Thrasher Magazine

HOW TO SPONSOR YOUR FRIENDS “We need another board company!” said no one ever. “Just don’t,“ would be my initial response to anyone thinking about starting up a board company. But then again, that’s what everyone told me when I decided my group of friends needed their own board sponsor. It’s been working out so far, but at times the hard goods business can lean a little heavy on the “hard” half of the God-given name. We started WKND out of the kitchen of my apartment ten years ago. Not like from scratch in the kitchen, I meant that’s where we stored them. Today we may not be a juggernaut in the industry, but we have a warehouse in Glendale that has two bathrooms. That’s gotta mean something. Here’s a few lessons—the hards and the goods—from our first decade as WKND skateboards.


How come Jordan gets all the lines? How productive is Pavey's summer? What's Avery's deal? You'll have to peep the vid and relive the memories to find out

Ten years of DIY company building and comaraderie come together in this heavy-ass 438-page book. Get one for your skate-house coffee table

Schmidt’s been on WKND since day one and the only thing he’s updated is his hat choice. Tailslides on underground spots and crusty ledges never get old

Photo: Horn


TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR CUTE, JANKY WINDOWI miss the early years of getting away with being such a sloppy company that it’s endearing. That only lasts so long. Eventually, the factories will not accept handwritten purchase orders; the skate shops will be over the late shipments, even if they come with love notes; and there’s a point when you can’t pay everyone only in product. Those first couple of years are glorious, but once your first cease-and-desist letter shows up, you’ll know this window has closed. Once, we received a cease-and-desist for the construction weave of a hacky sack. Some hippie put down their brimmed beanie and picked up a suit and tie. They’re now living off of lawsuits from their patented weave on a round sack filled with rocks.


Photo: Maalouf

FIND YOUR BRAIN AND YOUR MUSCLE Andrew and I met Trevor in Florida when we were in our late teens. Trevor was in Florida for rehab. Once he got clean, he started staying with a family friend. He began dating the daughter of that family friend—her name is Alia. I went to middle and high school with Alia. Hit the vert button a couple of times and Alia is our head designer and Trevor is not only a pro skater for WKND but also does all the sales, among many other things for us. Trevor’s addictive personality now translates into pre-books and video parts.

We found him in Florida, but Trevor Thompson still stacks on bricks back home in Connecticut. Nosegrind pop in     Photo: Heikkila

Photo: Maalouf

The BIG guy! Andrew, he keeps the ams in line for us. They love him so much, and I wish I could get that kind of respect. I don’t know how he has them so obedient. When the young bucks ride in my car, it’s nothing but trap music. When they ride with Andrew, he has them listening to the air conditioning only. It’s gotta be the muscles.

You think a car knocked over this pole? Nah, it’s trying to run from Andrew Considine’s full-speed jam    Photo: Papke

Don’t like the Airbnb? Talk to Andrew     Photo: Heikkila    

Photo: Maalouf

ENLIST A GENERATIONAL LIASON At some point, there will be a next generation. They’ll talk in this new dialect you won’t quite understand. You’ll need someone who blurs the line separating the JITs and the OGs to help with communication between the two groups. Tanner is our perfect guy for this. He sags his pants like the kids, but grunts when he sits like us. When it is time to hook up a new generation, start with who you know. For us, that was Zac Gracie, the local kid at the skatepark. When Zac was really young, he found out where Andrew and Trevor hid the key to their apartment. He’d skip school and just hang out at their house while they were at work. Let’s just say Zac missed out on quite a few book reports. Years ago, when it was time for WKND to start flowing people, we sent Zac a box of boards with a book in it. We told him we needed a book report if he wanted another box. We did get a report-and-a-half out of him until we realized Zac’s smarts come from the streets.

This kicker to pad is OD crusty, but Tanner’s switch flip is valid, bro    Photo: Papke

Gracie spears a whale of a rail with a boardslide out to the bank. Captain Ahab could never     Photo: O'Donnell

Stretching isn't just for the old heads    Photo: Schmitz

Photo: Yansura

Hooks and high drops, Avery Johnson avoids a few popular pitfalls in this business with a noseblunt   Photo: Schmitz

Gut check     Photo: Schmitz

LISTEN TO YOUR AMS BUT WARN THEM ABOUT WHAT'S TO COME They tell me what’s fire and I tell them they better stash part of their income to pay their taxes. I try to give them career advice but then Riley drops his pants while grinding a flatbar and gets millions of views. I realize, I just no longer know.

Normally a fan of the moon, Australia’s Riley Pavey ditches the shtick for a firecrackin’ back lip in sunny LA    Photo: Papke

Pavey's game goes hard on TikTok     Photo: Schmitz

When will they learn there’s no skate-stopping Tom K? Noseblunt to hippie jump

FIND YOURSELF A TOM K Tom is the least jaded skater in the history of professional skateboarding. Every payday he writes me a paragraph thank-you note. It’s on autopay. He finds all his own spots and a few more for anyone that doesn’t know how to look for themselves. He does all his own stunts, can pick any lock you need and will tell you the oral history of any spot in LA County. He’s also the most genuine person and lacks the ability to hold back on any question he may have. We had a Craigslist actor play a doctor for a scene in our video JIT. Afterward, the actor, a middle-aged man, kept sending me independent films he would appear in. One of those included a nude scene. When we brought the Craigslist actor back on for another appearance in a Nikolai skit, Tom saw him and immediately asked him, “Wait, didn’t you send Grant a nude video?”

Preactical effects at no joke    Photos: Burnett

Photo: Horn

Hope that your team can do more than just skate
Jordan has the misfortune of early-onset arthritis that prevents him from skating at the level that he would consider for filming a trick. Luckily, we’re a skitboarding company, so Jordan will be involved until the day we call cut on the final scene. I’d say skateboarding abilities are less than half of what’s needed to withstand a pro career these days.

Off the grate to the box, Shintaro busts a back nosegrind on his Uncle B shit    Photo: Papke

SPONSOR-ME TAPES WERE NEVER FOR US Unless you’re Shintaro, we’ve never put a skater on the team that we didn’t already know through someone. Shintaro was the first skater who we found solely from seeing footage on the Internet. I reached out to Shintaro and asked, if he was not already riding for anyone, would he be interested in getting boards from us? His response was very humble as he told me he was getting SK8Mafia boards but wanted to talk to them and would get back to me. When he wrote back, I noticed his English was now perfect, so I figured he was using Google Translate. We talked about his whole deal with the Mafia and how they would allow him out of their gang to join ours. After the deal was done, Shintaro’s English was not as sharp anymore. He then told me that I had been messaging with Brandon Turner on his phone during the negotiation.

Shintaro can't make the shoot? Any old legs will do    Photo: Horn


ALWAYS GET THE INSURANCE In 2021, while working through the wild times of COVID, we had a whole delayed season finally ship out via ocean freight. All was well, until one fateful day when we received an email with the attached photo. Our entire shipment went into the Pacific Ocean as part of the world’s largest-recorded ocean-freight shipwreck. We did not have shipping insurance.

Warehouse manager, tour van driver and god of the pallet jack, Glenn Reece keeps the goods moving     Photo: Schmitz

Glenn lets the JITs use the aux, but he still brings the jams, 50-50 pop into the bank   Photo: Schmitz

Freddy and Karsten keep it cool up north   Photo: Yansura

CREWS WITHIN CREWS What started as a party of five has turned into a team that’d take up a room full of diner booths. When we put Karsten Kleppan on as our first international rider, it was a new route for us. We’d never had a rider living so far from us. Now a fourth of our team is in Scandinavia so he’s not so lonely all those kilometers away. Keeping the team feeling like a part of a crew is important!

Frontside 50-50 drop down to another, Karsten Kleppan connects rail and ledge on an LA getaway      Photo: Papke

Fredrik Winsents hails from Norway, rides for an American company and back 180 fakie 5-0s in Canada. One of many WKND global associates     Photo: Schmitz

Sarah can shoot the photo or bust the stunt. This hydrant wallie is just a sample of her skillset   Photo: Seidler

Photo: Horn



SELL OUT TO EAT OUT Sometimes it’s worth selling out as long as you keep it real. Eric Koston knew Bieber’s stylist and they were looking for a skateboard to use for this GQ photoshoot. If not for the coverage, do it for your mom’s Facebook feed.

Johnny’s made a few friends    Photo: Schmitz

New York’s Johnny Cumaoglu puts the UP in up-and-comer. Switch flip     Photo: Schmitz

Photo: Maalouf

LEDGY VS EDGY Your whole team can’t be tech, but your whole crew also can’t have Spitfire hats and noseblunts that bark. I think it’s important to fill the car with a mix of the two. Usually, both ends of the spectrum can agree on one thing.



It’s a fine line between too much pinch and too much tweak, Nikolai 5-0s it well    Photo: O'Donnell

Guy Azulay went viral for resembling the CEO assassin Luigi Mangione. Our Guy’s a man of peace, but his three flips are pretty vicious     Photo: O'Donnell

How Guy sleeps knowing the old heads can’t keep upHow Guy sleeps knowing the old heads can’t keep up

DO WHAT YOU KNOW AND BRING IN PEOPLE TO HELP ON THE PARTS YOU DON'TI know early-2000s skate references and how to point a fisheye—that’s about it. Luckily, the rest of the team is obsessed with wheelbase, crotch rise and everything in between. You also have to listen to these damn kids, because I can make all the DVS Skate More references I want, but nowadays your average 20-year-old’s first video was Pretty Sweet.

Kerry Getz would get mad, so they literally made his head explode. Isn’t that funny?     Photo: Schmitz

Photo: Schmitz



I forgot to mention—we made rollerblades. Don’t do that; it’s ABD