More Hard Times series boards and wheels coming 2016!!!
Features:
-
Deck Colors: 80 Natural, 20 White
- Screen printed graphics: Black/Blue fade
- Top: Laser burn 30 year logo, signed by Ron Cameron
- Dimensions: 9.875 x 31.625”, 14.75” wheelbase, 6.75 tail, 5.25” nose
- Old school hole pattern
- Construction: 7-ply maple
- Manufactured by Watson Laminates, San Diego CA
- Original release date early 1990, Reissue date 2015
- Only the first 100 produced will be signed and numbered
Around 1989 Vision came out with the “Basics” series and other companies were also experimenting with a less graphic-lower price approach to team boards...but all their graphics totally sucked! At that time we were hanging out with Nor Cal Blockhead riders JJ Rogers and Jay West and the term “Hard Times” was thrown out often....for example noodles with ketchup packets swiped from the burger joint was “Hard Times Spaghetti”. So that was it!
Ron Cameron scribbled a rough drawing on a tiny scrap of paper and then enlarged it on the copy machine and then added the iconic HARD TIMES lettering and banged on a typewriter to get slogan “tiMes TOUgh? DOn’T CARe? nO EXPeNSiVe pAINt JoBS, no pRO RoYALtiES TO pAY. nO FRiLLs, jUSt A tOP qUALitY sKATeboARd FOr not aS Much monEY”.
It was just one color screen print on a natural or painted white board, no top graphic...oh then there was the wheels, only one wheel printed per set and bundled together with twine and a rubber stamped “DOA” tag. This low-fi scribble xerox art would go on to become Blockhead’s best selling graphic series ever! (Thanks JJ and Jay for the inspiration). The series continued for several years with 6 different graphics. Oh...don’t ask us because we don’t remember why!.....the first Hard Times board was not numbered, but the next one in the series had a #1, so this first one has become known as the Hard Times 0. (we’re dumb)
This first batch of 100 boards will have the Blockhead 30 year anniversary logo laser burned on the top and will be signed by the artist. The original boards were pressed by the now defunct Taylor-Dykema in San Diego, the reissues will also be manufactured in San Diego at Watson Laminates. To keep it real there’s no crappy heat transfers on these reissues, just real old fashioned screen printing!
