"What teaches you how to skate? The fuckin' concrete"
March 21, 2019 11:09 AM   Subscribe

Jake Phelps, the caustic, funny and brash (Vice) longtime editor of skateboarding’s most revered magazine, Thrasher, a position that made him a tastemaker in a subculture known for resenting authority (Thrasher), was found dead on March 14 at his home in San Francisco. He was 56 (New York Times).
Adage: You wouldn't think that a print magazine aimed at teen and twentysomething (mostly male) skaters could still be a thing in 2019. But you can thank Jake Phelps, the editor of the San Francisco-based monthly for the past 26 years, for keeping it real, keeping it relevant and keeping it wildly, urgently alive. [...]

Somehow, even though skateboarding has long been quasi-mainstreamed and commodified, Thrasher maintained a quite literally dangerous edge. That was pure Phelps. Though there are plenty of major brands that have linked themselves (either organically or as interlopers) to the skateboarding subculture—Supreme most notably—Phelps' Thrasher still felt legitimately, defiantly gritty.

Uproxx: Jake Phelps was always right because Jake Phelps was the embodiment of everything good about skateboarding. And when I say “good” I do not simply mean good. I mean true. That’s why he was the editor of Thrasher Magazine for 26 years. He was our sport’s guiding light. Our North Star. Our mission statement. [...]

Jake made me realize that hate was not the opposite of love. Hate is caring. Phelps made me realize that the true opposite of love is indifference. Phelps not giving a fuck about you was the coldest black hole of nonexistence achievable by any skater alive. I would rather get punched in the face by Phelps than have him walk by me in the street without an ounce of recognition. Period.

California Sunday magazine: An unwillingness, or inability, to stop is perhaps the defining characteristic of Phelps’s career. He’s been the editor of Thrasher since 1993. The magazine occupies such a privileged space in skateboarding’s collective imagination that it’s difficult to know what to compare it to. Skaters call it “the bible,” but we’re prone to hyperbole. Maybe it’s Vogue, but for degenerates, and Phelps is skateboarding’s Anna Wintour. Phelps likes to think of himself as the Thrasher brand personified, and in many ways, from his caustic wit to his encyclopedic knowledge of the sport, that’s true. [...]

Since he sees it as his job to enforce the rules of a degenerate subculture, he’s an interesting role model. But his antics make a certain sort of sense if you skateboard, because skateboarding is such a totalizing worldview. After all, the most cherished places in skateboarding are infrastructural background noise to most people: parking lots, empty schoolyards, disused plazas. It’s as if two universes exist, identical and coterminous with each other, and all you need is a skateboard in your hand to see the other. Phelps has been looking at the world this way for four decades now, so long that he can’t unsee it. It has instilled in him an active distaste for even the most lenient notions of politesse. In San Francisco, this gives him a magnetic quality: He repels and attracts strangers in roughly equal measure.
Post title from a Phelps manifesto at Unofficial Networks. Phelps previously: People always call me an asshole - that’s because I don’t stop.
posted by not_the_water (20 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
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posted by Grandysaur at 11:43 AM on March 21, 2019


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posted by djseafood at 11:50 AM on March 21, 2019


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posted by ZipRibbons at 11:58 AM on March 21, 2019


Whoa! OG. That the news didn't find me through other channels over the past week tells me how far I am from the scene, so that's a gift from beyond the grave I guess. I never had direct experience with him, but our circles bumped up against one another for a time and he was always around the EMB/GGP scenes.

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posted by rhizome at 12:14 PM on March 21, 2019


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posted by Foosnark at 12:21 PM on March 21, 2019


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posted by gauche at 12:22 PM on March 21, 2019


Thrasher was my gateway to punk rock, disrespect for authority, art, and freedom, things that have stayed with me long after I gave up my skateboard. I suspect this is true for countless other bored suburban kids. Without Thrasher, a whole ton of Important And Serious art and music over the last 30 years might never have happened. Saving a few souls is about the best you can do in life and Phelps saved a lot of them.

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posted by Slarty Bartfast at 12:49 PM on March 21, 2019 [11 favorites]


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posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 1:12 PM on March 21, 2019


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Until a few days ago, the last time I had seen an issue of Thrasher magazine was circa 1993. I knew the web site existed but thought the print publication had gone the way of Dragon and Omni.
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 2:14 PM on March 21, 2019


I feel like Thrasher is going through a resurgence. (at least as a brand). I see a lot of teenagers wearing t-shirts with the logo around my (small!) town these days.
posted by dismas at 2:31 PM on March 21, 2019


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skate brands in general seem to be coming back around in mainstream sources. mixed feelings on this.
posted by ominous_paws at 3:06 PM on March 21, 2019


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posted by limeonaire at 3:59 PM on March 21, 2019


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posted by holmesian at 4:05 PM on March 21, 2019


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posted by Gelatin at 6:28 PM on March 21, 2019


Vans and Converse have been some of the most popular shoes among the younger set for two or three years now, and Vans Old Skool lowtops are everywhere on people of all ages right now. At least here. Thrasher and other large established skate brands have been a part of this trend, which if my niece is any indication started about five years ago.
posted by rhizome at 6:42 PM on March 21, 2019


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posted by bitter-girl.com at 6:55 PM on March 21, 2019


Thrasher t-shirts are a thing, and I don’t think most people who wear them are very invested in the magazine. I have stopped asking young, fashionable women in Thrasher t-shirts if they skate, because they inevitably look at me blankly.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:25 PM on March 21, 2019 [3 favorites]


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posted by Xoebe at 8:29 PM on March 21, 2019


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posted by one teak forest at 1:50 PM on March 22, 2019


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posted by mediareport at 4:08 AM on March 24, 2019


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