Real Skateboards

Real Skateboards was founded in 1991 in San Francisco by Tommy Guerrero (the legendary Powell Peralta Bones Brigade-era professional skateboarder) and Jim Thiebaud (a former SMA Skateboards designer and professional skateboarder) as a deliberately-counter-cultural skate-deck-and-equipment manufacturer specifically focused on what they described as 'authentic San Francisco street-skate culture without the LA-and-NY skate-industry-marketing format.' The brand has been one of the defining post-1990 skate-deck-and-equipment manufacturers, with Guerrero and Thiebaud anchoring the brand's continuous design-and-team direction for over three decades. The Real Skateboards vocabulary settled around several specific products: the iconic skate-deck programme featuring graphics by SF-based artists (the deliberately-counter-cultural 'Real' typography, the iconic SF-Bay-Area-Cable-Car deck series, dozens of artist-collaboration deck designs), the long-running Real x Spitfire Wheels partnership, the Real Real Estate team-edition series, the Real Ishod team-rider sub-brand, and the deliberately-anti-corporate Real Skateboards visual-design language that has resisted broader streetwear-luxury-crossover marketing throughout the brand's history. The brand is independent and held by Guerrero and Thiebaud through Deluxe Distribution (the San Francisco-based skate-industry parent company that also operates Anti-Hero Skateboards, Spitfire Wheels, Thunder Trucks, and several other defining post-1990 skate-industry brands). Real Skateboards distributes through skate-shop wholesale globally — including the FTC San Francisco store (the iconic SF skate-shop that has been a defining flagship for the broader Deluxe Distribution skate-brand family), the long-running Supreme, Slam Jam, Civilist Berlin relationships, and the broader US-and-European-and-Japanese skate-specialty distribution.