If that's the first thing that comes to mind when you see me posting the crap out of the latest edition of Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art, well… shit. I can't blame you. It's been a long, sordid publishing journey since the original book first came out in November 2004, one that has involved many alterations and iterations, perhaps to your own irritation at times. For my part, I never intended for the book to become a "living document", so to speak, but I just couldn't help myself. I'd like to place the blame on my OCD—a wholly undiagnosed case, mind you—but it's the only real excuse I can run with so there it will rest. Anyway, enough of the half-ass mea culpas, let's get it on with the fun stuff.
Out with the old… …in with the new!
The short story behind this "new" book is that the "old" book was permanently put out to pasture over at Gingko Press. I couldn't blame them for their decision. The niche book trade has only gotten worse and worse through the years, both for publishers and retailers. Amazon is the easiest place to point a waggling you-fucking-fuckers finger, but the truth is everything in the world has just become more and more expensive, e.g. raw materials, printing, freight and shipping, and the production costs keep on going up and up. Consequently, every project has to be more carefully scrutinized prior to doubling down on a budgetary commitment. So, at the end of this book's day, the consensus was that Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art had at long last run its course in print. Unfortunately, I wasn't at all ready to let go—not just yet at least—so when the publishing rights reversed back into my lap I decided to seize the day. Yep, you got it, carpe diem and all that typically tattooed Latin schtick.
The thing is, Nick and I had already been talking about expanding into more printable products, like zines and books, so this seemed like a fine opportunity to get our feet wet. David Lopes, my longtime contact at Gingko, had kindly put us in touch with a printer overseas, so that took care of the hard part. The rest was up to me and the goodwill of the book's original designer, Eric Simpson, to dive back into the old layouts and spruce things up in what I came to affectionately call a "remastered" manner. This primarily meant replacing several previous deck images with others of a more high resolution (and ideally alternate colorway) nature [1], and correcting a few niggling typos and errors that had been brought to my attention over the decades.
But that's not all! Sixteen pages were added to the print quote, bringing the overall count up to 260, so I sent questions out to a select few people I wanted to squeeze into the historical mix of eras. Don Pendleton (Alien Workshop), Winston Tseng (Enjoi), and Esao Andrews (Baker) were at the top of my list, as well as a spotlight on Rookie Skateboards, the company founded by Catharine Lyons and Elska von Hatzfeldt in NYC, circa 1995. I then tapped skateboarding's resident intellectual, Ted Barrow, to draft a new foreword, and skateboarding's premiere photographer Grant Brittain for a possible new (old) shot suited to re-skin the cover, both of whom graciously came through and delivered. Other page shuffling took place to make selfish room for an "addendum" that stitched up my own adventures in skateboard art along with an embarrassing spread of old sketches of mine from the Powell Peralta days that a friend in Wisconsin had unwittingly archived and only rediscovered long after the two Disposable books had been published. Oh! And a Paul Zitzer quote, because germ, the best intentionally worst graphic ever. So, all in all, a much more well-rounded reading and visual experience… if I do say so myself. Which I just did, all obvious biases aside.
While I'm here and confusion still abounds damn near 20 years later, YES, this new particular volume and The Disposable Skateboard Bible are two COMPLETELY SEPARATE AND DISTINCT BOOKS. So yes, you simply cannot have one without the owning other. They're companions. Whereas the first has a near entire emphasis on the history as told by the very artists who shaped the "visual mythology" of skateboarding, the Bible pertains more to the slap happy pursuit of skateboarding collecting, featuring an extensive pictorial of boards from the late '50s up through the '90s but also mops up the histories from a few of the people I was unable to previously connect with, namely VCJ, Chuck Hults, Mark Gonzales, Christian Cooper, and Greg Evans. On that note, The Disposable Skateboard Bible is still available through Gingko Press. Want to obtain one? Click here.
And if you were one of the astute few who picked up on my idle social mentions that this remastered edition is the last printing of Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art, please know that is indeed a very factual and true statement. This is it, the end of the long and winding road, so get it now while it's in stock. —Sean Cliver
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1. Want to know more about this footnote and why it's here? Basically, I put some truck stop board porn together based on my behind-the-scenes exploits putting the books together, wherein I frequently reference how I shot the majority of the first book on a Sony 4.1 megapixel point-and-shoot camera, circa 2003–2004. Purchase Disposable Undressed here!
2. For what it's worth, our subsidiary tentacle from StrangeLove is now The Skateboard Museum Press, whose first foray into printed matter came with the Skateboard Americana zine that Thrasher's very own editor Michael Burnett hailed as an appendix worthy accompaniment to the Disposable books. What does that mean? Find out for yourself by gambling 15 bucks here.
