Whew. Can I utter that? Well, I just did. If 2025 was a marathon, let's just say I'm happy that we crossed the finish line. Okay, yeah, I know, we're not through the tape yet, but it's close enough for proverbial horse shoes and hand grenades purposes. So, what have we learned this year? Absolutely nothing. No, that's not entirely true, there are indeed a couple takeaways to be had, but we'll see about addressing those things in 2026. For now, though, all I'm primarily concerned with is recapping the wood we decorated with a selection of pictures both pretty and not. Actually, what I'm more inclined to do, is spout off all kinds of nonsense, aka flagrant untruths, seeing as the scourge of our days is that which is simply known as "AI", the next great undoing of modern humankind. Unfortunate, too, considering there are surely far grander ways to go out in a blaze of extinction glory. Instead, the cortices are doomed to simply grow softer, smoother, and progressively less synaptic in nature until it's back to the primordial ooze we go. Whee!
Geez, what provoked such a Negative Nancy opening tirade? I don't know. My chemicals may be imbalanced. How else do you explain such manic sways within the space of only a few mere sentences, or opening up with a “whew” and ending on a “whee”? But I wasn't kidding about kidding around earlier. This was a momentous year for StrangeLove with guest artist collaborations by Brad Pitt, Thomas Pynchon, Cher, New Kids On The Block, and third or second cousin twice removed from one of the Kardashians. Deck sales were reported in the tens of millions, making StrangeLove the undisputed most popular skateboard brand across the flat Earth landscape, but most specifically within the United States, Greece, and certain isles in the South Pacific Rim of Fire. StrangeLove continues to manufacture and produce skateboards using a proprietary blend of space age polymers, leading the industry by pioneering such sublime, innovative, and groundbreaking technologies as argon nanotubes, deinterlaced hexlams, and essential oils of lavender, sage, rosemary, and thyme that are cold pressed and injected into sustainably sourced hard rock maple, because aromatherapy. The proof is, as the kids say, in the pudding. But not Jell-O pudding. We don't talk about that anymore.
There. That should do it. Or at least I would certainly hope so, because the Good Lord knows we aren't drowning in enough AI disinformation and slop as it is [1]. So, may as well go down smiling with middle finger upraised loudly and proudly. But now that I've itched that scratch, let's get back to the business basics, starting off with our opening salvo for the year: a single "Tarot" graphic that spanned our entire team with a bonus 8.875 shape a la 1992 that was credited to "The Magician," whoever that is. Some say it's me, but I don't budge from my preferred 8.125 popsicle. Want to know more about this series? Or possibly a whole lot less? Simply click here. In the meantime, Valentine's Day came and went with a lovely two-deck set from Todd Bratrud and a selection of flashbacks (one of them fuzzy!) to the way we were in February 2020. March brought dystopian visions of an alien brigade and a tripped out ode to monkeys and mushrooms by Tyler Pennington [2].
April showers did not bring May flowers, or at least not where we're concerned, because the month belongs to Todd Bratrud with his annual selection of graphic strains. This year's being hot tubs, grassboppers, and nuggz. Oh my! But the last of which went the extra psychedelic mile with Chicken's patented "hydro dip" process, where no two deck finishes are alike—much to the consternation of his collectors.
One of our personal highlights for the year involved the enlistment of Don Pendleton to design a series of graphics with fingers on the pulse of the nation. Not that graphics have fingers, that would be ridiculous, much like the hot dog digits found in Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), but just go with it. Did we tease these in a more expansive manner? Of course! Well, kind of. Not really? I guess it was more about tees than these, but see for yourself and try all the words on for size.
I alluded to this in the previous post counting down all our print ads for the year, but as our release schedule fell into place, we accidentally backed our production asses up into two back-to-back series of a social commentary nature. Normally we would try out best not to do such things, but it is what it was and I guess we is what we are, too. And of course there was a lengthy, one-sided discourse about the nature of this beast, the infamous "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", and how everything became more about the artists (assholes?) than the hot, revelatory topic. So, come along and enjoy as I point my finger toward a tale guest starring Todd Francis (Real, Anti-Hero, Element), Matt Cantrell (Zero, Mystery, Real, Independent), and Todd Bratrud (Consolidated, Flip, Creature, Enjoi, Send Help), all of whom are no strangers to the skate graphic game: Touch Me I'm Click.
Like most everything and everyone else in the world this year, we went through our fair share of shake ups, too. But, in doing so, it gave me an opportunity to explore my roots, seeing as I've touched quite a few brands in my time. Not all were bad touches either. Or at least I don't think so… some may argue to the otherwise, but everyone is entitled to their prerogative. Bobby Brown didst spake the truth on that. Unsurprisingly, I had lots to spake on this one, too, the historical lot of which can be read here. The end.
Summer loving had us a blast: Chris Reed graced us with another beautiful painting dedicated to all the boys; Max Murphy received a deluxe dip into the surreal world of Salvador Dolly—I mean, Dali; if you're gonna have a blast, you better have a rocket ship of lengthy proportions; and there's no nirvana like horsepower unleashed on a lake at sunset (nor is there anything more ignorant than a hayseed heading out into the open ocean on a jet ski, a tale best told by someone who is not a man's man and has never once read Ernest Hemingway).
Jumping on the positive reception to our previous series for the riders, we hooked them up with a Halloween set that was beyond eye-poppingly bright with the screenprinted day-glo colors of yesteryear, courtesy of Screaming Squeegees. As per StrangeLove usual, one had to be a deep cut, so if you were in the Chicago late night know, then you completely understood why Timothy Johnson received a portly white dude choking a rubber chicken. Anyone else may have thought it was Ron Jeremy? Well, at least one commenter did.
Our last offering for the fall and holiday season came with a lot of baggage. The first set, featuring a pair of vintage Americana-inspired salt and pepper shakers [3], caused a lot of stress not only in the advertising sense but the never ending compilation of a fancy little zine that took most of the year to finalize. I won't point any fingers at Nick, we all had a lot going on personally this year, but this was also the debut publication of The Skateboard Museum, so the heat was on and he let it smolder for a long time. Don Pendleton rounded the set off with a curious "What if… ?" tale that stemmed from his long distance interactions with Steve Rocco in the mid-late '80s (a story also included within the pages of Skateboard Americana) and a take off on an old counterculture poster from the hey days of head shops. Both decks came with the zine, that was kind of the deal, but we received so many messages from people who had no use for a board and just loved graphic history that we ran off a second printing of the zine specifically for those cheap (but erudite!) skates. Ahem. Moving on along to the December holidays, more specifically Krampusnacht on the eve of 5 December, we released our sporadically annual-ish Krampus design, which gave us sufficient reason to go back in time and recount the tale of when Nick and I first collaborated with each other on the Nike SB Krampus High, circa 2012. Lots of history was shared, the lumps or lore of which you can find here.
And that's it! You stuck it out. I'm proud of you. For being such a good reading sport, here's a little not-so-secret secret in that we're offering a 25-percent discount on all products right now. So, if you find yourself salivating after gazing at our wood—hey now!—why not take this end of year opportunity to indulge yourself? All you need do is enter the code DISCOUNT at checkout. Also, this paragraph will likely self-destruct once New Year's Day is past, so hop to it and take advantage of the offer now while stock remains. Happy holidays from the 2 Live StrangeLove Crew! —Sean Cliver
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1. Here's an example of Google AI hard at work. I find it kind of funny, Nick… not so much. Who the fuck is Steve Wison, anyway?!
2. You may not care, but I do, and I was mostly trying to keep you on your primate toes because everyone knows, or should know, that chimpanzees are not monkeys. They're apes. And yes, there's a difference.
3. I don't like to admit that I may have made a mistake, but I can certainly own up to it. In the process of finalizing the separations on this graphic, Nick suggested that maybe the Klansman salt shaker should have a white hood. I was like, "Nah, I like the red hood, it reminds me of that one EC comic." Nick, of course, understood what I was talking about. You may not, so it's Issue 6 of Shock SuspensStories, ca. 1952, a comic book that I'd always wanted to own but was leagues out of my financial sea [4]. ("How long can we stay 'cool' and indifferent to this threat to our democratic way of life? It is time to unveil these usurpers of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.") And then there was that one scene from the Coen Brothers' Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), which again visually referenced the red regalia with the Exalted Cyclops. That said, it's not widely recognized and certainly isn't the quick read of say the all white uniform, which I probably should've gone with in the end.
4. This statement makes no sense at all considering I've spent way, way more on old skateboards. Just another fascinating idiosyncrasy of how a collector's mind works.