Geoffrey Joseph Rowley Jr. (born 6 June 1976) is an English professional skateboarder, former co-owner of Flip Skateboards and owner of the Civilware Service Corporation. Rowley started skateboarding around 1989 in his home city of Liverpool. He would skate for the course of entire days, while his friends would only skate for relatively short periods. In 1994, Rowley moved to Huntington Beach, California, United States with fellow Flip team riders, Tom Penny, Rune Glifberg and Andy Scott.
After two weeks in California, Rowley was featured on the cover of TransWorld Skateboard magazine—he subsequently
decided to relocate to the American state. In regards to his first TransWorld cover, Rowley explained in 2012 – “I’d been in the States for, like, two weeks, and I was at TransWorld—we’d been to visit TransWorld for the first time. And Swift just wanted to go shoot—he needed to shoot a Gullwing [truck company]. He said, “You ride for Gullwing, right?” I’m like, “Yeah, I think so … I got free trucks through the distributor in Britain … I mean, do I ride for them? I don’t, I don’t know.” “Do you wanna go skate?” And I went skating with them, and then they put it on the cover of the mag. It didn’t make any sense to me … like, at all. It still doesn’t make any sense to me; I just went skating with them and then it’s on the cover of the mag. I remember gettin’ it and thinking, “What just happened? What? That’s weird.”
Rowley has produced a signature line of shoes with Vans footwear since 1999, the year when his first vulcanised shoe model was produced. Rowley is credited with re-introducing the vulcanised skate shoe, whereby a new generation of skate shoes were designed with the benefits and functional superiority of the vulcanised process. In 1999, Rowley performed a “fifty-fifty” grind on the Staples Center’s “hubba” ledge, in Los Angeles, US, for his first Vans advertisement; the photographic image led to a significant level of recognition due to the vulcanised shoes that he is wearing in the photograph – at that time, the predominant trend in skate shoe construction consisted of large, bulky designs.
He received Thrasher Magazine‘s “Skater of the Year” award in 2000. In December 2011, Transworld Skateboarding named Rowley as the twenty-sixth most influential skateboarder of all time. Needless to say, this dudes a legend. Now at the young age of 46, he releases yet another stunning video part on Thrasher Mag’s Youtube Channel!! This one shows the true gnarliness of the legend. The grittiest of spots mixed with mind melters and the overall balls to the wall skating we have come to know and love from Geoff. This is a must watch and hopefully not the last we see of the legend!!
