‘Jake Phelps was abrasive, just like skateboarding’
- Text by Ed Templeton
- Photography by Thrasher magazine
Jake Phelps was abrasive, just like skateboarding. Through Thrasher Magazine, where for 26 years he was editor in chief, he helped promote a quintessential punk style and attitude to the skate masses that made skateboarding what it is today.
With Jake, you had to take the rough with the smooth, and at any given moment you never knew what you might get from him. He kept you on your toes. He played guitar in a punk band with Tony Trujillo called Bad Shit. He battled with drugs and alcohol, and he was so committed that skateboarding battered his body. I honestly don’t know how he did it for so long the hard way he did it.
The first time I met Jake Phelps was in 1990 when I was sent to Europe to compete in a bunch of skateboard contests. It was my first time to Europe and I realised once I landed in Germany that I had no idea where to go or how to get there. I wandered the airport hoping to see some other skaters going to the contests so I could ask them where to go. But Jake found me first. He yelled out from across the airport, “Ed Templeton!” – we had never met before. “Come with us.” It was as if he could sense I needed some help, and let me tag along with his crew on the way to the hotel where all the skaters were staying.
I never forgot that moment, and neither did he. It turned out to be typical of the kind of person he was. He may have been difficult to deal with, but he had your back and cared deeply about the way skateboarding was perceived. He had a nearly photographic memory and an encyclopaedic knowledge of skateboarding. He would recall some amazingly obscure details about your life when he saw you, anything that had ever been published in a magazine or in a video was seemingly logged into his head.
Jake’s spirit will live on. And his mark on skateboarding is undeniable.
Enjoyed this article? Like Huck on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
Latest on Huck
Exploring the impact of colonialism on Australia’s Indigenous communities
New exhibition, ‘Under a Southern Star: Identity and Environment in Australian Photography’ interrogates the use of photography as a tool of objectification and subjugation.
Written by: Miss Rosen
My sister disappeared when we were children. Years later, I retraced her footsteps
After a car crash that saw Magnum photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa hospitalised, his sister ran away from their home in South Africa. His new photobook, I Carry Her Photo With Me, documents his journey in search of her.
Written by: Lindokuhle Sobekwa
Inside New York City’s hedonistic 2000s skateboarding scene
New photobook, ‘Epicly Later’d’ is a lucid survey of the early naughties New York skate scene and its party culture.
Written by: Isaac Muk
Did we create a generation of prudes?
Has the crushing of ‘teen’ entertainment and our failure to represent the full breadth of adolescent experience produced generation Zzz? Emma Garland investigates.
Written by: Emma Garland
How to shoot the world’s most gruelling race
Photographer R. Perry Flowers documented the 2023 edition of the Winter Death Race and talked through the experience in Huck 81.
Written by: Josh Jones
An epic portrait of 20th Century America
‘Al Satterwhite: A Retrospective’ brings together scenes from this storied chapter of American life, when long form reportage was the hallmark of legacy media.
Written by: Miss Rosen