18/08/2026
Summer 2005 Palermo Italy
This is the only photo I own of myself skateboarding in my 20s. I was 20 years old in this photo and lived in Italy at the time before moving to the US. My setup in this photo was either a Mystery or a Danny Way Plan B deck, Venture trucks, Pig wheels, and either Element or Mini-Logo bearings.
In Italy, like many other European countries, skateboarding was very unpopular and not trending until the late 90s and early 2000s.
My generation was the first to experience the global rise of skateboarding culture through
TV, movies, video games, music videos, MTV, magazines, punk rock and pop-punk bands. Before then, my idea of skateboarding was something very 80s with old-school boards on huge half pipes and “Skate Or Die” video game, which was also the sole old-school video game I ever owned and I used to play with on my Commodore 64 in the late 80s, long before playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the first time on PlayStation in 1999.
