All John Greeley wanted was an original Powell Peralta Mike McGill F-14 Jet Fighter skateboard. He scoured eBay for one of the three-decade-old decks with legible graphics, but no dice. Classic skateboards from companies like Powell and Santa Cruz, coveted for their history and artwork, are almost always torn up—the graphics ground off by asphalt, curbs, coping, and just about anything else a skater can shred on. So Greeley, executive chef at New York's 21 Club, took matters into his own hands—he remade the boards himself.
Each replication took weeks or even months. Greeley bought blank decks from Factory13, an LA-based custom board maker. He then searched out battered vintage decks and scanned their graphics. Next, Greeley used Photoshop to painstakingly piece together the art from three or four scraped-up decks—creating a pixel-perfect template of the original. Finally, he hand-screened the design onto each new board.
Over the years Greeley has re-created more than 30 iconic boards from his youth, including the popular Hosoi Rising Sun and complete series from Powell, Zorlac, and Dogtown. "I may have the largest archive of original deck graphics anywhere," he flexes. Replicate or die.
