One of the world's most ubiquitous t-shirts was first printed in an SF garage

In 1980, Kevin Thatcher sat down in his Los Gatos bedroom and sketched out the design that would follow him for the rest of his life. Now, he sees it almost daily: on teenagers’ backs, in graffiti tags, in souvenir shops. He even spots it thousands of miles away from his home in Santa Cruz.

“I’ve been watching golf tournaments in India and seen somebody in the crowd wearing a Thrasher shirt,” Thatcher told SFGATE.

Thatcher was the first editor at Thrasher, the San Francisco magazine known to skateboarders as “the bible.” From 1981 to ’93, he helped evolve the magazine from a 5,000-copy obscurity to the skateboarding world’s paper of record. Thatcher also designed the magazine’s logo: eight sharp, angular letters that arch across the magazine’s cover, and later, across countless T-shirts and hoodies. (Currently, Thrasher’s web store alone sells about 50 varieties of logo T-shirts.)

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Forty-five years after its first edition, Thrasher still publishes its magazine monthly. Hundreds of thousands regularly watch its videos on YouTube. But Kevin Thatcher’s lasting contribution — the thing that, for better or worse, has made the leap from skate subculture to the mainstream — is probably the logo, which is one San Francisco’s most recognizable cultural exports. It’s a design that, like the famous Joy Division album cover, is endlessly spoofed, remixed and recirculated, far beyond the reach of the subculture that birthed it. For a few years in the 2010s, Thrasher tees were everywhere: on fashion models, on Ryan Gosling and all over American malls.

Kevin Thatcher in his office.

The first Thrasher T-shirt is framed in the magazine’s office.

Left: Thrasher photographer MoFo selects photos to use. Right: Rodney Mullen in front of a wall of Thrasher T-shirts.

Or, from another perspective: Thrasher’s logo was embraced by “posers” — people who had no interest in the magazine’s “skate and destroy” mission statement. To put it plainly, this pissed off a lot of people. The sudden, enormous interest in Thrasher merchandise started a debate that has yet to be resolved: Who gets to claim one of San Francisco’s most recognizable logos?

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By 1980, when Thrasher was founded, skateboarding was on the decline. In the ’70s, the sport had enjoyed a brief boom cycle. Polyurethane skateboard wheels had just been developed, unlocking previously impossible tricks and skate spots. Investment flooded in; Jake Phelps, a skateboarder who would go on to be Thrasher’s editor after Kevin Thatcher, recalled landing a brief Pepsi sponsorship. But by the turn of the decade, that surge of popularity, and the money attached, abruptly dried up. In 1980, Skateboarder Magazine rebranded as the catch-all Action Now, as if to punctuate the cultural turn.

Thrasher founders Fausto Vitello and Eric Swenson first conceived the magazine as an offshoot of Independent Truck Company, their skateboard part company.

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