Thrasher, the Skate Magazine Whose Flame Logo Outran Its Readers

In January 1981 a new skateboarding magazine came out of San Francisco. It was called Thrasher, and there was a practical reason for it. Its founders, Fausto Vitello and Eric Swenson, also ran Independent Truck Company, and the magazine's Wikipedia history says the title was started mainly to promote those trucks.

A trade catalogue with attitude is a modest start. What Thrasher turned into was something else, the closest thing skateboarding has to a newspaper of record, a prize-giver, a road-trip television show and, to the lasting irritation of its own staff, one of the most copied logos in casual clothing.

Built to sell trucks

The founding story has a small disagreement in it. Wikipedia names Vitello and Swenson as the founders and lists Kevin Thatcher as the first editor. FashionUnited and Hypebeast both count Thatcher among the founders too. Either way, all three men were there in 1981, and the magazine was published by their company, High Speed Productions.

The look was settled early. Hypebeast's history of the masthead notes that Thrasher launched with Banco, a bold, slanted, all-capitals typeface drawn by Roger Excoffon at the Fonderie Olive type foundry in Marseille. It was a French display face with no lowercase, and it became the most recognizable thing about an American skate magazine.

The staff stayed small and close to the street. Mörizen Föche, known to readers as Mofo, joined in the middle of 1981 as the second staff member and was later inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2016. The magazine itself went into the same Hall of Fame in 2017. Along the way High Speed Productions put out Skate Rock, a series of punk and hardcore compilations that ran from a first volume in 1983 to an eighth in 1990. Sources do not agree on how many volumes there were in all.

The editors and the owners

Jake Phelps became editor in 1993 and stayed for the rest of his life. He died on March 14, 2019. Michael Burnett is editor-in-chief now. The covers went to whoever was skating hardest, and in 1989 Cara-Beth Burnside became the first woman on one.

The founders did not see the whole run. Fausto Vitello died of a heart attack in 2006, and his son Tony took over as owner. Eric Swenson died in 2011. The company still keeps a foot in the real world. Wikipedia records that it owns the Double Rock indoor skatepark and a San Francisco skate shop called 66 6th. It reports a circulation of 250,000.

Skater of the Year

In 1990 the magazine started naming a Skater of the Year, and Tony Hawk was the first. The award became the most closely watched honor in the sport, partly because nobody can apply for it. Four skaters have won it twice. The list below is a selection from the full roll on Wikipedia.

By our count that is 36 awards from 1990 through 2025, with Danny Way's thirteen-year gap between wins the longest of the four doubles.

King of the Road

The magazine also built a contest out of the skate trip. King of the Road sent teams across the country chasing a list of challenges. It ran every year from 2003 to 2007, with each one released on DVD, came back in 2010 with episodes on the Thrasher website, and in 2011 ran as a one-off in China with Converse. Viceland bought the rights to the 2015 edition and later ones in 2016. The most recent tournament was in 2017. In April 2020 Burnett said it was on hold. Wikipedia points to Vice not renewing the show for a fourth season and to the loss of Phelps.

In 1999 Thrasher also lent its name to a PlayStation game, Thrasher Presents Skate and Destroy, which is a fair measure of how big the title had become outside the magazine rack.

The flame leaves the skatepark

The flame lettering is the version the rest of the world knows. On the magazine itself, Hypebeast notes, the flaming masthead has been kept since 2002 for the year-end issue. On T-shirts and hoodies it is everywhere.

Sometime around 2015 the logo crossed over. Hypebeast's 2016 piece describes a trend of the previous year or so, with Rihanna photographed in a matching Thrasher hoodie and sweatpants and fashion labels including Vetements and Gosha Rubchinskiy borrowing the look. FashionUnited reported in 2018 that flame-logo pieces were among the best sellers in the merchandise boom.

Thrasher's own people were not thrilled. Phelps was openly scornful of the trend, and FashionUnited, citing Highsnobiety, reported that he said the magazine would not be sending free product to pop stars. His point was simple. The shirt was supposed to be earned on concrete.

Wearing it with a clear conscience

There is no rule that you have to skate to wear the shirt. There is a decent argument, though, that you should know what it is. Thrasher is a working magazine with an editorial staff, a forty-five-year archive and a prize that skaters actually care about. Buy one from a skate shop rather than a fast-fashion rack and you are at least paying the people who make it.

The flame tee belongs in a longer story about skating and clothes. Read how Palace Skateboards turned a London crew into a label, how Supreme's drop model started at a downtown skate shop, and why the Vans Old Skool is still the shoe under most of those photographs. For the template every streetwear logo followed, see our history of Stüssy. More in skate culture and streetwear, and Thrasher itself is at thrashermagazine.com.

The magazine was started to sell trucks. It ended up selling an idea of skateboarding so strong that people buy the shirt without the board, which says more about the idea than about the people.