oh shit… the elephant is still in the room

Okay, so this particular post needs an introduction of sorts. Granted, I probably didn't need to spell that out as such. Could've easily just jumped right into it without stating something to the inane effect like, "Hey, I'm going to jump right into this," but how else are you going to know some dumb human actually wrote this and not the AI every technocrat is attempting to violently force down our collective throat? Anyway, all deliberate ignorance aside, I'm bucking company policy to excerpt a choice slice of Nick Halkias's print article from the Skateboard Americana zine due to a recent experience of mine in New Orleans. You see, while drinking our way through the French Quarter this past April, my wife and I popped in at Humidity skate shop, and in the midst of a lively conversation about politically-oriented graphics with the owner, Phil Santosuosso, he suddenly asked, "So, uh, what was up with that 'Republican Kickturn Party' board?" I had to laugh, albeit awkwardly so, because out of all the things we've done this is by far the one that has confused the most—and not at all in a good way. I did my best to explain the wildly misunderstood "inside joke" nature of the graphic to Phil, but now that I've teed up the debacle for everyone else, here's Nick to take a bigger swing in his own words. —Sean

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The Republican Kickturn Party was by far the dumbest idea I’ve ever had and the dumbest thing I’ve ever talked Sean into doing. The “RKP”—how I’ll reference the graphic going forward—was a response to all the customers and social media commenters that asked when we would be doing a graphic making fun of Joe Biden, Obama, Kamala Harris, or any other Democratic politician, pointing out that our politics seem one-sided and how they hoped to see something less partisan from us.

After kicking around ideas for a couple years, I found myself in a small town outside of Atlanta, GA, with my friend Thomas Taylor (RIP). He wanted to check out a backyard ramp where a small gathering was taking place. Now if you didn’t know Thomas, he was 100-percent. He skated his ass off and expected you to do the same. In pain, overweight, hurt—it didn’t matter. He had no patience for excuses. So, if you considered yourself a skater, you were gonna get down. I’d get worried when he was in this kind of mood, because I often ended up at the bottom of something cement praying I didn’t have to get taken to the emergency room by one of my not-so-sober pals.

Anyway, we pull up to this ramp. Trucks are scattered around, there’s some smoke from a grill, some younger dudes are smoking weed in a drum circle, and I notice a Trump flag on the back of a truck. Immediately I hear, “Oh, these guys… they take an hour padding up for a kickturn party.” Now I’m not knocking anyone who loves to skate at any size—I’m an extremely large fellow as it is, panda bear-shaped at best—but these words and the tense drive made me burst out with laughter: A Republican Kickturn Party! I remember trying to explain my idea for an RKP graphic to Thomas on the ride home. He didn’t quite get it.

Months later, as Donald Trump gained in popularity, we started seeing more stickers on cars, more Trump flags flying at backyard jams. The RKP was spreading. I saw it myself in Tampa and heard of sightings from coast-to-coast: 300-pound guys who skated in full pads that were inspired by Trump. I felt like a distant cousin to these guys… same size, loved skateboarding and punk rock, and on a good day dropping in and kickturning felt like a session. Hell, a slash grind and a fakie rock makes me feel like I’m working on a comeback! When I explained my idea for the graphic to Sean—an elephant, padded up, sunglasses, camo cargo shorts, Vans, mid-kickturn in pool—it made him laugh. He humored me by drawing it up. The shape was inspired by a Jeff Grosso deck: pointy nose, wide tail, sharp rail edge on top, and gorgeous wheel wells in red, raw, and blue. The top logo, a play on the GOP logo, was a marvelous cherry on top. 

For some reason I thought pairing the promotional deck image with the Comedian of Watchmen fame would help sell the fact that it's all just a joke, but nope. It most certainly did not. In fact, the only people who laughed were those on the very inside of the inside joke, none of whom were our conscious, caring consumers.

The board was released in summer of 2024, and I thought it would come and go quickly; a fantastic deck to setup with a funny, satirical graphic, fitting to sit beside any politically-charged deck released over the last 30 years. What came shortly after, though, was some of the wildest feedback and questions we’ve ever received from fans, friends, customers, skate shop owners, and basically anyone else who saw it. “Why? How could you? Are you right wing nut jobs? Did you join the Dark Side?” Apparently, we’d done such a good job that we were now being seen as the radical right. Very few saw the humor in it.

As we neared Christmastime, old friends were calling up for our yearly holiday check-ins. One of these pals—someone I’ve admired from long before we became friends, his own work creative, brilliant, and full of social commentary—when we spoke, he brought up his disappointment in the graphic. The fact that it wasn’t obvious what we stood for and that the people we were teasing would appropriate the image as theirs. I hung up a little heartbroken. He was right. Things had changed. Nobody was getting it. The RKP wasn’t coming off as satire… it was coming off as a proud statement. The reality is every day we were watching people we knew and loved become entangled in a different ideology. People were changing. So it was only fair that people would question if we were changing too. By the start of the new year we pulled all the remaining decks and tees off the site. Still have them, too.  —Nick Halkias