Reposting this because I can relate to the story of starting a skateboard company out of a garage. I can relate to all of it, except the part where the company is successful… From Blockhead Dave: Wow! Has it really been 40 years since I screen-printed my very first batch of skateboards in my parents’ garage?  It was late spring 1985, I was fresh from a screen printing class at Sierra College, and had never printed more than 1 or 2 of anything.  I had 60 red Streetstyle boards manufactured by Uncle Wiggley and I was nervous as hell, but no choice but to just go for it. I pulled the squeegee over and over again, honing my skills as I went along, then I laid each board in the driveway to dry, since I hadn’t built any racks yet. Well, I made it happen, and there were 60 skateboards with my art and my company name on them and just like that I was in business!  You can get on elf the limited Streetstyles in old school or the new school hole patterns starting Wednesday (9/24) at noon PST

The Hundreds has two articles on independent brands of yesteryear (and today) Blockhead, and Acme. Both are good reads, although both could have been much longer. These have absolutely nothing to do with two collaborations by the Hundreds, reportedly sold out already. Against the Grain: How Jim Gray and Acme Changed Skateboarding Forever Garage Brand: The Blockhead Skateboards Story

Blockhead Skateboards holds a strange place in my personal skateboarding history. It is easily one of the top 4 brands that I admired in the 80’s, and yet I never actually owned one. I did own one of those Easter Island head shirts, and we interviewed Sam Cunningham in issue #5 of Skate and Annoy when it was a zine. And our buddy Swiv was on the flow team for a while. Added to the list of things I said I would do but never quite got around to is making a website for Blockhead Skateboards. Well, Dave and Ron have done fine without my help, and now they are back in business with new decks and re-issues as well. If you blinked then you missed the availability of the original Streetstyle deck cut from blanks pressed when the deck was in the final phases of production. These uncut blanks (maple and fiberglass) were almost 30 years old, and were kept in storage by a former manager of the Uncle Wiggley wood shop. Only 30 of these were made available, and not surprisingly, they sold out within a day. So, I apologize to our readers for not getting this out…

  This quick sketch from Blockhead artist Ron Cameron shows the best way to shoot a board at home. Ron is working on a book and sent me this so I could photograph a super nice and rare Blockhead deck I found  in an old toy store in Belgium last year. The method works just fine and is tested and approved by Sean Cliver himself.

This week’s Shot of the Week is a Micah Breshears photo of Jeff Taylor taken at John’s Bowl in Albany Oregon. Check out the Shot of the Week.

Former Blockhead skater and artist Ron Cameron is having a solo art show titled Dismantled Hope that runs from June 9th-16th at the Encinitas, California library. The opening is Friday, June 11th from 6-9pm.

Ron Cameron was the skater/artist who helped define the public identity of Blockhead Skateboards. His web site features his paintings, graphic design, and very meaty sections on his board design, skateboarding and advertisements for Blockhead Skateboards and other companies like Acme. For instance, his board gallery features Disposable type commentary on the background of the designs and what was going on in the industry. The same goes for the ads he designed and the coverage he received as a skateboarder. I especially enjoyed his hand painted boards. The image above is a Grant Brittain photo from a 1990 issue of TWS, with a couple of classic Blockhead designs superimposed. As you can see, Ron was in the vanguard of bringing narrow boards back to skating. Sure that’s a 70’s era deck, but he did actually produce some narrow boards in anticipation of changing times, but he was a little bit too early to make it stick. Definitely worth spending some time at, check out Roncameron.net. Ron says a major chunk of retro content is imminent for the Blockhead site.