The Good, the Bad, and the Concussed: Two Decades of Skateboarding History

By Stephen Krcmar

The list of pro skateboarders who’ve made it in the art world is short. At the top of that list is the godfather of street skating and Renaissance man Mark Gonzales, who paints, acts, makes music, zines, and more.

Retired pro, painter, and photographer Ed Templeton shares that top spot. 

Templeton’s show Wires Crossed: The Culture of Skateboarding 1995-2012, currently on display at the Long Beach Museum of Art, shows just why. 

The art is pulled from the book by the same name and is one of the most thorough deep dives into skate culture ever assembled. New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh described the book as “unsparing but nonjudgmental.”

The same goes for the show. Seeing all of the work in one place is phenomenal. Wires Crossed takes up two whole floors of the museum and is a stroll through skateboarding history mixed with the very personal histories of some skateboarders, merging what the general public saw and more personal moments. 

Compete with hundreds of photos, there’s a fuck-ton going on, delivering a snapshot of what pro skateboarding looked like before social media and photo-sharing apps.

Some History

Templeton was born in 1972 and turned pro in 1990 before graduating high school. A few years later, he started his skateboard company, Toy Machine.

He’d corral fellow team members and go on tour. They’d pack into a van, roll into town for a demo sponsored by a local skate shop, and perform for an assembled crowd. 

Like a punk band on a DIY, small venue tour, this was a big fish in a small pond scenario. 

Many pros traded on their rockstar status. They signed breasts, hooked up with locals, and partied. A lot. 

Not Templeton. He married young and was sober, often making him the proverbial adult in the room/van. 

Always shooting photos, his teammates were comfortable being around the camera. Templeton was a step up from a photographer embedded with the troops during wartime. He was a soldier and a war photographer.

On the surface, his fellow skateboarders lived the life of Riley. Templeton’s photos go deeper than that. The images tell a story, obviously, but many photos include handwritten captions capturing the context and providing a backstory about the subjects and what’s going on. 

Contextualizing Templeton

It's tough not to compare Templeton's work to the 1995 film Kids, which takes an unflinching and uncomfortable look at a crew of skateboarders in New York City. Larry Clark directed the movie, and a young Harmony Korine wrote the screenplay.

Clark was well-known at the time for his 1971 photo series Tulsa, which featured Clark's friends shooting amphetamines intravenously, playing with guns, and having sex. 

"I was born in tulsa oklahoma in 1943. when i was sixteen i started shooting amphetamine," writes Clark in the preface on his photo book Tulsa.  

"i shot with my friends everyday for three years and then left town but i've gone back through the years. once the needle goes in it never comes out."

Clark was a massive influence on Templeton. 

"Clark was clearly a participant in the sex and drugs documented throughout his photos," wrote Templeton in a story in Huck Magazine (link is NSFW). 

"These were his friends and he just simply shot pictures of the daily life they were living like a fly on the wall…What he chose to shoot shows that he knew that the life he was living was extraordinary and a story worth telling."

The Show

Street skating is unlike anything else. Skaters use public and private spaces to do their thing. They take curbs, rails, and staircases and try to have their way with them, even if they have to manipulate or maul private property in the process.

When they land big tricks, it’s euphoric. When they don’t, they often get mauled. 

Injuries are part of the game. Templeton shows plenty of blood and destruction. Safety gear, including helmets, isn’t a thing in this world. 

Templeton himself has had six serious concussions. During one of the later injuries, he turns the camera on his wife, who is bereft at his bedside. She didn’t know if he’d recover. 

He did. His collection of snapshots that got him there create a body of work that doubles as a history of skateboarding, scars, and all. Follow his lead and head to Long Beach to experience it yourself. No pads required. 

Wires Crossed: The Culture of Skateboarding 1995-2012 is at the Long Beach Museum of Art until May 5, 2024. It’s open Thursdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults. There’s a free night for teens on Friday, April 19, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Be sure to bring your phone because Templeton provided some audio snippets to accompany the show.