Skater Owned: ABC’s Barton Damer
Skater Owned: A new series about skaters who own businesses that aren’t skate brands. In collaboration with Liquid Death and The Berrics.
As many of you know, there is more to skateboarding than just those who represent the tip of the pyramid, aka the pro skateboarder. Now, I know that becoming a pro skateboarder is almost every single person’s dream when they first step onto a skateboard. However, pro skateboarders really are just one component part of a bigger whole.
via Already Been Chewed
The skateboard culture is made up of many, many layers. And although historically it’s been true that many young skaters tend to move away from skateboarding when they get a car or find a girlfriend—typically around the ripe old age of 16—these days more and more people are sticking with it or coming back to it. What was once a field comprised of mostly 13-16 year old participants has now become a fairly diverse world of consumers ranging from the ones who were inspired after seeing the Olympics to the ones who were inspired after getting ‘THPS1’ to the ones who were inspired after they saw ‘Back to the Future’ to the ones who were inspired by Tony Alva. They’re all here.
via Already Been Chewed
Nevertheless, there is a cruel, cruel reality that comes in every skater’s life if their dream of becoming a professional skateboarder doesn’t come true. What is it you ask? It is the moment you realize you have to go out there into the world and take care of yourself. Some people are lucky enough, or unlucky enough, depending on who you work for, to make a living inside the skateboarding bubble. Team manager, filmer, photographer, warehouse clerk, graphic designer, etc., etc., all ring a bell. And some, well, they just have to go out into the cruel, cruel world where no one else knows the difference between a frontside indy and an Indy truck. See what I did there? There’s no such thing as a frontside indy, but that’s a topic for another discussion.
Barton Damer
Considering the above, that one isn’t “lucky” enough work inside the skateboarding bubble, there have been quite a few examples of skaters who have gone out there and actually started businesses that have became successful. People who know that if they had not started skateboarding, they may not have the kind of grit that was necessary to do what they had to do to survive. Everyone says it, but maybe because that is at least one opinion about skateboarding that’s true: it teaches you how to fail. There’s something special about skateboarding in that way.
via Already Been Chewed
So, here we finally are, my point—the launch of a new series called ‘SKATER OWNED.’ A glimpse inside some of the people who never made it to the tip of the pyramid but are very much a vital part of the skateboarding culture, not because they make anything that has to do with skateboarding, but because they are representatives of what the skateboarding culture can produce and what it has to offer. They’re prime examples of the exact opposite of that image I’ve always fought against, the one that screams skateboarding is just a bunch of dumb, drug-addicted party piles. And even if that may be true about a portion of skateboarders, the image certainly doesn’t represent a majority of the culture. And this first episode, with Barton Damer, the founder of Already Been Chewed—a cutting-edge design, motion graphics, and 3D animation studio—proves it. Having worked with some of the bigger brands in the world (Nike, New Balance, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany’s, Cariuma, Marvel, Diamond, and Street League, just to name a few) Barton has never forgot how it all started and why. Please Enjoy. -sb
via Already Been Chewed
