This comes way too long after the fact—and probably should've been posted in part before I even embarked on my trip to Japan back in October—but let's face the confusing facts: My woven word webs here are often difficult enough to understand as it is much less the labyrinthian maze of mutilation they no doubt are to someone whose second language is English. And that's not something to boast about by any means. In fact, it's a complete disservice as a writer to the reader. Intellectually, I get that, but am I going to do anything about it and change my excessively wordy and murky ways? Probably not.
So, how did this whole Japan thing come about in the first place? Well, a better question may be: Do you believe in the Power of Manifestation? Because ever since I was a small child with an outsized Godzilla obsession I've always dreamed of being BIG IN JAPAN, and for the past few years I'd really been fiending for the possibility of an art show taking place there. No, no... don't worry. I'm not about to get all "The Secret" on you, but fuck me if last year I didn't receive a direct message on Instagram from Verdy, the Tokyo-based Japanese graphic designer behind the popular Girls Don't Cry and Wasted Youth brands, asking if I would be interested in having an exhibition of my artwork at the Rise Above Gallery space located just up the stairs from the Henry's Pizza joint he owns.
This inquiry came entirely out of left field—or the blue, whatever strata of colorful baseball aether you like—but I was, as the girls like to say, over the fucking moon. Heck yeah was I interested in doing something like that! I hadn't been to Japan in well over 20 years, my only two previous trips being with the Birdhouse team for a random Big Brother article in 1999 and then a week of filming for Jackass the Movie in 2002, both of which provided little opportunity to see anything outside of what the work was focused on—you know, cement formations, marble ledges, wieners, butts, and throw up for the most part—so I was dying for an opportunity to go back to the future.
This Birdhouse skate trip in '99 was a bit of a whirlwind, seeing as the Japanese distributor who'd brought Willy Santos, Jeremy Klein, and Heath Kirchart over was a seasoned taskmaster with jam-packed itineraries for every waking minute of the few days we were there. So, all I really have visually left of it to speak of are a couple snapshots, and the distinct memory of Heath setting himself on fire at the bar one night. The highlight by far, though, was stumbling across a genuine rubber monster production taking place in a park near the Imperial Palace. I can’t recall how we finagled a photo with the mushroom phallus, but there’s a very good chance we just barged at will with full American aplomb.
When it was decided to take the cast and crew of Jackass the Movie to Tokyo for a week in '02, little did we know that the Japanese culture would work almost entirely against us when it came to shooting in public. The people are extremely polite and will do almost anything to avoid a confrontation or provide a reaction of any sort. Fortunately, we've always been virtuosos when it comes to amusing ourselves and there was no shortage of bottle rockets and sushi to be found.
Thus ensued a volley of zooms, emails, and messages over the next several months, as we attempted to hammer out all the logistics of doing an exhibition and how to possibly involve CB, our sole Japanese carrier of StrangeLove and the owner of Heshdawgz, who just so happened to be celebrating his 20th anniversary of the shop in 2025. Eventually, two separate shows were decided upon with an entirely different selection of art at each and exclusive T-shirt designs for both to help offset the budgetary expenses. All pretty boring stuff to read about, I know, so I'll simply let the photos and captions take it from here.
Fliers. Flyers? Honestly, that one has always confused me… maybe I should just look it up once and for all and be done with the conundrum. Hmm. Okay, the internet tells me both are acceptable, which, even more honestly, bothers me all the more. I want it to be one or the other, not both, and I refuse to reach across the aisle on this one. So, from now on, it will be "flyer" in my whorl of words.
When it comes to selecting pieces to hang for shows, I like to provide a mix of the original pencil sketches (none of which, incidentally, are shown here), the final pen 'n' ink drawings, and a few accompanying decks to illustrate how the art gets from Point A to Point C (the skipped over Point B being the color separations that I exclusively do in Adobe Illustrator), because people always seem to be most curious about the processes involved in getting the art from paper to board.
Several people showed up to the opening night in Tokyo on October 24 wearing vintage skate tees that I'd done over the years—unfortunately I didn't get a shot of the Blind Guy Mariano "Bye Bye Kitty" Bob shirt—or brought along other items of yore for me to sign, e.g. a Big Brother Rick Kosick sticker from Issue 11 in '94 and the Powell Peralta Ray Barbee "Tarot Card" model, circa '91, that will likely never be tainted by a reissued version.
I was duly honored that the Japanese artist extraordinaire Haroshi stopped by on the opening night in Tokyo, and the next day I was stoked to go see a solo show of his that was still on display at a gallery in Harajuku. Insanely intricate handcrafted work as always!
We interrupt these relatively short-form fun-size captions to bring you this little known shard of trivial skate history in a more eye-friendly point size: One of the biggest surprises on the night of my art opening in Tokyo—aside from the amazing generosity of a few who brought me tokens of Japan and Godzilla as gifts (ありがとうございます!)—was a prominent vintage T-shirt collector who pulled out a tee from his bag that I hadn’t seen since I stupidly purged a cache of my belongings on eBay 25 years ago. In my amazement, I tried to explain the story behind this very rare shirt, but I think a lot of what I stammered then may have gotten lost in translation. So, I’ll recount the origin story here: In 1991, while I was still working at Powell Peralta, CR Stecyk came into the art department with a piece of art that either he or Stacy had acquired from Mark Gonzales just as he was leaving Blind [1]. The artwork, likely created in the heat of the moment, contained a few hints to the reasoning behind his departure, as well as renditions of a whip-cracking, money-mad Rocco with references to the recent acquisition of Plan B. Anyway, because we had a hot shit color xerox machine in the art department, we printed out a few heat transfers of the art and pressed them onto some white tee blanks—hence the Powell tag. No more than a handful of these tees were made, an afternoon lark that I’d come to expect and look forward to whenever Stecyk came up from LA to the lemon factory in Goleta. I held onto the shirt up until 2000, when I made a few errant decisions about downsizing and let go of several key historical items I probably shouldn’t have, but… so it goes. I’m just glad this particular tee (as well as a few others of mine I found out that night) eventually found its way into the hands of a worthy collector who maybe now has an even greater appreciation for what he came up on along the hoarding way.
Exclusive tees created for both the Tokyo and Osaka exhibitions, all of which I believe sold out during the week-long show durations.
I had no idea what Osaka was like as a city and it turned out to be really fucking huge (it is, in fact, one of the top ten largest urban centers in the world). Conveniently, I was able to get a bird's eye view of Henry's Pizza and the Rise Above Gallery from the posh accommodations I'd been graciously hooked up with by Verdy at the Patina Osaka Hotel. Also, I heartily recommend stopping by Henry's Pizza if you ever find yourself in Osaka—the pizza is really that good and quite unlike many of the other crazy corn and pea concoctions I'd seen offered up in the Asian area.
On the opening night in Osaka, a few people brought boards by for me to sign that the original art just so happened to be on display as well, e.g. Ray Barbee's first Element pro model from 2009 and the Supreme "Vampire Boy" graphic, circa 2021. I was also surprised by how many people pulled out dog-eared copies of the original Concrete Wave softcover printings of Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art at both locations.
I cannot thank Verdy, his team, and CB/Heshdawgz enough for all the hospitality provided throughout my stay, as well as the enthusiasm, curiosity, and politeness of everyone who attended the shows. It was above and beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before, making for a trip that my wife Donna and I shan’t soon forget. Hopefully we can make it back over the Pacific expanse sooner than as late as it took this last time. Until then… sayonara, and thanks for all the fish! —Sean Cliver
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Bonus! One of the more complicated and contentious stories to come out of the early '90s relates to the creation of Bitch Skateboards by Sal Rocco, Jr. Founded on the heels of the mass defection of pros from the World camp to form Girl Skateboards in September of 1993, Bitch sported an infamously misogynistic logo that would eventually evoke the ire of El Segundo and garner the mainstream attention of local news media stations. Even though the company was very short-lived in skateboarding—imploding amid a crazy estrangement in the Rocco clan within the space of a year or so at most, circa '93–'94—it somehow caught the attention of a Japanese company that bought the license for several million dollars and proceeded to go buck wild with the brand exclusively overseas, making everything from tie-dyed bikinis to full-on boogie boards. Three decades later, I was amused to see the logo still being parodied, from a "Snitch" shirt found at Pal Pal skate shop in the Gangnam district of Seoul, South Korea, to a "Drama" sticker spied on the outside wall of a kick-ass seafood restaurant in Shibuya (the authentic Bitch coach's jacket was found on the wall of Bud, a vintage apparel store in Harajuku, and I probably would've bought it for shits and giggles had it not been for the ridiculous amount of yen being asked).
Another bonus! I know, this is starting to feel like one of those never-ending internet articles that ultimately goes nowhere, but I wanted to address the one and only disappointing aspect of my time in Tokyo. I had, as you see, been greatly looking forward to revisiting the Nakano Broadway Mall that I'd been enlightened to back in 2002 when I asked the local Japanese fixer for the Jackass production where I might be able to find any vintage vinyl toys. It took a couple days of asking friends, but she finally directed me toward the Nakano subway stop where an indoor mall was supposedly located just across the plaza outside. I didn't have a lot of free or even flexible time, but I was able to get there one night after wrap to frantically run through a couple of the stalls before closing time, blowing all of my per diem on a few of the Marmit figures from the Godzilla pantheon. So, this time around, I was looking forward to a more leisurely Nakano shopping experience, but was thoroughly crestfallen to discover that the spot had long since become blown out by tourists and was ridiculously overcrowded and too difficult to peruse enjoyably. It was no longer the little known collector haven it once was, but then again what can you expect to happen after 20-odd years of the goddamn internet. Hrumpf. Anyway, I finally settled on buying one relatively inexpensive vinyl figure from a Mandarake storefront. I know absolutely nothing about the maker or origin—haven't even bothered to do any research—but its strikingly prominent facial feature was the deciding factor considering how much personal involvement I've had with this skeletal visage of VCJ's since the late '80s…
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1. There was a certain level of giddiness about this news within Powell as some assumed Gonz’s exit—as well as Mike Vallely’s—was a signal that Steve Rocco’s supposed house of cards was starting to topple. Obviously that couldn’t have been farther from the truth seeing how history eventually played out for all of the players involved.