Jerry Hsu is a professional skateboarder.
It’s lore that Taiwanese-American skater phenomenon Jerry Hsu is best known for his role in Emerica’s 2010 release stay gold, where he skates for the entire video. Skating switch essentially means leading with your non-dominant foot while performing the same tricks. Changing your stance doesn’t necessarily mean skating backwards, but rather adjusting your weight and forward momentum to make it appear like you’re skating “forward.” Before filming, Hsu had sustained a serious injury to his knees and ankles that limited his reach and pop, so he turned it up, an almost mirror-inverted image, a bit like a film negative printed backwards.
As recently reported in GQ Magazine, “Hsu’s greatest contribution to skateboarding is perhaps a bit more abstract: he made highly technical street skating seem effortless. Style is everything in skateboarding, and Hsu proved he didn’t have to be sacrificed to be amazingly difficult stuff.”
Jerry Hsu is a professional photographer.
It can be that gorgeous body doing the difficult things, as well as capturing the style of other people, animals, and stills of people doing their own gorgeous things every day. As hero magazine explains: “Jerry Hsu started his blog NAZI GOLD in 2009. A curated feed of cellphone photos combined with vintage photography and film to highlight Hsu’s acumen and flair for capturing life’s ironies and absurdities: from polemical religious slogans to Fish guts and dogs hanging out of cars. Now these images have been published in a new book by Hsu entitled ” The beautiful flower is the world— taken from a mistranslated t-shirt he found in China.” He recently took the pictures for a Magazine of the Los Angeles Times Food Story, “Fly Fishing for ‘Channel Salmon’ in the LA River.”
Jerry Hsu is a business owner and designer.
In 2019, Hsu created without sponsorship for the first time since his early teens — voluntarily science fiction fantasy, his skater-owned arts outlet. “I was interested in not being sponsored. I’ve been sponsored my whole life, I’ve been a pro skater for about 20 years, since I was 16, so I kind of burned myself… It was tough because all of my income – half voluntary and half non-voluntary – just evaporated . But luckily I had already gotten into sci-fi, so it filled the income gap that skating offered. And now I’m just free to do all my creative stuff and I don’t have to worry about skating. But I still skate. I just have more options now. I can do what I want.”
science fiction fantasy Gear was spotted on Zendaya, who plays Rue Bennett in the hit Netflix Show, Euphoria. Kat Danabassis, to whom Hsu is married, came up with the name and completed the logo. Danabassis works as an assistant to Heidi Bevins, the designer behind it euphoria‘s Style. Hsu explains his approach: “I’m a big fan of the sci-fi fantasy genre, but I don’t want to make the company too pushy and kind of restrictive. So I base the designs on very clean, basic designs graphic design. I also dabble in corporate graphic design. My parents were computer engineers, so electronic catalogs were always coming my way, and I kind of grew up with that kind of Silicon Valley design. I use a lot of it as a source. ” Watch the first official Skate Team video with Ryan Lay and Arin here.
Skate style, photography and streetwear collaborations come together in Hsu’s latest project with the iconic 1980s brand Jimmy’z and based in London Palace Skateboards. Hsu brings his outstanding photography skills to bear on the release of this unexpected but right collaboration.
Jimmy’z was founded in 1984 by artist and surfer Jim Ganzer. That’s around the same time Sean Stussy scrawled his name on t-shirts and hats and sold them out of his trunk. A who’s who of skateboarders rode for the brand, perhaps best known for the attached Velcro belt that acted as the closure for their pants and shorts. Ganzer was super connected to the Hollywood art scene. According to this interview, the expression used by Jeff Bridges is in the great Labowski, “The dude stays” was actually a saying that Ganzer created. He and Bridges were friends.
As a result, like Science–fi fantasy, Jimmy’z has not only been worn by the gnarliest and most stylish skateboarders, but also by Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Jack Nicholson. The brand was sold to Aéropostale and was never the same. In 2011 the brand was bought back and revived by Black Harrington. You can now order online. There is also an Instagram page with images of classic t-shirts and advertisements. Take a trip down memory lane.
As Hypebeast reports, “Lev Tanju is the founder of Palace Skateboards, based in London. Born and raised in London, Tanju first started out designing skateboard graphics before founding Palace Skateboards in 2010, primarily to fund his skateboarding lifestyle. Aesthetics for a culture largely dominated by America’s west coast, Tanju’s label experienced a one meteoric rise in the skateboarding world…”
palace suggests synonymy with collabs. Since its inception, palace has worked with Ralph Lauren, Adidas, Reebok and Umbro. In the last few days they released a collaboration with New Balance. As GQ Magazine Conditions, “palace has certainly helped set trends. His mix of ’90s sportswear and handcrafted opulence is now ubiquitous; Designer brands like Celine and Dior have appealed to skaters with current collections that you might be wondering if palace was on their mood boards.”
