The Surprise in the Collection

There’s some buzz about a large collection of skate memorabilia up for sale, not only because of the size of the collection, but the method and price. Right now the only way to see it is via Instagram. The seller reportedly is asking $125,000 for the entire lot, and is unwilling to break it up piecemeal. So far the seller has not been identified, but the collection includes a statistically abnormal concentration of gear from Skatemaster Tate and Adrian Demain, which may provide some clues. Is this interesting? Yes, but the thing that really fascinates and intrigues me is the inclusion of a mega-rare, but ultimately valueless (except to Neil and myself) Skate and Annoy t-shirt in the middle of the collection. This is probably second iteration of a design that went through 3 changes. The first batch was screen printed in a house on a makeshift rig with water based inks printed on cheap Hanes undershirts bought in 3 packs at local discount warehouse/clearance type of store. I imagine I screened less than 2 dozen. The version in this collection is likely the second iteration, and may have been printed on slightly higher quality shirts, but again, would have been limited to two or three dozen total.

Here’s the very first version of the Nash Exploited girl shirt, from House of Neil’s personal collection. I can smell the must through the jpeg….

Now being that this is 2016, and especially in light of some recent comments revealed to have been made by an individual running for President of the United States, a little explanation is in order. Why is there a censored, but naked woman on a skateboarding shirt? Isn’t that exploitive? Well, yes. It was actually intentional and thoughtfully conceived as a reaction to what we perceived as an exploitation of skateboarding by a rash of companies pushing crap and trends. The choice of Nash as the pasties was intentional as well. Thrasher and other mags were still running full page ads for hideous and very inferior skateboards brands like Nash on a regular basis. The difference in price that the Nash completes were advertised at was not at all proportional to the difference in quality in a “real” skateboard setup. Sounds like an excuse to put sex on a t-shirt? I’m not going to lie, we thought it was the funniest thing in skateboarding at the time, and It’s still pretty funny to me. The adolescent in me is still hanging on. The text is made with dry transfer lettering, which you can amazingly still buy today. The border was made with graphic tape, and the film positive was made by copying the artwork in two layers onto transparency film at a Kinkos.  The image used came from an adult magazine, and the halftone is from the original black and white print, enlarged. This print was done at home in Urbana, Illinois. We stuck a board inside the shirt and placed a large frame over the shirt, held in place by hand to print it. I ordered a largish screen frame and a real, but still crappy squeegee, from the art supply store I worked at. We “might” have ironed these or placed them in the oven to heat set the water based ink. Again, we probably printed less than 2 dozen of these, on paper thin, crap t-shirts. You don’t have to look very closely to see how off center the image is on the shirt.

Here’s the S&A shirt in the collection. I had posted a short recollection about making this in the Intagram comments,  but it has been removed for some reason.  I can’t imagine why. He or she must have a grudge against us! This is the second version because it’s got the inclusion of the dog in the corner and an additional thin border on the outside.  I was flexing my screen printing layout muscles here. The dog originated from the very first thing I ever screen printed. It was a Skate and Annoy shirt, that featured a dog leering at an anthropomorphized fire hydrant that had a sour look.  I’m not sure what that had to do with skateboarding or our “brand.” That first S&A shirt was abut 5×5 inches square, and printed with one of those “Teach Yourself to Silkscreen” home kits. The screen was a frame punched out of a thin sheet of rigid plastic, with some mesh glued onto it. Even the squeegee was a piece of plastic. I printed that thing on about half of my wardrobe, as well as various, random flat surfaces in the house I was living in.

Let’s get back to the shirt in the collection. The second version of this shirt probably had a print run of 2-3 dozen, and might have been printed on a semi decent shirt. It’s hard to tell by this photo. By this point, I was probably already working at a screen printing shop where my boss would let me print my own projects after hours. We used water-based inks at this shop, and for a while were air drying the shirts on hangers and then someone would individually heat press the shirts on one of those presses used for transfers at t-shirt shops. I’m pretty sure we blew off that step for Skate and Annoy. This shirt is faded as a result of that, or it might have just been a subpar print made when the ink had partially dried in the screen. That might have be why we gave it away, who knows?

I don’t have a print or picture of the third version of the Nash girl, t-shirt, but I do have the original separations. These were printed with plastisol at the screen printing shop I started with some partners in Chicago. As this was 1989, the pieces of this design were enlarged and shot on a stat cam, adhered to a larger sheet of clear film, and in this case , had the border applied manually with ruby tape. Although transparent, the red tape is as good as black when photographed with B&W film or exposed on a screen. This shirt, the girl, dog and box were printed in black, and the text and Nash pasties were printed in red. The print run on this was probably about 4 dozen, and included some god-awful looking white, half polyester crewneck sweatshirts too. Gross. Check out the handmade grunge type! I can’t remember for sure, but the original was probably press type defaced by hand, then photographed and enlarged on a stat cam again.  We did possess a photo typositor, but text scratched on that film would have required an exact blade or something similar, and would have had a different look.

Here’s a detail of the original paste up of the Nash girl. I found this scan from when we made stickers of this in 2002. It’s from a feature on the Nude Bowl from a late 80’s print edition. I still have it, but I literally can not get to it without moving an entire row of semi-industrial shelving in my basement. This partial scan was still on my hard drive from making those stickers.

So the mystery is, who owned this shirt? The huge bulk of these stayed in the midwest, probably within a 300 mile radius, with the highest concentrations in Chicago and Champaign-Urbana. We probably gifted this to a pro at one of the pro demos/contests held under the St. Louis  arch  (What were those called?) or one of the big  Surf Ohio events we travelled to.  We know for certain that these went to Tony Magnusson and Art & Steve Godoy, but that’s the extent of our recollection.

Check out the sale on Instagram. What few details available are on the first image uploaded, but you have scroll down past 80 or so images to get there, so here’s a direct link. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. Hopefully someone will find out who it belongs/belonged to.

Im featuring a huge oldschool skateboard collection here. this collection was started over 30 years ago and contains many rare and one of a kind items some once owned by skate master tate, adrian demain and stacy peralta..the collection contains of over 250 boards 200 plus deadstock tshirts ,tons of parts.. over 1000 stickers..original banners..rare custom vans shoes. Original photos and autographs..many team only items and props from bones videos and much more..this is a one time chance to own items you may never see again…this collection will be sold all together and will not be split up..i will keep pulling items from the warehouse and adding photos until someone comes and buys it….if you are a serious buyer feel free to send a message to discuss in depth details and pricing…the collection is located in southern California.