El Skate Shop - The Wildest Skateboard Shop in the West

El Skate Shop began in 2002 as online shop AND brick and mortar shop in Huntington Beach, CA. At 177 square feet we were fairly certain we owned the title of "Smallest Skate Shop in The World".

We also went by the slogan of "The Almost Non-Profit Skate Shop" where we priced our inventory very low in order to make easier for people to keep skating. You could buy blank decks from $16 to $20. Grip was $3.

As of 2021, elskateshop.com is mostly an archival site. However, we still do sell grip tape, wax and hardware and may one day get back into the business of selling skate goods.

Past team riders included Dallas Rockvam, Aaron Babila, Chris Treiber, Chris Hernandez, Mike Davidson, Matt Bublitz, Amber Moffatt, Darrell Norman, Eric Ricks and Ryan Fitch.

Check out some skater profiles like Wee Man, Bam Margera, Danny Way, Andrew Reynolds, Eric Koston, Riley Hawk and Geoff Rowley. We try our hardest to make these entertaining reads. If not, let us know and we'll revise em for ya.

Chet Childress

Home >> Skater Profiles

Chet Childress is refered to as “Crooked Arm” because his arm is literally crooked.

Chet Childress Back in Black Black Label

Chet Childress – Portland, Summer 2010 | Green Label Experience

Nike SB Chronicles, Vol. 1 | Extras | Chet Childress

SB Chronicles Unplugged: Justin Brock presents Chet Childress

Chet Childress God Save The Label

Chet Childress – Tracker Stacked

Chet Childress – Creature Heshers on the Run

Decks:

label_brew_jay_childress

In the Big Brother Shit video, there is a nice old scene where they go out to the East Coast to visit Chet. The song in that section is hilarious. Today it would be considered politically incorrect. But it’s one of the best trash talking songs about Morrissey ever. There’s actually a few great music tracks from that video…

On Social:

Facebook page:facebook.com/chet.childress
Instagram:instagram.com/chet3000

Sponsors (Current & Past)

Chet Thomas

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“Chet Thomas used to own the skate shop down the street from us. Owning a board company must be way more lucrative than owning a skate shop. Perhaps we will do the same.”

Darkstar Battalion Chet Thomas

Chet Thomas | Globe Opinion | 2001

Chet Thomas 411vm#15 profiles(1995)

Chet Thomas in TWS – ‘Uno’ [1996]

He is the owner and creator of Darkstar Skateboards. Darkstar started out as a wheel company. Eventually they moved into skateboards, and it seems that skateboards have become the focus of the company since this transition.

Chet Thomas also owned two skateboard shops in Huntington Beach, CA for a while. One of them was on the corner of Warner (the same Warner that the Warner Krew lived on – Andrew Reynolds and the Baker guys) and Springdale. Around 2003 a lot of skate shops in Huntington Beach were feeling a pinch because skateboarding popular was starting to decline a bit. Chet Thomas left his partnership with the Aftermath skate shop and focused on Darkstar full time.

On Social:

Facebook page: facebook.com/chetthomasofficial
Twitter: twitter.com/FriendsOfChet
Instagram: instagram.com/chetthomas

Sponsors (Current & Past)

  • Darkstar Wood and Wheels
  • Globe

Chico Brenes

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Now everyone should give Chico mad props. He has the cleanest style and and and just give it up for Mr. Chico Brenes.

Chico Brenes Central Skatecamp Nicaragua

Chico Brenes’ “7×7” Part

Chico Brenes in New World Order(1993)

VS – Skate More – Chico Brenes

Chico has been on Chocolate for as long as I can remember. He is a part of the original family. He’s always had a super clean and smooth like butta style.

What I love about that lil’ Transworld video above, is someone moved down to Nicaragua and built a small skatepark in their jungly backyard. Now that’s living!

On Social:

Twitter: twitter.com/ChicoBrenes
Instagram: instagram.com/chicobrenes

Sponsors (Current & Past)

  • Independent Trucks
  • Autobahn
  • Central Skate Shop
  • Chocolate
  • DVS
  • LRG

Cairo Foster

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If you watch the Transworld Free Your Mind video, Cairo Foster makes the funniest face I have ever seen when he doesn’t land that super huge ollie over that gap.

Cairo Foster – Transworld Free Your Mind (ollies 2 block + gap)

I have never seen someone so pissed and not throw their board.

Cairo is known for hurling his body over gaps and other big obstacles. There are a few guys like that: The Butcher, Corey Duffel and Jerry Hsu to name a few. Cairo is a mad man and great skateboarder.

A little fact probably forgotten about: Cairo rode for Popwar Skateboards back in 2004. Unfortunately, that company didn’t last too long. The distribution that brand was out of seemed to be going through a lot of changes back then and I guess they had to can the brand. It had some pretty sick graphics and a good team.

More video with Cairo:

Classics: Cairo Foster Real to Reel

The Reason – TransWorld SKATEboarding – Cairo Foster

Enjoi Oververt : Cairo Foster

On Social:

Facebook page: facebook.com/cairofoster
Twitter: twitter.com/cairofoster
Instagram: instagram.com/cairofoster
YouTube: youtube.com/c/CairoFoster

Sponsors (Current & Past)

  • Enjoi
  • Etnies
  • Eswic
  • Krux
  • Spitfire
  • Mob Grip
  • Diamond
  • Bones Bearings

CKY2K

This was a video created by Bam Margera, Brandon Dicamillo and Ryan Gee. When this came out I had never seen such an explosion in video popularity ever. This sh*t traveled like wildfire. Every kid (not just skater) had a copy of this video within a year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFVzwvet0Uo

I always preface that Bam must have had some influence from the Big Brother Video Shit, because they both share a very similar format; a mixture of hi-jinks and skateboarding. The Shit video spread in a similar fashion in the skateboarding underground, but it was released in the early 1990s (skateboarding wasn’t very big back then and neither was media duplication) so it didn’t have the mechanisms to spread very far.

Most of the video includes Bam and friends f*cking around. Renting cars and destroying them, jumping of buildings and tall structures and landing in either trees, bushes or piles of gravel. There is also a section on land-skiing furniture using cars (instead of boats) and kicking footballs at cars. It’s all pretty juvenile, but when it came out it was quite funny.

There are also some well edited skateboarding montages, which I would have to blame for making skateboarding super popular in the year 2000. I think more people go introduced to skateboarding because of CKY2K than they realize. I think they other part of that equation was definitely Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

More on the rise of skateboarding popularity: A lot of people think that it’s sad. Sad at the fact that skateboarding got most of it’s popularity from Bam Margera and a video game. I think it’s great. Here’s why: Skateboarding is an awesome culture. It’s creative, intelligent, individualistic and anarchistic. Basically it teaches people to think for themselves and not to follow orders. That’s great for teaching people to oppose oppressive regimes, police brutality and messed up governments. Most people will say “kids don’t understand that stuff, they just skate for fun”. This is true, but eventually these characteristics of skateboarding will come through in their later years. I’ve seen this happen over and over again!

Baker Bootleg – The Video

Company:

Baker Skateboards

Way back before there was Baker Skateboards, there was this little underground skateboard video called Baker Bootleg. It has nothing to do with any specific skateboard company. It was just a bunch of skateboard footage from skaters like: Andrew Reynolds, Jim Greco, Brian Sumner and Ali Boulala. Actually there were a lot of video parts in there, but those are some of the bigger names that come to mind.

Year Released:

1999
This is the video that sets the tone and style for what Baker Skateboards was going to become. It really is the first Baker video. It’s funny because there was a video for the company before a skateboard company ever formed. So if you want to see some young Reynolds and Greco footage this is the video where it’s at.

This video circulated and became quite popular. Soon enough two skateboard companies formed from this video (well sorta). The first company was Baker Skateboards and the other was Bootleg Skateboards. Baker was started by Andrew Reynolds and Bootleg was started by Jay Strickland. Unfortunately Bootleg didn’t last as long as Baker.