Powell Peralta’s Caballero Chinese Dragon

This feature is about the most innovative, subversive, original, and artsy graphics in skateboarding. Highlighting new and current decks on the market but also going back in the great catalog that many legendary skaters and companies have put out since the underground debuts of this highly marginalized sport.

Powell Peralta’s Caballero Chinese Dragon

With the reunion of George Powell and Stacy Peralta, reforming as Powell Classics and Re-Issueing decks of the Bones Brigade era, old-school skateboard buffs have been flooded with every deck possible in every thinkable color.
Choosing one was not that hard since my favorite rider of this team was with no doubt Steve Caballero. A pioneer of so many vertical tricks and an inspiration for pool skating. As a warm up I often watch videos of Caballero in the pool just to get me pumped enough.

Sadly, I never owned a Cab deck and despite the cool Chinese dragon graphics I’m not that much of a fan of decks with no concave. This choice is only based on the graphic that is still considered as legendary and that inspire respect amongst skaters. What is more corny than a dragon on anything? With the name Caballero it changes everything and impose a legacy of old-school grandeur.

This is a reissue of the classic deck in a dark green that could only match huge round wheels.

Bones Brigade: An Autobiography

Bones Brigade: An Autobiography (Stacy Peralta, 2012)

When six teenage boys came together as a skateboarding team in the 1980s, they reinvented not only their chosen sport but themselves too - as they evolved from insecure outsiders to the most influential athletes in the field.

Dogtown and Z-Boys

Dogtown and Z-Boys (Stacy Peralta, 2001)

Just as a bunch of The Beach Boys songs reminds us, California and surfing is the real thing. The History of skateboarding has everything to owe to surfing and its invention is in most part due to a derived product from the wave riding movement. In California a bunch of kids wanted to be the next champions of surfing but had to compensate for the lack of waves in their area with another standing sideways item. It was natural that they go to the four wheeled wood planks to fulfill their needs of sensations.