![]() He was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of skateboarding and his cutting wit, and he exerted his will over the industry well beyond the years when most people put the board down. Separating the kooks from the rest was Mr. But in skateboarding, he added, “it doesn’t matter how good you are if you’re a kook.” Vitello said, using an epithet skaters wield against those who fail to grasp the unspoken rules of the subculture. “You score 40 points a game in basketball, it doesn’t matter if you’re a kook,” Mr. It is a chaotic subculture that requires arbiters of taste to draw boundaries, which Mr. Skateboarding at the professional level is a peculiar enterprise, one without official rules and few contests that any skaters really care about - something that can happen anytime, anywhere. Phelps became more or less synonymous with the magazine, which was not always an easy thing to be: Thrasher’s motto was “Skate and Destroy.” Its vision of skateboarding was unrelentingly gnarly it had a recurring feature in which readers were encouraged to send in pictures of broken bones and open wounds. (He was subsequently banned from Thrasher.) Phelps had labeled “Most Annoying” in the previous year’s issue showed up at Thrasher’s offices and punched him in the face. In 1996, a professional skateboarder whom Mr. Phelps banned skaters he didn’t like from his pages and mocked others in the annual T-Eddy Awards. ![]() His magazine, a San Francisco-based monthly with a circulation of about 100,000 and thick with ads, is knowing but abrasive. Phelps was at the top of Thrasher’s masthead for half his life, a position that made him both loved and hated in the small, insular world of skateboarding. Phelps would be cremated with his skateboard. “It was more than a hobby or a form of transportation for him - it was his oxygen.” “Just as we need food and water to survive, Jake needed skateboarding to get his blood pumping,” Tony Vitello, Thrasher’s publisher, wrote in the post. ![]() His death was announced by Thrasher in an Instagram post, which did not specify a cause. Jake Phelps, the caustic, funny and brash longtime editor of skateboarding’s most revered magazine, Thrasher, a position that made him a tastemaker in a subculture known for resenting authority, was found dead on March 14 at his home in San Francisco. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |