The European Brain Drain: Six skaters spend their summer in Europe

This article covers six skaters' 2002 summer trips to Europe, capturing their thoughts on the food, nightlife and spots they encountered. It was put together by then-staff photographer Oliver Barton for the January 2003 issue of Skateboarder.

Spike Jonze's 9 Most Memorable Moments While Filming Video Days

Below are Spike Jonze's nine most memorable moments while filming for Video Days, as told to Aaron Meza. This was published in the January 2003 issue of Skateboarder. 

For anybody keeping count, this is my 600th post on this blog. Never thought I'd get this far, and no plans of stopping anytime soon - there's still a lot more I want to scan and post. I appreciate all of the feedback and encouragement I have received from all of you - this has been a nice opportunity for me to feel like I am contributing to skateboarding culture in a small way. Thank you! -SMN

Stefan Janoski interview - January 2003

This is Stefan's interview from the January 2003 List Issue of Skateboarder, which he was also on the cover of. Words by Alex Klein. In the last question, Stefan answers that he wants to become rich before he's done skating. Six years later, he would get that wish when his Nike shoe was released. Photos by Oliver Barton and Mike O'Meally.

Love Fades: 8 Biggest Company Coups of All-Time

This was written by Mackenzie Eisenhour for the January 2003 issue of Skateboarder. What would be included in this if it was updated for 2024? AVE & Dill leaving AWS and starting FA? Brian Anderson and Alex Olson leaving Girl? The 917 team leaving to create Limosine?

The 5 Best Cities For Skateboarding (2003)

The 5 best cities for skateboarding in the world, according to Aaron Meza 20 years ago. Would any of these be on a Top 5 list made today?

Stefan Janoski's Skateboarder covers

Along with Jamie Thomas, Stefan Janoski had more Skateboarder covers than anyone else, having made the front 4 times between 2003 and 2010. All four all of them are posted below. You can see Jamie's Skateboarder covers here.

January 2003
photo: Oliver Barton

September 2005
photo: John Bradford

June 2007
photo: Jonathan Mehring

December 2010
photo: Mehring

Focus: January 2003

Photos from this issue's Focus feature.

Daniel Haney - January 2003 Skateboarder

Daniel Haney was skating handrails twenty years ago that are big even for today's insane standards. I could do an entire post just on all of his photos (and probably will someday in the future), but for now I wanted to get this one up on the blog before then. Partly because I've had it flagged for scanning for a long time now, and partly because Daniel asked for a scan of it, which immediately bumped it up to the top of the list. Thank you to him for reaching out (via Kevin Marks/Look Back Library). 

photo: Seu Trinh

Nike's "First Sponsor" ad series

This was a pretty interesting ad series that Nike ran for 5 continuous months, from September 2002 to January 2003. These ads I scanned were in Skateboarder; I am assuming that they appeared in other magazines as well, though. I only have Skateboarder issues from this time period.

Also, I can't say with 100% certainty that these were the only ones that they did. I checked in the issues immediately before and after these five months and didn't see any, but that doesn't mean that they didn't extend the ad campaign for a different magazine. 

It looks like Todd Jordan got photo credit for all of these ads. I wonder if it was his idea to do this series?

Richard Mulder and his father
September 2002

Danny Supa & his friend Vinny Ponte
October 2002

Gino Iannucci and his mother
November 2002

Reese Forbes and his friend Chris Hall
December 2002

Todd Jordan and his brother Jeremy Jordan
January 2003