Close your eyes and travel back, far back, all the way to the turn of the millennium, brah. A period when brands like Maple, Shorty’s, Blind, and Birdhouse ruled the asphalt with lots of cartoony drug references and suggestive animation. The late ’90s and early ’00s were a visually off-kilter era for skateboard graphics, an anything goes sort of era.
Dudes like Natas Kaupas and Jim Thiebaud were before my time, so I won’t be including any of those famously provocative old-skool graphics, gramps. No, my focus here is narrowed in on the saucy, sultry, and steamy anime broads of Hook-Ups skateboards. These Japanese-style chickadees in their flirty poses were elevated to an iconic level amongst skaters and we, Мишка, don’t plan on breaking off our fling with these girls anytime soon.
Started by Jeremy Klein, an asiaphile and early rider for World Industries and later Birdhouse, Hook-Ups began from an old Industries graphic called “Dream Girl”. A simple portrait of a brunette in a futuristic get-up, under it written in Kanji are the words ‘Dream Girl’. After that there was no stopping Klein as he released hundreds of designs, featuring slightly different women in both work and play wear.
These females loved to role-play, something I always cherished about them. To this day, collectors will pay ungodly prices to own original boards that have been out of print since their collapse, but they can’t hide it from us, we know what wood these monied dilettantes are really shredding.
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5. Agent 347
I spy cameltoe! The buxom secret agent has the look down pat but don’t get any ideas because this bitch is packing serious heat. A spicy, red jumper hugs her hourglass figure tightly, emphasizing her most valuable assets, as you look down the barrel of her big, hard magnum. By the way she wields that weapon, it’s fair to say she can handle even the largest of pieces.
Agent 347 appeared a few times over the years in varying jumpsuits and hair color.
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4. Evil Nun
Convents need more nuns like this. Religious wars would cease and a unified denomination might take form in praise of these badass ‘sisters’. In all seriousness, the world would be a better place if these vixens didn’t look like they had been preserved in ashes for 1000 years, dusted off, and propped up. The Evil Nun is flipping shit on it’s ear with a blast of bawdy blasphemy.
Whiskey, smokes, the finger, and a mean upskirt reminds us that even the prudish of women have a wild side. The fires of hell are no match for the heat this girl is giving off.
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