Brand Intro: GX1000
Brand Intro:
GX1000
A novel concept for operating a skate brand in 2019: actually skating.
It seems strange to have to specify that, but this is, after all, the age of limitless aesthetic tourism. There’s at least a 50/50 chance that the next person you see walking down the street in say, a skate or die t-shirt and a denim jacket with a South of Heaven patch on the back wouldn’t know Slayer from Stryper, and would need a multiple choice selection to answer which side of the skateboard goes on the ground.
Needless to say, skateboarding isn’t an activity that you can fake your way through, no matter how flawlessly you happen to dress the part. If you don’t know what you’re doing, there is no avoiding a meeting between anatomical features prone to breaking, tearing, dislocating, etc, and some emphatically unforgiving and inflexible surfaces. This is especially true of San Francisco, skateboarding’s unofficial capital, and home to GX1000. The physical topography of the city, most especially the eye wateringly steep hills, demands a certain level of legitimate dedication, if for no other reason than self-preservation.
GX1000 aren’t just out there cruising for #OOTD likes, and they aren’t going to trade in their boards for zoot suits whenever the 90s retro calendar decides to flip over to “1998 Swing Revival.” Even the name GX1000 requires a certain familiarity with skating, namely the VX1000 camcorder that revolutionized the skate scene by putting affordable, professional quality recording technology in the hands of the general public.
Founder and skate filmmaker Ryan Garshell made the GX1000 name by documenting the hill-bombing exploits of what has been called “the most fearless crew in skateboarding.” The insane levels of physical risk, and an anti-authority, borderline anti-social attitude are a throwback to a time when skateboarding was anything but acceptable in mainstream culture, and you had to genuinely love it to even want to get involved with it in the first place.
This attitude is reflected in GX1000’s back to basics output: irreverent, subcultural graphic design, applied to tees, hoodies, hats, accessories and decks. If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. It’s meant for skating.
