ART GRIP

The term I have coined to identify where my skateboard grip tape jobs have been since the late Nineteen Hundreds.

“DIE CUT” – Back in the 1980s, the standard grip tape job was known as die cut. Two big chunks of grip tape to make a sandwich out of the logo printed on top of the skateboard deck.

“STICKER JOB” – In the 90s, the die cut morphed into exposing custom sticker murals or random placements. That is, if you weren’t a flippety-dippety full gripper.

“FULL GRIP” – Roll to Board, peel it, stick it, hope for no air bubbles. I’m old enough to fondly remember Freestyle, and will always hold a special place in my heart for full grip.

“TOE SIDE” – Much like full grip, only using the skater’s toe side as the guide versus up against the side of the deck. Full grip tries to center align to the board’s edges versus the skater’s toe. Boom, racing stripe up the deck.

“ART GRIP” – While my boards typically end up almost “Full Grip”, there is always some sort of ART thrown into the mix. Sliced up “full grip” strips. Spray painted, Sliced, Deck Stickered, and slapped. Running out of cash after breaking a board and pulling griptape remnants from the garage, to assemble “art grip”.

Most of my deck archive is mounted to the ceiling, so it will take a bit to assemble the full sample gallery of previous “art grip” jobs.

Spoiler, not all of them are loud like the two shown in SHREDDER2 product shot. Art Grip aka Art Tape is just something I’ve been saying to myself since 1995ish.