1. 150 151
At 50, Peter Ducommun still looks the punk. He almost always dresses in
black. His body has filled out slightly, but his grey hair remains thick and
shorn. He can usually be found sitting behind the counter at the iconic
PD’s Hot Shop, relaxed like a Bowery Buddha, welcoming first-timers,
old-timers, college cruiser kids, street skaters, backyard bandits and
tourists. He has for decades.
He also runs Skull Skates out of the Hot Shop, powering one of skate-
boarding’s most durable brands with his punk ethos. But PD’s punk isn’t
mainstream rejection for attention’s sake, or an outlet for anger, it stems
from sincerity and the strength to ignore outside pressure. If you’re
sincere about skateboarding, no matter if it’s knocking coping blocks
loose or freestyling in your basement, PD and Skull Skates are down with
you. And that inclusivity coupled with his follow-the-gut business plan
has allowed PD to survive and thrive.
By Sean Mortimer / photos by brian peech
Thirty-five Years
of Skull Skates
PD’S
PUNK
REIGN

2. 152 153
Ironically, it wasn’t until
the mainstream skate
scene died in 1980 and most
major skateboard brands
ran aground that PD’s
legacy started.
The Beginning, 1976
Skull Skates started with cheesyT-shirt iron-ons—those heavy, plastic heat-
transfers that stick to your chest when you sweat. Huggy Bear posing with glitter
borders; Fonzy giving the thumbs up; Gas, Grass ’n’ Ass mottos... you get the pic-
ture.Twenty-four-year-old Rick Ducommun owned an iron-on company and made
regular California runs to scoop the newest designs. Living in Nanaimo, Rick
had already bypassed skateboarding, but during his south-of-the-border travels,
he’d often pick up skate equipment for his 14-year-old brother, Pete.
By 1976, Nanaimo had a healthy skate scene. But Canada was on the far
side of the moon regarding modern skate supplies, and word spread fast that a
local kid was running the primo California gear. “Eventually, other kids wanted
parts, too, and Rick would go [to California] with these lists,” PD says. “It grew
into a business because we saw that people wanted the stuff in Canada and you
couldn’t really get it.”
Rick moved his iron-on company to Regina, Sask., but continued filling his
brother’s wish lists and selling Grey-market goods out of his garage. By the
time Pete hit his early teens, he was skate obsessed and christened with a new
name. “It comes fromTony Alva being calledT.A. obviously,” PD says. “But my
family—everybody just calls me PDThat’s my name.”
PD visited Regina often, and the brothers’ new skate business consisted of sim-
ply saving up and stuffing the vehicle with product. Rick would bring back brands
like Santa Cruz,Tracker, Bennett trucks, Road Rider, Fibreflex and Hobie. “All that
classic stuff that was coming out of California in the ’70s,” PD says.
The brothers realized they’d started a business by accident and decided to get
legit. Great North Country Skateboards (GNC) began officially selling product
out of Rick’s garage. “Initially, we didn’t have a storefront, we were just doing mail
order,” PD says.
The younger Ducommun was an obsessive tinkerer, and his company role
evolved from ordering stock to designing gear. “I’ve always been curious as to how
functional design works and how it comes together,” PD explains. “I was always
taking things apart and cleaning them and tuning them up and fucking around with
tension adjustments on my trucks. Quite early on, I had an urge to tweak things on
my own. I’d think how cool it’d be if the wheelbase was half an inch longer, or if the
board was slightly wider.”
GNC released their first run of boards at the end of 1976.The following year,
Rick moved out of his garage and opened a Great Northern Country Skateboards
shop in Regina. GNC’s major seismic shift occurred in 1978 when Rick locked
onto his visiting brother’s crude artwork. “The reason that the skull is very
simplistic and has these hard, straight, almost jagged lines is that, initially, it
was cut out of griptape that was already stuck to the board,” PD says. “I cut it
and peeled the bits up,” he says. “My brother saw it and said, ‘That should be our
new logo.’ Of course, I said, ‘No, I can draw a way more evil-looking skull.’ He said,
‘No, that’s it.’ He liked the simplicity.”
There was no board meeting, no market research needed to discover that crude
skulls attract skaters. It’s difficult to fathom, but skulls were not a common skate
image in 1978.The crude skull only represented a new logo—the boring GNC name
remained stamped next to the skull. It would take outside forces to serendipi-
tously create one of skating’s most enduring brand names. “We started to get
letters from kids addressed to ‘Skull Skates,” PD says. “The more that happened,
the more we realized that they weren’t even seeing the little GNC in the corner of
the logo.They were just seeing the skull and the skates.We didn’t rename it, really,
the customers renamed it.”
In 1979, Rick shut his Regina shop and iron-on operation and moved toVancou-
ver, where he reunited with his brother.They opened the GNC shops in Stanley
Park and Richmond. Skateboarding’s popularity crested, and Rick capitalized on it,
pumping promotions with a flair unique to the Canadian skate scene. He secretly
brought upTony Alva and Steve Olson (the two most popular skaters at the time)
for the Canadian championships in the fall of 1979.They arrived to a darkened
arena, chauffeured in a black stretch limo. For Canadian skaters, it was as if the
gods had descended Mt. Olympus. Unfortunately, by the fall of the following year,
these gods were reduced to mere mortals when skating’s popularity shriveled up
and it was viewed as an embarrassing, washed-up fad.
PD shows his diversity; skateboarding in the late
‘70s, snowboarding in the early ‘90s and a recent
skimboarding photo. Photos courtesy Skull Skates

3. 154 155
The ’80s
Ironically, it wasn’t until the mainstream skate scene
died in 1980 and most major skateboard brands ran
aground that PD’s legacy started. Creatively, it was
the perfect storm. His interests naturally gravitate
towards anti-established, underappreciated activi-
ties, and skating didn’t get more underground than
the early 1980s. For the following decade, skaters
would create all legitimate skate product, and there
was virtually zero mainstream interest. Skaters had
to search out gear, and no one wanted to look like
a skater unless you were one, which pretty much
guaranteed widespread harassment. Also, PD had
just ditched high school in Grade 11, terminating his
major distraction.
Skating was a tight community, and Rick realized
it was stupid to not leverage his brother’s reputation
and renamed the store PD’s Hot Shop.While Rick
rightfully reasoned that his brother had more pull
than a weak, rebranded logo and a wonky name, PD
had reservations. “I thought it was pretty corny put-
ting your own name on the business,” he says. “It was
embarrassing to have my name on it. I still cringe. But
my brother said, ‘Oh, no, it should be on there because
you’re always out everywhere skating, bike riding
and snowboarding, and people see you around and
know you.”
For one of Canada’s most legendary skate stores,
it’s interesting that the peculiar name is an import.
“‘Hot Shop’ came from the BMX world,” PD says. He
rode BMX, as well as skated, and at the time, SE Rac-
ing issued dealer stickers announcing that said store
was an ‘Authorized Hot Shop.’That struck me as being
pretty cool,” PD remembers. “Anybody can tell when
they go into a store—and this goes beyond skate-
boarding—if it’s not that awesome or if the people
running the shop are totally keyed into the details
and actually care about not just selling you crap, but
stoking you out and making sure that crap works for
you.To me, that’s the difference between just a shop
and a hot shop.”
PD applied his hot shop philosophy to the board
company, and his fingerprints became more visible
on the brand. A major reason for that skull’s longevity
is it’s a conjoined twin of sorts with the Hot Shop. As
most skate companies grow, their success creates
a distance from the streets and skaters’ mercurial
needs. PD instinctively understood that his shop was
a direct line to skaters and the perfect R&D lab.
“By ’81, it was pretty established that we were
doing our own thing,” PD says.The Hot Shop operated
as a traditional storefront, but also allowed the
Ducommuns to mix Skull boards in with the most
respected skate equipment of the era. “Nowadays,
people put out their own shop boards, and it’s a thing
where they put out a price-point board to hopefully
make better margins than they would on other brand-
named boards. But ours was never meant to be a shop
brand.The idea was just to make a better skateboard,
to make something that I was stoked to skate on. It
was just a coincidence that we had a shop, as well.”
A lot of people talk about skateboarding,
PD actually does it. Backside Carve, Puerto
Escondido, Mexico. Mike McKinlay photo
Skull Skates ads from the early ‘80s
featuring some iconic pros like Steve Olson,
Dave Hackett and Christian Hosoi.
Full Skull Circle
A 12-year run is respectable, and PD could have closed
shop and coasted on saved money while attending
punk shows. But talking to PD, I get the sense that he
was never totally comfortable in the States, and while
“success” had some obvious perks, it wasn’t a natural
fit for the flat-top skater who enjoyed making his own
photocopied zines, paper stickers and tinkering with
skateboard designs.
PD has always followed his interests, whether or
not they were deemed “acceptable” in the hyper-
critical world of skateboarding. PD had been hitting
the slopes for years when snowboarding was still a
bootleg activity, and it helped pull the brand through
the dry spell of the early ’90s. “Snowboarding became
really big, and we had been making snowboards since
1983,” he says.
While snowboarding picked up Skull’s financial
slack, it also allowed PD to refocus. “You can’t be
afraid to work every day and make shit happen,” he
says. “That’s the bottom line of owning your own
company; there’s really no one else to pass things off
to. It’s up to us to make it happen or not. Determi-
nation to make shit happen comes from being a skate-
boarder—that whole idea that you keep practising
something until you get it down.When you eat shit,
you don’t let it put you off.
“Whether it’s booming or scrambling, it’s just the
flow of things,” he continues.The paycheques dropped
some zeros, but PD never considered a second option.
“When you know that this is something that you’re go-
ing to do for your whole life, then you just ride through
whatever comes at you—good, bad or indifferent.”
PD took his tinkering to deeper levels and used his
shop as a Skull Skates hub, running the brand while
working the shop. He expanded from the standard
shapes, and offered a variety of skateboard shapes
before most brands clued into cruisers and long-
boards. “Everything is up for personal interpretation,”
PD says. “If you’re on a skateboard, how can it be bad?
Even if I think the guy is a kook on a longboard, there’s
no point in disrespecting him because he’s skate-
boarding and doing it in his own way.When I got into
skateboarding, there was slalom, freestyle, high jump,
barrel jumping, just skateboarding. Skateboarding is a
weird thing. Sometimes the vibes are pretty thick, and
sometimes they can be very welcoming.
In our store, if people are cool, then we’re incredibly
cool to them.”
In stark contrast to the Hosoi blowout days, he
carefully crafted Skull as a hidden treasure. He has a
lot of trust in his customers, and feels that they’ll clue
into his commitment behind the product. Instead of
seeking wide distribution (already offered by Harris
and Ultimate Distribution), he made Skull a secret so-
ciety of sorts. InVancouver, still to this day, PD’s Hot
Shop is the only local store that sells Skull product.
“I think anything cool has to be a little harder to get a
hold of,” PD says. “You shouldn’t be able to just go to
the mall and pick it up.”
Even when PD does expand, it’s not in any
traditional way. Skull Skates Japan (est. 1994) and
Switzerland (est. 2005) are also run out of shops.
“In both of those cases, I was approached by people
who said that they liked what we were doing and
wanted to do it in their countries,” PD says. “In many
ways, I think I can be quite naive. I just think you
try stuff. If this dude was stoked on Japan, and I’m
convinced he’s pretty sincere, well, let’s just try it and
see what happens.”
Skull Skates Japan likewise adapts to its custom-
ers’ shopping habits with 8 p.m. ’til midnight hours.
“The cool thing about Skull Skates Japan is that it’s
very much Skull Skates, but also very much Japan,” PD
says. “It’s [the owner’s] own take on it. I really dig it,
actually. Part of that is due to us giving him the free-
Skating began heating up again by 1983, the same
time as Rick’s acting career. PD’s Hot Shop remained
open, but the brothers migrated south to take on the
big boys in the skateboard Mecca of California. “My
brother got into show business and he moved to Hol-
lywood,” PD says. (Rick co-starred withTom Hanks in
The ’Burbs, Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, had his own
HBO comedy special.) “It took us from being this Ca-
nadian company and made us a more internationally
recognized brand,” PD explains. “But I don’t see us as a
Canadian company or a California company, I just see
us as skateboard brand. Some people are proud of
Skull being Canadian, but I’m just not a super patriotic
person. I don’t think it’s super important what country
you’re from or you support or whatever.”
Skull quickly erased any “small Canadian company”
stigma after partnering up with some legendary heav-
ies.They worked with old friend Steve Olson, who be-
came Skull’s first pro.The brand solidified their image
in an industry heading towards DayGlo by offering
multiple punk band boards. Musician Skate Master
Tate worked as Skull’s new brand manager, and
hooked up PD with Gang Green,TheVandals, Social
Distortion, Red Hot Chili Peppers andWasted Youth.
Rick focused more on his career, while PD stepped
in and began controlling the brand on his own.With a
Zip code in the heart of Hollywood and PD’s rep for
hopping fences to invade pools and ditches, the brand
established an international reputation.
Olson’s pro model showed that Skull had matured
into a brand able to support pros, but nobody expect-
ed them to join forces with one of the most popular
skaters of the ’80s. “[Signing] Steve was the first
step in making boards for somebody like Christian
Hosoi,” PD says.The partnership was atomic. In 1985,
Hosoi posed with his three different-sized models in
ads, and blasted judo and rocket airs on Skull/Hosoi
planks while PD and company produced more product
than ever before.
“That made me realize that they were on a
different level,” says Kevin Harris, a freestyler who
at the time was ranked second in the world behind
Rodney Mullen.
But did a flamboyant superstar dilute the small
hardcore company steeped in punk tradition? “I don’t
think it changed the brand,” PD says, “but it enabled us
to do bigger numbers.We never did as big a numbers
as we did with a mini, mid and max Hammerheads.
Those sold in the thousands every month.”
It’s a little fuzzy now, but there was a surreal point
in 1987 when Hosoi began working with Santa Cruz,
and stores stocked two separately manufactured
and distributed Hosoi brands. “There were definitely
some difficulties that were related in dealing with
a rider that high-profile for sure,” PD says, but in his
relaxed, bedtime reading voice emphasizes that even
after the break-up, it’s all good.This was the ’80s,
after all, when some of skating’s biggest deals were
sealed with a handshake.
Skull rode the California dream until the end of the
decade—pretty much like every other established
skateboard brand.Then “skateboarding ate shit,” PD
says bluntly. “The ’80s had just burned themselves
out, not only in skateboards; the crazy teased hair
and all that ’80s shit reached its climax and ended.
It made more sense for me to be back inVancouver
running the store again instead of down there running
Skull Skates.We were grouped in with that ’80s
thing.We weren’t Blind.We weren’tWorld Industries.
We were Skull Skates, and people basically weren’t
interested in that shit anymore.”

4. 157
The Locked Room
Harris, with his experience running Ultimate
Distribution, knew there was a strong demand for Skull
products, and often talked with PD about working out a
deal. “Kevin has been an old friend since the ’70s, and he
started Ultimate Skateboards, which is a great distribu-
tion company, and he’s been bugging me for decades to
distribute Skull Skates,” PD says. “I was always comfort-
able doing my own thing, but there have been some real
changes in the industry.We do sell direct to dealers, but
you have to prepay us before we’ll even ship anything.
And most of the industry runs on terms, and we’re not
going to offer anybody terms.”
PD and Harris worked out a deal that widened
distribution but built a fence around the Skull brand.
PD wants to keep his Hot Shop exclusive so nobody in
Vancouver can sell Skull and it doesn’t really open up
that much across the country. “I’ve heard that Ultimate
sells to 800 to 1,000 dealers across Canada, and at the
moment we’re authorizing 80 dealers,” PD says. “I’m not
trying to be a dick and say, ‘You can’t have it because I
don’t like you’ or anything stupid like that.We’ve always
been pretty strict with how we’re represented, so it
needs to be a proper skateboard shop.”
Strict is right. PD laughs when I ask about the
infamous locked room that stores Ultimate’s Skull
stock. It wasn’t his idea, but apparently shops unaware
of restrictions were throwing Skull product into their
boxes along with other brands. Now you need an escort
if you’re hand-picking through the Skull stash.
Skateboarding may be more mainstream than ever,
and while he doesn’t want Skull in a mall shop next to
bathing suits and scooters, he isn’t too worried about
the integrity of the activity. “What’s great about
skateboarding is that even if you look at the business
side as being sort of washed- or blown-out—skate-
boarding is always going to have that difficulty—there’s
always that risk of falling down and getting hurt and
ending up being gurney’d out of a spot,” he says.
“There’s something exciting about that. None of us
want to get hurt, but it keeps everybody from doing it.
They’ll wear the shoes, they’ll go buy theT-shirt in the
mall, but a lot of them will never push off in the street
or drop into a bowl because they know it’s going to
hurt like fuck if it doesn’t work out. I think that’s
skateboarding’s saving grace.”
“They’ll wear the shoes,
they’ll go buy the T-shirt
in the mall, but a lot of them
will never push off in the
street or drop into a bowl
because they know it’s going
to hurt like fuck if it doesn’t
work out. I think that’s
skateboarding’s saving grace.”
dom to feel it out and do it the way he wants it. But he
also recognizes that he’s part of a lineage and wants
to keep that thread running through what he does. It’s
worked out great by naturally making it happen and
not pushing it.”
The storefront/brand headquarters inVancouver
is a major reason for PD’s continued enthusiasm.
Skull may be an artistic outlet for PD, but his shop
allows him to interact and do what he loves: stoke
people out.
“You kind of want to blow minds. You want people
to come in and be overwhelmed by awesomeness. For
a lot of shops, their awesomeness is their shoe wall,
which is totally cool, but I’m really into skateboards.
If you want a freestyle board, a drop downhill board,
a transition board—we’ve got them.We sell a lot of
boards geared to cruising and commuting.We sell
lots of technical boards, even in our own brand. A
lot of people see Skull as an old-school thing, which
is totally fine, but to exist as a viable company over
decades, you can’t be stuck in one style.There’s going
to be demand for things that I’m not going to skate. A
typical example is a Popsicle under eight inches. I can
appreciate what those are about, but I’m not going
to ride it myself.We’re completely connected to the
people using our stuff. Our customers’ and people-on-
flow’s input is a very intimate and direct connection.
Everybody will tell you that their stuff is designed to
be functional, but the further you are away from the
people using your stuff, the less up-to-the-minute
your product is going to be.”
That an independent skateshop survived two
major economic depressions says something for
PD’s durable business savvy, even if it bucks common
sense. An example: PD doesn’t accept credit cards.
If a customer buys a sticker it’s no big deal. It gets
more complicated when purchasing a complete
or a Skull cruiser bike. “Imagine if an accountant
calculated how much money he’s lost by not accepting
credit cards,” Harris says. “It’d be substantial.
You’ve got to hand it to him for his ethics over all
this time—he’s never changed.”
Compared to most modern skate brands, Skull
is not polished; there are no carbon fibre inserts or
kevlar layers in the boards.This isn’t to say that PD
isn’t particular about his product. He literally takes a
hands-on approach and keeps his Canadian suppliers
secret. “We’ve always tried to make stuff very close to
where the wood grows,” he says. “A wood skateboard
is made from something that was a live tree, and
I compare it to making food; do you want a salad
that’s made from ingredients that have been shipped
through several climate zones? Really, the best
skateboards are made from where the trees grow.
The best maple skateboard is going to be one that’s
of clear material, a dense material with a resiliency to it,
a proper snap and flex.When it crashes into something,
it dents but it’s not going to explode. My opinion is
that they need to be made in small quantities close to
the material source.” And Skull’s wood does have its
dedicated fans.
156