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Shipyard Skates Keeps It Old-School
Posted by: Necci – Mar 08, 2011
Sitting in the dim light of the Republic restaurant, Hank Fauerbach, a local skateboarder, folds his heavily-tattooed arms across his chest and leans back in the booth to recount the history of his locally-grown skateboard company, Shipyard Skates. “When I was a kid, we were considered criminals, not athletes. Skateboarding was dangerous. Now it’s just big business with that X-Games Mountain Dew attitude,” he laughs, raising his glass of Coke to take a drink. He reaches out to the passing waitress, asking “Hey, can you put a little rum in this?” She smiles and retreats to the bar to fill his order.
When Hank and his brother Michael grew tired of predictable corporate logos and “refused to continue to look like dumb asses” wearing the mediocre mainstream offerings in available skateboarding clothing, they formed Never Again Clothing Company as “something to do, to keep us out of trouble.” That idea then morphed into what now is a hidden treasure of local unique counterculture skateboard clothing, which resides in the garage behind his house in Southside amidst stacks of blank decks and screen printing ink.
When Hank and Michael teamed up with their friend, lowbrow artist Richard “Ryzart” Janusz, for logo and design work for their merchandise, they were introduced to Dan Tag, a well-known East Coast skater from New Jersey. Ryzart, who is also a custom motorcycle pin striper and airbrush artist, was working on a motorcycle of Dan Tag’s at the time. Ryzart made the connection, and Hank and Dan began the dialogue around the values of American-made skateboard products and the quality of screen-printed decks. Both skaters missed the “old days” of hand-screened decks and locally produced products.
Dan Tag, who was skating for Death March Skateboards (formerly Wreckroom) at the time, agreed to do a Never Again guest deck. Through Hank’s conversations with Russell Phillips of Death March regarding the guest deck, he decided to found Shipyard Skates, with a mission to support both Never Again and Death March. Shipyard has since grown and now supports a wide variety of skater-owned, skater-operated companies. The next step for Shipyard is to release its own brand of decks focusing on early to mid-90’s shapes, as well as become a custom screenprinting shop for skateboards.
With the birth of Shipyard, Michael turned Never Again’s focus solely to clothing, leaving the decks and boards to Hank with Shipyard. Dan Tag created Crappy Skates jokingly, and Hank and Tag decided to run a “crappy” deck for Dan’s trip to Creature’s Rumble in Ramona in 2010. Crappy, a “shitty little company”, whose decks can only be purchased through Shipyard, now proudly boasts, “We’re #2!”
“Skateboarding is now such a big business, with companies just churning out factory-produced boards with heat-transfer graphics. It’s pretty rare to come across hand-screened boards anymore. There was such a pride in owning a screen-printed board, where the board just slid along the rail. This new method just sticks, and the graphics are worthless.” Hank takes a drink of his rum and Coke, very fitting for a man whose body is covered with his collection of old-school tattoos celebrating his grandfather’s rich naval history. With Shipyard’s support of other home-grown skateboard companies through the United States, coupled with the pride of keeping it local, their diverse offering--although far from average--can be definitely defined as All-American as Mom's apple pie. That is, as long as it’s a shooter, and as long as Mom has a few tattoos and can still pull off an invert.
www.shipyardskates.com
www.neveragainclothing.com
By Jaime Turko
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