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New Deal Skateboards are back

New Deal Skateboards are back Steve Douglas interview black sheep store new-deal-skateboards
New Deal Skateboards are back Steve Douglas interview black sheep store new-deal-skateboards New Deal Skateboards are back with a reissue of their original range of skateboards, soft goods (featuring the iconic Andy Howell crafted logo that first launched the brand), along with reissues and re-jigs of various OG logos on stickers, which will please all the archivists and arthritic skate fans who love the brand.   New Deal Skateboards are back Steve Douglas interview black sheep store new-deal-1st-product-catalog-1990   Founded back in 1990, New Deal Skateboards was one of the first iterations of the skater-owned skate company as far as modern skateboarding is concerned. Created through a coming together of UK skateboard impresario, liptrick innovator and general force-of-nature Steve Douglas, legendary industry figure Paul Schmitt, and artist/technical innovator Andy Howell, New Deal followed in the wake of the early 1990's shake up of the 80's skate industry initiated by Steve Rocco and his World Industries enterprise.     To those of you too young to really get the influence that New Deal Skateboards had, it was born at a point in skate history where the major brands that dominated the industry had become bloated, slow to move with the evolution of the culture and resistant to the rapid fire changes being spearheaded by street skaters across the world. Rather than the over-produced, high-budget skate films produced by the likes of Powell-Peralta, (which often looked dated by the time of their release due to the speed at which skateboarding was changing), New Deal skateboards took a similar route to that of H-Street and World Industries. The focus was off camera tech, big budgets and cheesy narratives: instead New Deal's initial video output focused on trick evolution and innovation, mixing a line up of established pro skaters, (including co-founders Steve Douglas and Andy Howell among others) with a crew of virtually unknown rippers whose skateboarding spoke for itself, without the need for the industry to have co-signed them first. Their first video release summed up this DIY attitude and approach perfectly. Simply entitled '15 Minute Promo', this was a statement of intent from the fledgling brand and set their stall firmly within the wider skateboard culture by concentrating on the skateboarding itself, set alongside cameos of the kind of tweakers instantly recognisable to anyone out skating street in the early 1990's.     We're super stoked to be a UK stockist of New Deal skateboards and will be carrying the full range of New Deal gear beginning in October of this year. There's just so much history tied into this brand and so many amazingly influential skaters who have ridden for New Deal over the years that it's impossible to mention even a fraction of them here but, if you'll indulge us, we'll throw a few of our personal favourites into this piece. Before we do that however, we suggest that you all follow @newdealskateboards on Instagram for a curated feed of historical gold, and go explore the #mynewdealstory to see and read a bunch of stories from skaters across the world relating to their own memories relating to the New Deal skateboards brand.   Additionally, you could do a lot worse than to get up to speed on the entire history behind the creation of New Deal skateboards, (along with nearly 2 hours of related skateboard history) from the man behind New Deal, liptrick evolution, 411VM, Giant distribution and a host of other highly influential pieces of skateboard history - none other than London's own Steve Douglas. Hit the link below to listen to a fantastic in-depth interview with Steve Douglas courtesy of the always excellent UK-based Looking Sideways podcast.   We can't recommend this podcast enough - for those of you old enough to remember New Deal Skateboards the first time around, just as much as for those of you who aren't. Steve Douglas has had such a massive influence on global skateboarding culture and has touched all of your lives, whether you know that or not. We'll update you all on the ins and outs of the product related to the fact that New Deal Skateboards are back soon but for now, consider this your historical input feed whilst you wait to see the proddy.   As stated above, there are way too many insane video parts to include in here so we'll bang a brace of our own favourites below. Once you've watched those - head over to the New Deal Skateboards YouTube channel to see the entirety of their earliest video releases uploaded from the original masters. With that said, here's co-founder Andy Howell's section from New Deal's first full-length release, the epoch-forming * useless wooden toys. Imagine not only filling your section with new tricks that nobody had ever seen before at the time firstly, then imagine having tricks in your section released 30 years ago that nobody has ever replicated to this day. Pretty heavy right? (0.30 in for the nerds). It'd be churlish to mention New Deal and to not include Ed Templeton's first full section too so, here you go. This was also the ender of * useless wooden toys - even now, 30 years later, it's not hard to see how far ahead this one was when it came out. Finally, for now at least, is the truly incredible Danny Sargent section from the same video. If Gonz is the John Coltrane of skateboarding then Danny Sargent is Ozzy Osbourne. Raw as fuck. For more info on everything New Deal Skateboards related - head to newdealskateboards.com
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