Bernie Tostenson – Skate and Annoy

Madrid Reissues

Madrid Skateboards has some new and some not-so new limited release reissues out. According to the distributing arm of Madrid, these 40th anniversary edition decks will only be produced this year, yet the Explosion model and Beau Brown model have already been available for some time. Not mentioned in the release is their most infamous […]

Brand-X Reborn

Brand-X skateboards are being re-issued! These are hand screened (not heat transfers) made by Watson Laminates, the same company that produced Brand-X boards before they shut down. However, it gets a little tricky here. Bernie Tostenson owned and screened and supervised the original Brand-X, but he sold the company in 1986, but stuck around to […]

Sims New Wave knockoff

Three Sims boards in different colorways? No, the middle one is a Speedent, copied from the Sims ‘New Wave’ team deck from 1981 by Bernie Tostenson. The legit Sims images are from (left) eBay Watch March 2010, and (right) February, 2011. The Importers and Exporters Association of Taipei turned up some history of Speedent: ‘Charles […]

More Brand-X bootlegs

In June there were (at least) 2 fake Brand-X decks for sale. The left one is a copy of a 1986 Sean Goff model that was designed by Steve Krajewski, it even says ‘Sean Goff model’ on the top right. The right one was based on the 1987 XEX-model by Bernie Tostenson. It’s actually the […]

Brand-X counterfeit

In this edition of counterfeits we have a fake Brand-X deck. The original team deck from 1987 was designed by silkscreen-artist Bernie Tostenson. In the late seventies and early eighties Bernie was working for Sims where he created the famous ‘Winged logo’ and Brad Bowman’s ‘Superman logo’. In 1984 he and Bud (a photographer and […]

TOM SIMS R.I.P.

Tom Sims died last week from a heart attack. My first snowboard was a Sims, because it was in the 80’s and quite frankly, there weren’t a lot of other choices out there. Sims put out some of my favorite skateboard graphics courtesy of Bernie Tostenson, so why would any self-respecting skater choose another brand? […]

A weird (o) way to spend a weekend

A few weekends ago I got a bee in my bonnet that resulted in wasting a lot of my time trying to duplicate the artwork on this Brand-X Weirdo board. I’m pretty sure Bernie Tostenson is my favorite skateboard artist. I loved those mid 80’s Weirdo boards, as well as the late 70’s and early […]

Disposable blog

Hey everyone, quit reading this blog and head on over to Disposable: random essays on skateboard art. Take this extra on the passing of Bernie Tostenson. Bernie did some great graphics for Sims before starting Brand X. Brand X had a crappy wood shop, but the the screen printing was second to none. For instance, […]