Dogtown: The Legend of the Z-Boys

Description

These are the stories and images of a time that not only inspired a generation but changed the face of the sport forever. This volume has been described as 'the DogTown textbook' and an indispensable companion piece to the Sony Pictures Classics film Dogtown and Z-Boys. Now spanning 1975 1985 and beyond, the first section of the book includes the best of the DogTown articles written and photographed by C.R. Stecyk III as they originally appeared in SkateBoarder Magazine. The second half compiles hundreds of skate images from the archives of Glen E. Friedman - many of which appear in the movie. (Stecyk and Friedman acted as executive producers and advisors for the film.)

Glen E. Friedman, one of the most important photographers of his generation, is known for his influential and iconic images of rebellious artists from classic skateboarding, punk, and hip-hop cultures. As a true artist his process was much more incendiary than it was documentary. Friedman, first published at the age of fourteen, has produced over 100 record covers, countless magazine pages, and almost a dozen books, including DogTown: The Legend of the Z-Boys. His work is now included in a number of notable international collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution.C.R. Stecyk III is the DogTown godfather. He is a seminal figure in the skateboarding and surfing worlds as a writer, photographer, museum-collected artist, and one of street culture's chief architects. He is cofounder of Juxtapoz magazine, and one of the earliest iconic inductees into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. Stecyk is a Southern California native.

"[Friedman's] knack for being in the right place at an extraordinary amount of right times, coupled with his ability to size up noteworthy characters and scenes, has secured his place as one of the most important and recognized photographers of youth culture...If it wasn't for these photos and these words, the story of the Z-Boys may have never been told, and the impact skateboarding's had on the world would have been significantly reduced." --Strength Magazine "[An] amazing collection of images from Friedman, who was a skater and friend of the Z-Boys and managed to be there for a ridiculous amount of the important sessions (Tony Alva's first frontside air ever?!)...The book picks the best of the best from [Stecyk's] articles and photos, and coupled with Friedman's you get a very personal and complete sense of what the whole deal was really about...[A]s a skater, you not only owe it to yourself to check these things out and learn what went down way back when, but you owe it to these guys who changed skating forever." --SLAP Magazine "Fueled by Stecyk's often cryptic prose and stark black-and-white photography, these pieces of poetic propaganda proliferated the defiantly aggressive Dogtown skateboarding style that flew in the face of the more wholesome image propagated by the media and then fledgling skateboard industry. With help from prescient (yet barely pubescent at age 14) photographer Glen E. Friedman, who published iconic shots of the Z-Boys for SkateBoarder, the Dogtown scene set the gritty, urban, counter-culture tone that would come to define modern skating...A must-have companion piece." --Surfer