HISTORY OF SKATE SHOES - PT 2

And how did you develop the skateboard museum?
It started with a two week exhibition in late 2003, after finding an empty basement in Stuttgart. Until opening night we kept gathering every skateboard related item we could get from our friends, shops, former pros and team managers who still lived in Stuttgart (eg. Mathew Bauer /  Santa Cruz, Fritz Klein /  Zorlac and Joerg Ludewig / Urban Supplies). When the two weeks were over we thought it would be a shame to just tear everything down and leave behind an empty space, so we decided to just stay and see what happens. After almost a year of squatting, we had talks to some city officials and asked for permission to stay and make it permanent. From January 2005, the Museum is open once a week on Sundays or for special events. All for free!

Now that’s showing some initiative. Your museum is also touring, with dates in London and various European cities... what else have you got planned?
Yeah the touring part is great fun. We thought that it was not so easy for skaters to travel to Stuttgart, so our first stop was Berlin where we had a huge venue with two floors and we could integrate a big mini-ramp. The next stop was Barcelona in a very famous gallery called Iguapop. At this time we focused on the art side of skateboarding and invited Andy Howell, Jeremy Fish, Stefan Marx and the Spanish artist Davilock. We have now a gallery space integrated in the Museum where we had a Jeremy Fish exhibition and a Claus Grabke retrospective. Right now we show the ‘Dirt Ollies’ exhibition and are planning a Stefan Marx exhibition later this year. We are also doing skate-culture expos at the Bright Skateboarding trade show in Frankfurt. Skateboarding is totally versatile so we always try to show a special topic.
This year we showed the World Industries retrospective ‘Censorship is weak as Fuck’ and the year before we had ‘The Mags we Read’ which was a history of skateboard magazines and ‘Made for Skate’, the history of skateboard shoes. The Made for Skate expo had such an impact that we were able to show it after Frankfurt in London and Vienna – we think that we can say we have the largest collection of skate shoes so far. And right now we are working on the Made for Skate Book – an illustrated history of skateboard shoes.