San Leandro, CA – Skate Shop News: Top 3 Places to Find The Best Skateboarding News

Thrasher Magazine – Founded in 1981 by Fausto Vitello and Eric Swenson, primarily as a way to promote Independent Truck Company, their skateboard truck company. The magazine’s first editor was Kevin Thatcher. In 1993, Jake Phelps was named editor of the magazine. Mofo became the second staff member, joining Thatcher in mid-1981. With him, he brought the punk-skater ethic to the world thru his photojournalism, changing the essence of Thrasher, and in turn changing the sub-culture of skateboarding forever. Vitello’s son, Tony, took over as owner of the magazine after his father died of a heart attack in 2006 and Swenson committed suicide in 2011. On March 14, 2019 long time editor Jake Phelps died. Michael Burnett is the current Editor in Chief. Still to this day Thrasher Mag is widely considered to be the Bible of skateboarding’s past, present and future. 

Skateline NBD –  Hosted by Gary Rogers, it originally started on the Metro Skateboarding website. Gary Rogers takes a comedic view on the events occurring in skateboarding, so the weekly show is not only informative, but comedic. As I mentioned earlier, it originally started as a small series on Metro Skateboarding. It continued to run until about 2012-2013. After this, it started to run on the Thrasher Magazine youtube channel. Still wanting to take advantage of the show’s popularity, Metro Skateboarding continued to post a series called Gary responds, in which the host reads comments on the episode of Skateline from the previous week. Although this show is satirical, Gary spotlights current news within the industry, promotes up and coming skaters clips, and gives us heads up on what insane video parts to watch. Not to mention makes me laugh throughout the entire show!

Transworld Skateboarding – Founded in 1983 to rival Thrasher magazine with a slogan of “skate and create” as opposed to “skate and destroy”, TWS was intended as a more accessible alternative to Thrasher Magazine. The public release of Transworld Skateboarding occurred under the ownership of Peggy Cozens and Larry Balma, owner of the Tracker Trucks brand. Initially, the magazine’s editorial teams were known collectively as the “United Skate Front” and Balma later spoke of the magazine’s beginnings as a reaction to Thrasher, explaining in a 2003 Union-Tribune interview: “They were pretty harsh, sex and drugs and using four-letter words and all that and in the early ’80s, the sport started growing and [Thrasher] wasn’t the best magazine for young kids”. The first issue of TWS contained the article “Skate and Create” and its author Peggy Cozens noted, “I have become increasingly concerned about a new skate attitude being pushed on skaters: Skate and Destroy”. She highlighted the positive and creative side of skating. The stance of the new magazine remained positive, to the extent that even Thrasher owner Fausto Vitello wrote, “They were about Skate and Create; we were about Skate and Destroy.” The print publication was recently shutdown, but the website is alive and strong with current articles, photos and videos.