What struck us as different here was the strong recycling current that runs through the story. Underground, it’s true, but then skateboarding has a long tradition of resistance to the mainstream. An ‘underground’ way of promoting the store.” Therefore, anyone who finds them gets them. Stickers with the brand and the address of the new stores were applied to them and they were left on streets nearby main skateboard places around Curitiba, Brazil. “In order to promote this new spot,” we’re told, “designer Beto Janz customized used and broken decks, using the decks to produce skulls. The project rose from the crypt of a marketing campaign - albeit one on a small, DIY scale - to celebrate the new structure of a skate store called Ultra Séries. Don’t take our word for it, though talk to Brazilian graphic designer and skater Beto Janz, who found he had all the materials he needed in the form of snapped decks to create his own take on the whole skeletal aesthetic: a series of stylistically simple yet striking skulls, grinning at the observer like the ’90s never ended. In fact, if you’re ollying steps or grinding rails all day, you’ll be lucky if your board lasts you a month. In the bone-crunching world of street skating - where slams regularly cost ankles - a skateboard isn’t going to last forever. Skating prides itself on being hardcore to the bone. Maybe it’s just the fact that skulls look gnarly. Maybe it’s because whether carving along the sidewalk swell of the concrete sprawl or dropping in on the vertical faces of unforgiving, drained swimming pools, skaters are that little bit closer to danger - and possibly death - than your middle-of-the-road, law-abiding citizen. All images used with permission of Beto Janz.įrom the early days of the Bones Brigade skateboarding team, with their classic Ripper insignia, to the minimal black and white design of the Zero skateboard company of the ’90s, skulls have always been synonymous with skateboarding art.
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