RIP Fausto Vitello

[MAR]

For all you who love skateboarding:

 

 

By MARGALIT FOX

Published: April 27, 2006

Fausto Vitello, an entrepreneur and publisher who helped take the dying pastime of skateboarding out of the suburbs and into the streets, where it became a rude and riotous multibillion-dollar business, died Saturday while riding his bicycle in Woodside, Calif. He was 59 and lived in Hillsborough, Calif.

Skip to next paragraph Thrasher

Fausto Vitello, a founder of Thrasher magazine and Independent Trucks, an equipment company, at a San Diego skate park in 1983.

 

 

 

The apparent cause was a heart attack, his family said.

Mr. Vitello was revered by skateboarders (and reviled by their parents) as a founder and the president of Thrasher magazine, which for a quarter-century has been the rebellious bible of the skateboarding subculture. He was also a founder of Independent Trucks, a leading manufacturer of skateboard equipment, clothing and accessories.

"He's the godfather of punk-rock skateboarding," Michael Brooke, the publisher of Concrete Wave, a skateboarding magazine based in Toronto, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Published monthly, Thrasher has a circulation of about 175,000. Its Web site, thrashermagazine.com, features articles, interviews and, for school-age readers, a selection of downloadable term papers "to free up more time to skate."

Skateboarding has been around since the early 1900's, when some thrill-seeking child first nailed a two-by-four to a roller skate. Conditions improved in late 1950's, when the first commercial skateboards were marketed, and again in the early 70's, when urethane wheels and better boards made fancy maneuvers possible.

By the mid-70's, skateboarding was hugely popular among suburban boys, who performed in empty swimming pools and in specially built skateboard parks. By the end of the decade, however, many towns, concerned about liability, razed their parks, and the sport went into decline.

But it was still possible to skate in the streets, using features of the urban landscape — curbs, steps, railings, benches — as launching pads from which to take flight. Mr. Vitello, a devoted skateboarder who had founded Independent Trucks in 1978, capitalized on the fledgling sport of street skating, starting Thrasher with several associates in 1981.

With its mantra "skate and destroy," the magazine embodied the punk-rock ethos of the day, exhorting readers to devote their lives to their art. And if the pursuit of art happened to involve some imbibing and inhaling, it implied, that was all right, too.

"Thrasher magazine has had its detractors," Mr. Brooke said. "Fausto and Thrasher had no problem being very — how can I put this? — gnarly. There are swear words; there is a whole violent side to it. There are a lot of parents who forbid their children to read Thrasher."

Fausto Vitello was born in Buenos Aires on Aug. 7, 1946, and came to the United States with his family as a boy. He grew up in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish from San Francisco State University.

Mr. Vitello is survived by his wife, the former Gwynn Rose, and their children, Tony and Sally, all of Hillsborough; a sister, Lidia, of Elburn, Ill.; and his mother, Aurora, of San Francisco.

Today, skateboarding is a $2 billion industry, according to Mr. Brooke. And as the sport has been embraced by mainstream culture, including ESPN and the X Games, its roughest edges have been smoothed away.

This did not sway Mr. Vitello from his original vision.

"Fausto never cleaned up," Mr. Brooke said. "You open up Thrasher and it's still guys drinking and shooting guns."

[Gunm]

"if the pursuit of art happened to involve some imbibing and inhaling, it implied, that was all right, too."

 

""Fausto never cleaned up," Mr. Brooke said. "You open up Thrasher and it's still guys drinking and shooting guns."

 

Ha ha, reminds me of Channel Zero

 

RIP to someone famous i actually care about....fuck

[pornbooth]

respect

 

 

 

 

dowmagik

[Harvey Wallbanger]

Wow.

 

This guy's impact on the skateboarding world was monumental.

 

RIP

[Nekro]

I knew I'd heard that name somewhere. A true pioneer in skate youth culture.

[dirtydoses]

RIP

 

sk8 or die

[King Of Hell]

ripski.

[Smart]

hmm, that's sad. RIP