grow veggies and tomatoes back there. I like having an outdoor area, at first it was for the dogs, but then I thought, why not plant some veggies? I really enjoy cooking and BBQ-ing. There’s nothing more satisfying in the kitchen then to cook a dish with something you’ve grown in your yard.”

Luke Stedman ponders a life beyond pro surfing.

Pro surfer Luke Stedman has a tattoo on the back of his legs, one line on each calf that reads: Live by the sea. Die by the sea. And that pretty much sums up his whole ethos. It defines him.

Growing up in Sydney, Australia, the 6-foot 2-inch, lanky, laidback 34-year-old has spent his entire life in and around the Pacific Ocean. It comes as no surprise. His dad, pioneer pro surfer and board shaper Shane Stedman wouldn’t have it any other way, raising him in the sets just offshore in New South Wales.

“I grew up around the ocean,” reflects Stedman, sitting out in the backyard of his Euhukai Beach Park vacation rental with one eye squarely on me and the other eye gazing out at the surf line-up. “And I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else.”

Since the ocean’s siren song called him from an early age, it seems only natural that he would follow his father’s lead and become pro one day. But, unlike most other budding pros on the ASP World Tour (the global contest circuit organized by professional surfing’s governing body that crowns an undisputed world champion every year), who qualify in their teens, Stedman worked his way up the ranks and qualified later in life.

“Since I didn’t qualify for the tour until I was 26, I was kinda a late-bloomer. Most guys qualify when they’re 19 or so. But it kinda worked out better for me because surfing is 70% mental and 30% physical. I was older so I was able to get my head right before getting into competitive surfing.”

Over the past seven years, he’s tried to make up for lost time traveling the world and paddling out on every continent. But it hasn’t all gone his way, or according to plan. As you’d expect, the sea can be a harsh mistress, a real bitch at times. Because of it, Stedman’s had his share of setbacks in the water. A re-occurring foot injury sidelined him until recently. And he’s just lost his major sponsor making the business-side of pro surfing that much more difficult. Currently, he’s working with surf coach (and former pro himself) Brad Gerlach to improve his form, and hopefully, improve his ranking. But still, currently standing 31st out of a possible 32 total, he’s sitting squarely on the bubble for joining next year’s tour. Yet, through it all, he’s enjoyed his moment in the pro surfing spotlight even if it’s time to step away.

“It’s a new zone for me so I spoke to my dad the other day about it. And, it’s tough because he’s got some pride about my accomplishments in surfing. But, at one point, he said, ‘Son, there’s more to life than just trophies.’ And, ya know what, he’s right.”

Just like the ocean that’s always ebbing and flowing with the swirling currents and the changing tides, Stedman’s own life out of the water is in flux. Now, at 34, the idea has dawned on him that he must look to creating a life beyond pro surfing. It’s a bit unsettling and scary because surfing’s all he’s known, his singular focus. But the time is coming.

Splitting time between Hawaii, Sydney and Bali, where he lives with his girlfriend, he’s working on developing his own clothing label as well as finding ways to bring jet skis into surfing to enhance the creative side of the sport. One idea is to create a choreographed surf show a la Cirque de Soleil. Surf de Soleil anyone? “It’s uncommon for me to not know what I’m doing. But I’m keeping myself open to the possibilities of life.”

Some of this recent self-reflection and introspection has to do with his strong desire to be there and help raise his two-year-old Spike. He’s even got his son’s name tattooed under his left arm, right next to his heart. “When you’re on tour, it consumes your whole life: training, equipment development, and focusing on your sponsors. It’s difficult traveling so much when all I want to do is spend time with him.”

He continues, the stress and strain clear on his face: “Losing a heat can be frustrating; my competition results haven’t been great over the last month. But then, when I get out of the water, seeing my son puts it all into perspective. Raising my kid has become my #1 priority, not surfing. And I’m happy he’s here in Hawaii with his mom because it’s a special place to grow up.”

With all this mounting change, Stedman’s drawing strength from key sources, namely close friends and family. “Right now, my family inspires me 100% and we’re there for each other. We’re very close. And I want to be there for my son as well.

Some of my best friends Taj Burrow and Ozzie Wright also inspire me. They live a full life outside of the water and that’s something I need to learn as well. I admire it about them and it’s something I aspire to have in my life.”

So, beyond finding some much-needed balance, what’s out there on the horizon for Stedman? Truth is, even he’s not really sure. But, whatever may come, he’s focused on embracing the change that’s rolling in like a Hawaiian winter swell. “All I know is surfing. It’s a real switch for me to be out of my comfort zone. I’m not really sure what I’ll do. All I know is that it’s a big time in my life.”

In the end, there’s more to life than winning surf trophies. Thanks dad.

DIY surf-wear designer “IT” girl, Jill Hansen’s got a neoprene dream that suits you.

From the moment you meet Jill Anjuli Hansen, one thing becomes crystal clear: She is the Betsy Johnson of surfing. Like the famous designer, she’s a study in contrasts, a free spirit with a DIY edge. But instead of pop-inspired party wear and floral, feminine prints, Hansen’s chosen canvas is bright color-blocked neoprene.

Even her looks defy convention like two sides of the same coin. Imagine a slim, tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed California beauty with inked body art from head to toe. That’s Jill. Wild. Confident. Sexy. She’s a real original who seems perfectly at home in her own tattooed skin.

When we meet up at Coffee Talk, a local Honolulu coffee shop down the street from her house, she’s wearing all white to match her bleached blond hair and a neon orange rubber headband to keep her punk locks back out of her eyes. Recently, Hansen embarked on developing her own line of sexy, form-fitting wetsuits called California Candy. Over the past two years, she’s been test-driving prototypes and custom samples thanks to a Japanese investor she found through a friend. Now, that she’s happy with the results, she’s finally ready to produce it and deliver it to select, tastemaker surf shops in LA, SF and Honolulu. And, as you’d expect, the response from female surfers along the way has been overwhelming.

“All I wanted to do was create a sexy wetsuit for myself,” recalls Hansen. “Most brands have men designing women’s suits. They don’t understand a woman’s body, where the cuts and the curves should be. It’s frustrating. And the colors are always too conservative. Allover black, mostly. So I decided that I wanted to have the hottest wetsuit in the water with tons of great color. And, everywhere I went, whenever I paddled out, women always asked me, ‘Where’d you get that suit? I love it. Where can I get one?’” That’s when I decided that I was really onto something.”

If you sew it, they will surf it.

Hansen’s unabashed love of surfing spawned from an early age. Growing up in Hawaii on the island of Oahu, she was always attracted to the ocean. No surprise, really. It’s inevitable in paradise where you can live in the water year round. But, for her, surfing all day, every day in world famous Waikiki simply wasn’t enough. As a teen, she started shaping her own surfboards and doing the DIY thing. At the same time, like most girls her age, she plunged headlong into fashion, mixing and matching colors, prints and styles while creating her own signature outfits. And she was also modeling for Japanese fashion magazines that were enchanted with her classic Cali surf girl vibe. Ultimately, that led her to a strong desire to design her own clothes.

Her strong-willed ambition took her to LA where she pursued her two loves: fashion design and surfing every day in earnest. While at FiDM, she immediately recognized a distinct difference between her and the other students. “They would come to class sporting head-to-toe designer looks and wanted to create couture. I was the complete opposite, showing up at school in ripped jeans or shorts and slippers. And I wanted to make cool, sexy wetsuits. I knew I was different but they never made fun of me or made me feel like an outcast. To them, I was just that cool surfer chick that was into sewing wetsuits.

Once, one of my friends even dared me to wear snowboard boots to school. I rocked them.”

Finally, she’s made the leap by transforming her laidback surfer girl lifestyle into a career and she’s never looked back. As she puts it, her vision is simple yet decidedly ambitious: To create a women’s surf-line that’s a bit edgier than Roxy with sexy, comfy clothing that’s clean and modern. “There’s nothing out there that’s different for ladies, an authentic, fresh perspective that’s not trying to cater to everyone, only to a select, confident group of individuals. I mean, let’s face it. Women want color. Women want sexy. Women want custom-made booty shorts!”

Fair enough. And the stars look to be lining up for her. Even now, while she’s prepping for the launch of the wetsuit line, she’s formulating the development of two more like-minded surf lines: a skimpy, Brazilian cut-influenced bikini line called Surf Punk (reminiscent of Reef girls) and a bedazzled, ’70s-influenced custom art board line called Sunchild. As if those weren’t enough to keep her busy and preoccupied, she’s also in talks with MTV Networks to develop a reality show based around the launch of the line and set, naturally, in Oceanside, CA.

So where does she get all of this unbridled energy and ambition? What drives her? “Well, I’m inspired by my inner rockstar and I try to inspire others as well. My family’s also a huge influence because we are all seriously competitive. And, strong, multi-talented, creative women like Gwen Stefani, Karen O. and Lady Gaga are also constantly a source of inspiration for me. They’re amazing.”

Gazing down at her hand while we chat, I notice that she’s got a long row of big, black stitches right across her pinky knuckle. It’s ghastly, like a Franken-finger. Apparently, she tripped and fell walking down the street and broke it. Surgery was necessary. Fortunately now, she’s on the mend. I chuckle, telling her that her accident just proves the point: She’s always better off in the water then she is on land. “I like to spend more time surfing than I do in the city.”

Point taken, Jill. We’ll see you out there in the lineup.