How 1990s NYC Skateboarding Culture Birthed 'Supreme'

In the 80s and 90s, New York City's skateboarding scene was wild and gritty, and seemingly unable to be commercialized. And then the streetwear brand Supreme came along. Director Josh Swade discusses the new 30 for 30 documentary “Empire Skate,” which tells the story of 1990s New York City skate culture that inspired a global brand.

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Coming up on the show tomorrow, July 10th marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Scopes Trial, which centered on whether or not evolution could be taught in public schools. We'll talk about the legacy of this monumental case and its relevance to today with Brenda Wineapple, author of the book Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation.

That's in the future. Let's get this hour started with some history that's both more recent and closer to home.

[music]

My guest is director Josh Swade. His new 30 for 30 documentary, Empire Skate, tells the origin story of a group of kids who turned the streets of New York into their personal skate park. It started out as a tribe with its own rules and rights. It had roots in the 80s, when skate shops were just small, more like clubhouses than stores. By the 90s, these kids were hanging out on Lafayette street, working at a one of a kind shop, called Supreme. This was before Supreme was a global fashion giant with lines around the block.

This was when the shop had a reputation for being hostile to customers. Let's say you didn't want to shop there unless you had street cred or were giving the employees a 30% under the table kickback. Using archival footage, Swade captures the attitude that was unapologetically New York City. As skateboarding moved from underground into streets and gained mainstream acceptance, brands like Supreme grew from a local skate shop into a fashion icon, pushing streetwear into the spotlight.

Listeners, we want to hear about some of your memories of New York City skate scene through the 1980s and the 1990s. Which shop you hung out at, the spots you skated, or the people who defined the scene for you. Call us at 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC, or you can let us know via social media, @allofitwnyc. You can watch Empire Skate now on Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu. Josh Swade joins me now. Hey, Josh.

Josh Swade: Hey. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing well. First of all, do you skateboard?

Josh Swade: Yes, of course. Of course.

Alison Stewart: I have to imagine you'd have to skateboard. When did you start?

Josh Swade: When I was about 10 years old.

Alison Stewart: What did you think of skateboarding when you started?

Josh Swade: Well, skating is magical. It sucks you into not just riding down the street on a plank and four wheels, but it sucks you into a culture and it kind of teaches you how to dress and how to communicate with other skaters. It changes the way you see the world and it just becomes a big part of your identity. That's never left me.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn about the history of New York skateboarding that really flew in the face of common knowledge?

Josh Swade: It just doubled down on this idea that these kids in this city didn't have space and they didn't have what they had in Southern California, which was really forever the origin, the center point, the ground zero for skateboarding. They had to be improvisational, but also have a lot of courage, because they were doing things in the street that took a lot of just fearlessness.

For a New York brand of skate to evolve over time meant that these were kids that were standing on the shoulders of other kids, who were attacking the pavement, the curbs, a park bench, and a ledge in ways that was just dangerous, and very much to the spirit and attitude of New York City.

Alison Stewart: What was the first seed of the film for you?

Josh Swade: For me, being adjacent to this culture in the 90s downtown. I just thought there was an unbelievable story to tell about these kids in their skate shop. I also really love the idea of pitching this to a brand like ESPN specifically, their iconic 30 for 30 label, because it had such a big and larger cultural touch point, given how big Supreme has gotten. It felt like a really cool, different way for 30 for 30 to do a documentary, like a very non obvious 30 for 30 film, because it's not baseball, it's not basketball, it's not football.

To their credit, they really saw the vision right away and got behind it.

Alison Stewart: When did you know which way the story was going to go? That it was going to wind up at Supreme?

Josh Swade: Very early on, that was just sort of the meeting place and the clubhouse for these guys, where they got together and decided where to go skate, and just where they came back to after a hard day of skating, and just-- it was home. If this place is home, that becomes the hook, the narrative through line. The place from which this culture builds. Really, really early on, we discovered that there was no way to tell this story without the shop.

Alison Stewart: My guest is director Josh Swade. We're discussing his documentary Empire Skate, about the group of kids who helped define New York City skate culture. You can watch it now on Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu. We want to hear from you listeners. Do you have memories of the New York City skate scene from the 80s and the 90s? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. One of the things that makes this documentary so worth watching is all of the archival footage. Where did this archival footage come from?

Josh Swade: Yes, look, it's lucky and fortunate for someone who's trying to make a film, because skaters, in a lot of ways, were trailblazers. They were people that had cameras, the sort of camera you could walk into, say, a Best Buy, or-- New Yorkers will certainly remember The Wiz, back in the day, spend a few hundred bucks and get a camera, and then follow your friends around as they try and do their tricks.

The beauty of it is, those cameras oftentimes stay on past the day of skateboarding. They stay on when they're hanging out, when they're having their downtime. It gives you just this richness and this gold mine of a time and a place that really speaks to skaters in particular, because they had cameras. They all wanted to capture their tricks on cameras. There's just too much of this footage that exists, and it's so fortunate we have it all.

Alison Stewart: When you think about it, they were the original content creators.

Josh Swade: That's right. That's right. They were ahead of their time and they were filming everything.

Alison Stewart: The underground skate scene in the city offered a belonging and a purpose for kids from some pretty rough background. These kids became each other's found family in many ways. How much of this was about self expression on the board and how much of it was about their survival as human beings and human souls?

Josh Swade: Well, it was, as we, I think, do a good job in the film, of showing the audience, skateboarding, for them, was like the ultimate release. You're right. Most of them, if not all of them, came from really difficult home situations, broken homes, abusive parents. Many were latchkey kids and they had, being young people, no control over the circumstances they were born into. Yet, once they got on the board, a real sense of freedom drove them, and that happiness that came from just riding became an escape.

That's a story that's pretty bespoke to New York City, skating, it was the ultimate ticket to go wherever you want. You don't have to be stuck in your home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. You can go, suddenly, to Manhattan, find your crew, and together, you guys can go explore. It creates a bond, it creates family, and yes, the self expression comes as they get better, hone their skills, and find their own-- the thing that makes each one of them an artist and an athlete. Skaters are really both of those things. They're artists and athletes all at once.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. This is Mitchell, who is calling in from Manhattan. Hey Mitchell, thanks for making the time to call All Of It. You're on the air.

Mitchell: Glad to participate. Skateboarding started for me in around 1962, using a 2x4 and a broken in half steel skate with steel wheels. We were in Far Rockaway in the Edgemere projects. We used to ride the boards sitting down, tandem, leaning our feet onto the opposite person's board, and we would lean back and forth, and go down the hill in front of our project buildings.

It eventually led me to looking for the advanced skateboards of the day that were sold in Central Dive Shop in Jamaica, Queens, from Hobie Skateboards and Hobie Surfboards. Eventually became a surfer, went out to California, worked in a surf shop, sold skateboards with Chicago trucks and Cadillac wheels. That's when it turned to urethane after the ceramic wheels, used to stop on rocks, get thrown off the skateboard, and get all kinds of rashes on your skin from scraping against the sidewalks.

However, as the culture developed and I was selling skateboards, it all of a sudden really blossomed. When I was living out in California, we were always in search of the best hills to skate. It was quite a community of guys and gals that were skating. When it started getting really popular in the 70s, 80s and 90s, it got to be all the trick skating, all the aerial stuff, and riding-- How should I call them? I guess they would be considered banisters and staircases, or outside staircases. I'm still skating at 70 years old.

Alison Stewart: Love that. Thank you so much for calling, Mitchell. Love that. He's skating at 70. I want to talk about the community that came up around these community clubhouses, where the kids, the young skaters, were going. They were small and they were mighty. They were skate shops. Why were they so important to the community?

Josh Swade: Well, I think in a lot of ways-- by the way, Mitchell, thank you for sharing that. Good story.

Alison Stewart: Right?

Josh Swade: That was an incredible story. You're an OG of New York City skateboarding, for sure. I think in a lot of ways, they were looked at in the beginning as nuisances. They were in people's way. They were scaring folks walking down the street. This wasn't a city that had welcomed this activity with open arms, to put it mildly. They were really, really outcasts in this city. Our story shows that history.

You get to the end, in modern times, and the city has done an unbelievable job changing its attitude towards this sport and this pastime, with skate parks now littering our five boroughs. It's beautiful and amazing to see, but it wasn't always like that. This is a story about-- [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: You got plenty of local officers telling kids, "Get off my front. Get off my property with your skateboard." [chuckles]

Josh Swade: Exactly. It is a really cool story about a changing city and a city that changes its attitude. We are one of the great skateboarding cities now. That's certainly a testament to people, going all the way back to people like Mitchell and continuing on through the decades. These 90 kids brought it all home.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Philip, who's calling in from Manhasset, New York. Hey, Philip, you're on the air.

Philip: Hey, sure. I'm from Flatbush, Brooklyn, and I just recall, all the time, [unintelligible 00:14:08], Bed Stuy, all over the place, meet up kids from Lower East Side and from Harlem, and just meet up at the Brooklyn Banks. It was amazing. I don't know if any of the listeners-- I would echo everything the last caller said. We were counterculture, everybody didn't like skaters, and we just took over the streets, just enjoyed it, and really, really just hung out.

There's no cell phones. Everybody knew where to meet. Meet at the Brooklyn Banks. The cops shut it down years ago. I'm so amazed by the way the city is like. Embrace the culture. Building skateboards for kids now. Listen, I'm like 50 years old. I still have my skateboard too, Santa Cruz. Wonderful. I just love it.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling, Philip. We have a question for you. The text says, "Will you please ask your guest his favorite New York City skater of the 90s?"

Josh Swade: My favorite what?

Alison Stewart: Your favorite New York City skater from the 90s. Of all the people you met and interviewed for the film.

Josh Swade: Now you're putting me on the spot. So many of them did things uniquely themselves, so it's hard to-- It's like comparing great artists. Ryan Hickey is a guy that-- They called him the King of New York. He skated so fast and boisterous, [unintelligible 00:15:49] so big. He was a guy that I could watch for endless amounts of time. He stands out to me as just like someone who really, really, in the 90s, brought home what it meant to be a New York City street skateboarder.

Alison Stewart: Yes, you have a lot of the OG skaters in the film. Jefferson Pang, Ryan Hickey, as you mentioned, Javier Nunez. Was there anything that they told you that surprised you about their experience?

Josh Swade: Well, I think that their allegiance to the brand and the shop. All these years later. You're talking about 30 years after it's opened. It opened in 1994, and here we are, 31 years later, and I thought we'd run into some people who were bitter about how big it got and had a lot of negative feelings towards just the exploitation of this little tiny shop that they made cool, that they called home.

Really, everyone is just so celebratory and so complimentary about what Supreme meant to them and what it still means to them, that it was really heartwarming.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Empire Skate. It's part of the 30 for 30 series. My guest is director Josh Swade. Do you have any memories of the New York City skate scene from the 80s and 90s? We want to hear about them. Give us a call at 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. After the break, we'll get into Supreme.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We are discussing the documentary Empire Skate, about a group of kids who helped define New York City skate culture. You can watch it now on Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu. I'm speaking with its director, Josh Swade. We've gotten to 1993, 1994. There's sort of a resurgence around skateboarding. It's got a new energy. One person, James Jebbia, saw an opportunity.

He transformed the skate clubhouse to a retail space under the heading Supreme. What was the original business strategy and what was different about Supreme?

Josh Swade: Well, I think what made it so unique immediately was, it didn't look like any skate shop before, it looked like an art gallery. You walked in there and the products that they did sell were against the wall in the neatest, most pristine way they could be presented. The skateboards themselves were displayed as if they were pieces of art. The ceiling was really high. You had white walls and hardwood floors. Before then, a skate shop was like a workshop.

It was the sort of place that was dirty, grimy, and gritty, and had bearings, trucks, tools, and crap everywhere. This was the antithesis of what James Jebbia envisioned for his shop, Supreme. That alone made it really, really different and unique.

Alison Stewart: James Jebbia is kind of missing from the film. Why did he like to stay behind the scenes?

Josh Swade: Well, he's a guy that's wildly private. I think that mystique has been a big part of the magic of the brand. It, in my mind, is incredibly refreshing. It's such a far turn from the culture we currently live in, where everyone's posting every last thing on social media. He just isn't that. He comes from a different time and place, and that mystery behind him really added to the brand, especially as it started to explode as a legitimate fashion house.

It started as a skate shop, but the clothes, the hats, the sweatshirts, and all the gear became so coveted that it really became this brand new idea in fashion. The way they released product was trailblazing as well. They would release new capsule collections every week. That drove demand. There was a real supply demand sort of marketing masterclass that was brought into play here, that no one had ever done before.

That just drove people nuts trying to get the stuff. Then this reselling becomes a whole market. It becomes a big explosive business in and of itself. It's not just about getting the stuff, it's about selling the stuff for a profit. There's this micro economy that gets birthed in downtown New York, that's now global.

Alison Stewart: Yes, it's interesting, because Supreme's Clientele changed over time, and people got used to the drop, buying, and reselling. What does it say about culture, maybe even counterculture, that something so raw and local could become so collectible and commodified?

Josh Swade: Yes, yes. We've seen it with high end couture brands, or ladies' handbags. There's certain items over the years where, gosh, if you can get your hands on it at retail, it's just going to go up in value. For that idea to come into streetwear, at the time, was unheard of. Sneaker culture, the proliferation of sneakers, sneaker collecting, and sneaker reselling, and the secondary marketplace also plays a huge role in this, because collaborations come into play, and suddenly, it's not just about Supreme.

It's about Supreme making a Nike dunk. It's about Supreme Louis Vuitton. It's about Supreme and another great brand coming together to create something that suddenly brings in two different audiences, and then that just drives up the demand to a whole nother level. Like I said, it really is like a masterclass in marketing that was birthed at this tiny skate shop in downtown New York at a time where-- We think of SoHo, New York, and we see all these stores there, it's kind of like this shopping Mecca.

In 1994, it wasn't that. It's hard for people to imagine, but without Supreme, you wonder what SoHo looks like today, I think it looks quite, quite different. I really do.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call from Ariel, who's calling in from Brooklyn. Hey, Ariel, thanks for calling in.

Ariel: Hey, Alison, how are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing great.

Ariel: Great, great. I was just reminiscing and this brings back so many deep memories. We grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn. Our shop, like a clubhouse, like you mentioned, was Marine Park Bikes. Back in the day, we would skate in Brooklyn. We'd skate in the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village. Quarter pipes would pop up everywhere. There used to be one in Red Hook. There used to be on on 6th Avenue where there was a gas station that got closed down, and boom, there's a quarter pipe, and guys would be flying off of it.

Awesome. Washington Square Park also was a central area for guys to skate. We built a half pipe right in the shadow of King's Plaza in Brooklyn. Guys would be flying over the top of this thing, and you could see them from Flatbush Avenue, just driving by. It was amazing. We made papers. We made it into the center fold of the Daily News magazine, some local papers, and music. Skating, even snowboarding started back then, in the early 80s. We got one of the first fish fin snowboards in our shop. Just great times, and great memories.

Alison Stewart: Thanks a lot for calling in. We got this text that says, "Somewhere along the way on my commute from Queens to Staten Island, I used to cross a drawbridge, which occasionally was open. Unforgettable scene. Skateboard artists waiting for the bridge to open, and when the roadway went up, they would come tearing along, go up the risen roadway, curve around and come down. How the heck they got away with that, I'll never know, but it was impressive." [chuckles]

That's such a good text. The world at large became more used to, more accustomed with skateboarding, through the film Kids. It was in 1994. It was an indie film. It came out, it was controversial, coming of age story, surrounding skateboarders in Washington Square Park. Some of the skateboarders became local lowercase c celebrities. One, how long did that attention last, and what did that attention do to skate culture?

Josh Swade: Well, the film came out about a year after Supreme opened. It really brought such a huge amount of interest to New York City skateboarding because, like you said, it was a really controversial film. It was a film that made waves for a lot of different reasons, the AIDS crisis being one of them. One of the beautiful things about the film is just the lens it provided the outside world to this building culture in New York City, this building skate culture.

It did make stars, especially for guys like Harold Hunter and Justin Pierce, who were leads in the film. It made them not just New York famous, but, Justin Pierce went on to act in several other films. It was a launching pad for not just those two individuals, but the entire crew. Its significance, you really can't-- It was a big cultural moment in the country, but in particular in New York City. What it did for these guys who, before that movie, were just local skaters, it really put them on the map in a very big way.

Alison Stewart: In the archival footage, we see how dangerous it was to skate in the city at that time. Cars screeching to a halt, people getting beat up for interfering with skating. How did New Yorkers feel about the city skate cult back in the 90s, when it was blowing up?

Josh Swade: Yes, I don't think they felt great about it. You're walking down the street, suddenly, four guys are coming at you, or coming from behind you. It's scary. It's daunting to interact in a city where everyone's managing a few square inches as they go about their way. You know New Yorkers. New Yorkers are very emphatic about their right of way and are not the kinds of folks who historically are patient enough to sit and wait if someone does a trick in front of them.

There was this give and take. How do we coexist here? How do we live in a tight space that allows me to get where I want to go, but allows you the freedom to express yourself on your skateboard? In the 90s, there was a lot of animosity towards these folks. With time, like anything, they became accepted. I think their value, their artistry, just everything they stood for became celebrated more than disliked or disdained, so, finally, people got on the same page as New Yorkers, like, "Hey, we can make this work."

Even still today, you see skaters riding down a busy street and they're getting flak from passerbys. It happens every day, everywhere in the city, still.

Alison Stewart: That's a little part of it, though, don't you think?

Josh Swade: It is, for sure.

Alison Stewart: You should watch Empire Skate. It's another 30 for 30 from ESPN. You can watch it on ESPN+, Disney+ and Hulu. I have been speaking with Josh Swade. Thanks for joining us, Josh.

Josh Swade: Thank you so much for having me.