While the magazine was originally started as a platform for Swenson and Vitello to promote their skate brand, Independent Trucks, Thrasher has since transcended its original purpose to become the most influential skate magazine in the world. In a similar way that The New York Times has a writing style that is literally copied by writers and editors around the world, there too exists a Thrasher-style of skateboarding, though no definitive handbook exists.
Under legendary Editor-in-Chief Jake Phelps, the magazine has earned the nickname “The Bible” amongst skaters, referring to its judicial role within the community – its hallowed pages are where skaters are made into legends, or satirized into obscurity. Every good magazine has one issue that can’t be missed. In fashion, that would be Vogue’s fall fashion issue. In skating, Thrasher’s annual “Skater of the Year” issue is the must-read news of the season: the magazine celebrates the skateboarder that has most accurately embodied its de facto mantra of “Skate and Destroy” over the past 12 months.
jake phelps for hypebeast magazine
what: in cultural defense of skate tees, featuring incorrigible thrasher icon jake phelps.
when: summer 2016. photography courtesy of tobin yelland.
intro:
Seminal skate magazine Thrasher was founded by Eric Swenson and Fausto Vitello in 1981, and has always represented a sense of incensed opposition to the status quo – within the skate industry and outside of it. So of course, as a skater, it was jarring to catch the magazine repped by models and fashion pundits outside at presentations in early 2016.
