STROKE – Censorship Skateboards
Photography by Gerard Riera
Words by Mackenzie Eisenhour
Censorship 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. 2. a Roberto Alemañ skateboard company.
Skateboarding and censorship; at face value, the two are complete opposites—oil and vinegar, black and white, Hawk and Hosoi. Skateboarding (to us) represents unfettered freedom. Freedom to roll wherever (and whatever wink) we deem rollable. Freedom to wear whatever we deem wearable. Freedom to say whatever we… Yeah, you get the picture. Censorship of any kind represents infringement on those freedoms. Case closed? Not really. In conjunction with a profile on Roberto Alemañ’s brand Censorship Skateboards—let’s take a trip through the history of censorship in skateboarding.
When have we, or our message, been suppressed through the years—either by official authorities and/or governments or by our own industry and media? Perhaps a better question would be when have we not been? Have we been deemed obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security? I certainly hope so. Has this changed over time as skateboarding has become (arguably) more accepted by the mainstream (I think we can use the old Olympic Sport! marker here)? Let’s find out.

Adrian Fuentes, pole-jam melon, Ondo
Censorship Skateboards was created in 2020 by Roberto and his friend Alex Valero from their hometown of Matola, Spain. Censorship in skateboarding, meanwhile, can be traced back to the very beginnings of our pastime during the mid-to-late ‘50s and probably even earlier. Since the first set of roller-skate wheels were nailed to a 2-by-4, people from within our pastime as well as others from outside our realm have sought to sanitise us—to omit certain facets of skateboarding they deem unsavoury. At times, they have also declared our entire existence a non-starter.
Up front, let’s draw a line between the censorship or suppression of our message and the outright ban of our pastime. My first memories are of living in Oslo, Norway in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. Skateboarding and even the ownership of a skateboard were banned by the Norwegian government from November of ’78 through May of ’89. That’s really less censorship and more just complete illegality.
Moving ahead a few years, for most people from my generation (skateboarding’s greatest generation of course, who started skating circa ’86-’92) the first thing that comes to mind at the mention of censorship is Steve Rocco’s famous line—”Censorship is Weak as Fuck.” That statement was tied directly to the 1990 release of Randy Colvin’s first pro model but also harkens to an entire era—circa ’90-’98—that was for better or for worse the golden age of uncensored skateboarding.

Roberto Alemañ, boardslide, Barcelona
Randy’s first pro board depicting a masturbating maiden (drawn by Marc McKee who in turn repurposed the image from Penthouse) would be the first time full-frontal nudity was silkscreened on a pro board and was a radical departure from the more tween friendly skulls, daggers, and dragons that had pervaded the ‘80s. The graphic was deemed so controversial that the boards were shipped to skate shops in sealed black plastic bags—adorned only with the famous yellow sticker declaring ‘Warning: Censorship is Weak as Fuck.’
When asked why he named his brand Censorship, Roberto referenced that exact board and moment in time: “We grew up skating in the late ‘80s and saw the huge impact of what Steve Rocco was doing with World Industries. All the graphics for Rocco brands (World, Blind, 101, Liberty, Bitch etc…) by McKee, Cliver and the other artists—we loved how subversive and countercultural it was.”

Miguel Bahamon, ride-on backside tailslide, Mollet
Roberto elaborates, “In 1990 the World Industries Randy Colvin ‘Censorship’ board was really something else. Just going into a skate shop and spotting a deck in a black blind bag with the yellow sticker—it broke the mould of what we knew about skateboarding graphics. Skate shops wouldn’t open the bag for you to see what was inside unless you bought it, and then boom—you get that graphic you have to even hide from your parents!”
“In some way that deck represented how we felt as skateboarders in the ‘90s.” adds Roberto. “Society saw us as some kind of delinquents, but at the same time we were so few that they didn’t really care about us. Rocco and all the early Dwindle brands influenced us a lot. Then Consolidated Skateboards did too, as I rode for them more than 20 years. Birdo was of the same mentality and a true genius with his graphic ideas. So ‘Censorship Skateboards’ felt like the right name for us—not just for the meaning but also as a kind of tribute.”
The Rocco era that Roberto seeks to pay tribute to provides the best case study on censorship. Tipper Gore had famously launched her quest to censor rap music in the US around the same time and censorship was a hot topic. Simultaneously, as Roberto mentioned, skateboarding had shrunk down to such a tiny number of skaters that only the dedicated few hardcore lifers stuck with it, and Rocco’s push to break all the old rules was exactly what that group wanted. It was “us” against “them” and Steve quickly convinced the remaining skateboarders he was not only one of ‘us’ but leading the charge against ‘them’.

Jechu Corvalán, backside 180 kickflip into the bank, Castelldefels
Steve was a genius at making himself somewhat of a false victim, especially when it meant for highly effective marketing. However, every time I have spoken to him about this era, he is quick to point out that he was attacked first by Powell Peralta and some of the other ‘big’ companies then known as ‘the Big 5’ (Powell Peralta, Santa Cruz, Vision, Tracker, and Independent). It is important to note here that he viewed their ultimate take down as an act of self-defence.
Regardless, the Colvin board set the template for his modus operandi over the next few years. Steve knew that no matter what he did, skaters would rally to his side if it appeared that he was being ‘censored’. So he set out to offend anyone or anything—multinational corporations, religious groups, the old guard skate industry, taboo racial stereotypes, drugs, alcohol, porn, Satanism—nothing was off limits.
After a string of controversial boards and ads including the Gabriel Rodriguez Jesus graphic, Jason Lee “Burger King” board, Natas exploding space shuttle “Oops” board and the notorious Satan on pentagram graphic, Jovantae Turner’s “Napping Negro”, Ronnie Bertino’s “Mr. Butts” deck that came with your first cigarette, and many more Steve quickly (and somewhat predictably) ran into not only outrage from the mainstream press and cease-and-desist letters from big business—he also began to face censorship from within our own industry.

Adrian Cuenca, backside 50-50 to slappy crooks, Granollers
By 1992, Transworld SKATEboarding, the largest skate magazine in the world at that point, was refusing to run his ads or demanding so many changes to those ads that Steve felt it amounted to censorship. In a stroke of ingenuity, he pulled whatever ad he had planned that month and instead ran a two-paged spread of text explaining his dilemma and asking TWS’s readers what he should do. The resounding answer to his multiple choice questionnaire—”Start your own magazine.” And so in the summer of ’92 Big Brother magazine was born.
Quickly becoming the official magazine of skateboarding’s uncensored golden age, Big Brother promptly shocked skate media and mainstream media outlets at large with gratuitous full-frontal-nudity, articles like ‘How To Kill Yourself’ in issue three, bodily excretions of every type, and events like the annual Bong Olympics (RIP Captain Stoney). As a kid who grew up in that timeframe—even just reading up on the latest World/Blind Midwestern tour, where Rocco had paid some teenage girl to parade around the demo topless or offered up several hundred dollars for a single trick—it was hard not to see it as the coolest thing that had ever happened (of course as a dad today I can think of several reasons this might not always be the coolest thing in the world).

Miguel Bahamon, frontside 180, Sabadell
But this is also a good opportunity to explore the other side of the coin as far as censorship is concerned. By the mid-to-late ‘90s Rocco had ceased to be the underdog in the skate industry and was now himself the establishment. He became his own Big Five (World, Blind, 101, Plan B, Menace). When Simon Woodstock ran an ad in Big Brother for his new board brand Woodstock Skateboards around ’97, he decided to copy Rocco’s early ‘90s attack-style. His ad depicted a bent over Steve (holding a freestyle board) being sodomised by Devil Man (by then World’s defacto logo along with Flameboy and Wet Willy) with the words ‘Contract Negotiations’ printed above them.
How did Steve respond to Simon using his own strategy against him? He sued Simon and shut down the company. A very “George” move (As in George Powell from Rocco’s ‘Dear George’ ad). As Simon told me when I interviewed him in 2016, “Steve (Rocco) was like, ‘I know that people probably think this is a good ad Simon. I’m not mad at you. But you can’t do this. You attacked my brand.'” With the shoe on the other foot, Steve became the censor, even if still somewhat a reluctant one.

Adrian Fuentes, no-comply, Granollers
Irony comes in many flavours, but there is something deliciously special about the ’97 sale of Big Brother to Hustler’s parent company LFP (Larry Flynt Publishing). The first thing LFP—one of the world’s largest creators of pornography—did after acquiring the magazine was censor all the nudity within its pages. This was presumably done to increase circulation of the magazine as LFP actually wanted a died-in-wool skateboard magazine that could live on newsstands. They even added a giant ‘skateboarding’ header across the cover to drive the point home—essentially making it look like the TWS covers the mag had been created to counter.
Another incident worth visiting, if only to play devil’s advocate, would be the infamous Corey Duffel interview in Big Brother (Aug. 2001). If ever there was a moment in time where censorship might have helped, or at least just some adults in the room editing, this would have been it. This was the interview where a 15-year-old Corey was somewhat coaxed into using racist and homophobic language. It should be noted that Corey only did this after having his own sexuality attacked and questioned at the start of the interview. Corey has regretted this interview for decades and at the time it almost ended his career. However, the idea that all censorship is bad takes a bit of a backseat on this one. For the sake of all involved, the conversation a young and insecure Duffel had with an instigating Chris Nieratko should probably never have been printed.

Miguel Bahamon, heelflip, Barcelona
What of censorship in skateboarding since the turn of the ‘00s, into the ‘10s, and up to present day? Here’s Roberto’s thoughts: “In the ‘90s you could put almost any graphic on a skateboard, and there was no problem because nobody cared about us. But by the ‘00s, as skateboarding became more popular and mainstream brands started to take over the industry—many brands started to be more aseptic—trying not to offend anyone. Best-selling boards nowadays are mainly logo decks.”
Roberto also feels that where we ride our skateboards is key to whether we remain a counterculture or not: ‘We all know real skateboarding is on the streets, and we get banned from streets all the time. This is also a kind of (cultural) censorship, as what we do—our culture—comes from the streets and not from inside a skatepark. Despite what the Olympics and Street League believe, we can’t play on a square field like other sports. You have skateboarding brands now trying to have a clean aesthetic to be polite and politically correct to be accepted. But our creativity and the skateboarding that is cool and subversive comes from the streets.’

Roberto Alemañ, frontside 50-50 from the bench, Montmeló
Do we censor ourselves or is it those outside skateboarding doing it? Roberto replies, “I think both. We censor ourselves to be accepted. For the corporate companies skateboarding is better when done in skateparks, with a tracksuit, creating gold medallists. They don’t want to know about our reality, they just want the money of our industry, so they will censor what they don’t like about us; that rebel spirit out on the streets looking for spots and dealing with cops and security guards. So yes, definitely, a part of skateboarding is trying to be accepted by society—censoring themselves—and society will take skateboarding as a clean-cut sport leaving out the subversive and countercultural part of it.”
Steve Rocco ultimately sold his companies for many millions and rode off into the sunset during the mid ‘00s. His impact on the skateboard industry remains monumental, and is almost more prescient today. After skateboarding’s Olympic debut, soon to be followed up by Paris 2024—the rift between the uncensored counterculture and the safely sanitised and uniformed sports version of skateboarding grows wider by the day. Ultimately, it is the consumer who will decide which version will be passed on to the next generation. If you believe Roberto’s philosophy is the one for you, consider buying a Censorship Skateboards deck. Or if you believe another brand presents skateboarding in the right light, support them. Whatever you choose, choose wisely. Our future is in your hands.

Miguel Bahamon, ollie into the 3rd bank, Barcelona
After I interviewed Steve Rocco for Skateboarder magazine back in ’01 – while the issue and interview were already sent to the printer — Steve sent me a paragraph of text he had wanted included explaining his motivations for all that he had done up to that point in the skate industry. Since the issue was already a wrap, it never got used. I had completely forgotten about it until a few years ago when I was looking through old files. As it has never been printed anywhere (and also because I still need to fill some space), here is an exclusive letter from Steve (circa ’01) straight to the pages of Free Skate Mag.
Note: I haven’t censored a word.
A Letter from Steve Rocco:
Skateboarding wasn’t always like this. It was serious. Or at the time it just seemed that way. To me, serious is when someone says ‘no’ to something, anything. Can I do a graphic like this, a board this shape, an ad without products? No, no and no. I hate that word. and all those no’s weren’t just for me they were for all pro skaters. In 1987, there were no skater-owned companies. Even icons like Tony Hawk couldn’t just walk in and do the ad, graphic or tour he wanted. We were to be seen and heard for our skating skills yet not listened to in deciding board graphics. I was not a happy camper. And then I got fired.
When I started the company (World Industries) I quickly noticed it wasn’t like a regular job in which the boss tells you what to do and you just do it. There was no boss and no money to hire one. Finally this little voice in my head says, ‘What about me?’ You know the little voice I’m talking about. The one your parents and teachers tell to shut up all the time. The one that has all the witty things to say after someone who insults you walks away. The one that tells you if you kickflip some fifty-foot death gap and survive you’ll have fame, fortune and women. Yeah that’s the one. Mine had been bottled up for years and now he not only wanted out but he wanted to be in charge. So, like a genie in a bottle, my little voice came out and there was no one there to put it back. Soon my otherwise ridiculous ideas became ads, graphics and products that not only defied logic and common sense but turned the industry upside down. Rodney (Mullen) would often try to reason with me but the little voice was in charge now and Rodney was the last person he wanted to hear from.
One of the great things about having your own company is sharing with your friends. My friends just happened to be Mark Gonzales and Natas Kaupas. So we started Blind with Mark and 101 with Natas. Of course they had little voices of their own which were even more demented than mine. They were so excited because now they could do some pretty crazy shit—things that could have never been skate graphics had there been adult supervision.
Natas did a board with the space shuttle blowing up that said ‘Oops’. Gonz once hand-painted hundreds of individual boards. We had boards that had free cigarettes, pictures of naked ladies, crack pipes, copyright infringement, lottery tickets and even political commentary. Our ads were even more rebellious. We ridiculed everything under the sun, especially ourselves. Which at the time was unheard of for a skate company. It was nothing less than complete unbridled mayhem the likes of which will probably never be seen again. Surely these were the best of times.
As time passed things became more complicated. We were not only competing against big non-skater owned companies but skater-owned ones as well. And soon after that, former riders left to do their own thing. It got biblical for a while, brother against brother all fighting for a piece of the proverbial skateboard pie. But time heals and in recent years there has been a prevailing peace. Which is good, I guess, if you like that sort of thing. But it felt as if my job was done.
All I ever wanted from the start was to give the skaters a voice and now they have one. When skaters talk people listen. And that my friends, has finally made me a happy camper.
—Steve Rocco (2001)
• Learn more about Steve Rocco by watching the ’07 documentary The Man Who Souled The World or read my interview (with the same title) from the Jan. 2002 issue of Skateboarder magazine (on my site deadhippie.net).
• Learn more about Censorship Skateboards by checking their site: censorshipskateboards.com and Insta: @censorshipskateboards.
• Read more about controversial skate graphics in my book 1000 Skateboards (2023 by Rizzoli) in bookstores, skate shops, and on the interwebs now.