Amazing Americana: 80s Bones Brigade Skate Ads

In the early 80s, skateboarding veteran Stacy Peralta brought in Craig Stecyk III (who Dave has collaborated with in the past) to art direct the first of the Powell-Peralta Skateboards "Bones Brigade" advertisements. This was a skate team formed by Peralta that included the likes of Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero and Mike McGill. Yeah, THEM.

These guys were still relatively unknown, young, gangly kids who were just starting to create a splash in the skating community. Peralta wanted to do things differently - both in how the team was run and how they were represented.

Stecyk, avoiding "team" and "skating" altogether, came up with the name "Bones Brigade." At the time, skateboarding ads at the time were boring product shots and Stecyk wanted to create something absolutely new and different. In the words of Peralta, he wanted to, "Let the magazines show skateboarding. We show ideas and images."

For the first photo shoot Stecyk drank a bottle of Mezcal, cut a Cadillac in half and lit it on fire.

The rest is history. These kids established modern skating as we know it. These magazine ads are an amazing piece of design history that capture how creative they were in advancing the sport.

The "Bones Brigade: An Autobiography" is a must watch documentary chronicling the whole movement.