Monday, October 7, 2013

Eight Ball & Droors.




It's a somewhat haphazard look at skateboard clothing companies from the early 1990s for the week.

Ken Block started Eightball Clothing in 1991. The name soon changed to Droors. Block partnered with Damon Way, Danny's brother, and soon launched a footwear line. This little shoe company came to be known as DC, which was an abbreviation for Droors Clothing. It wasn't named after team riders Danny Way and Colin McKay, as was the popular rumor. Droors was around for most of the 1990s. They specialized in technical athletic garments that firmly landed on the fresh side of scale. Droors was under the DC umbrella until the brand was sold to Dwindle in 1998. The clothing company lasted until 2002.




On an unrelated topic, Fred Smith's Loud Ones have some new music coming out on Beer City Skateboards & Records. They recorded a new full length album that will be released on CD sometime this year and on vinyl in 2014 for Record Store Day. There's also going to be Fred Smith Loud One deck on 1031.

Eight Ball: Transworld - March 1992 Volume 10 Number 3

Droors: Transworld - June 1992 Volume 10 Number 6

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Didn't Droors do Dukes Shoes, once it was under Dwindle?

Also, there was Drawls clothing company around the same time, but I can't remember who rode for them.

--Rikku Markka

Justin said...

I want to say Dukes was entirely under Dwindle.

I don't know if anybody rode for Drawls. I'm sure some people did, but they mostly had ads with the Dukes Of Hazard and other retro type things.

Anonymous said...

I totally forgot about Eight Ball clothing. Did you see the Jenkem Mag article about early nineties skateboarding? Pretty funny. By the way what ever happened to Damon Byrd?

P.S. The first time I ever saw someone wear a shoelace as a belt was 1992. It was Jamie Thomas at a NSA contest in Texas.

Anonymous said...

Dave Kinsey did the DC logo that looks like Chanel. He used to do stuff for Underworld Element.

Keith said...

There was also Ghetto Wear, which iirc was the predecessor to 8 ball. Or maybe it wasn't. That was a long fucking time ago!

Droors did have some shoes with Droors labeling. They were like Chucks with the rubber toe.

For some reason, I remember Dukes being a sister brand to Duffs, rather than sister brand to Droors.

Justin said...

Ghetto Wear was World Industries. It's tough piecing these things together given the short shelf life of skateboard clothing companies.

I think you are right as Dukes having something to do with Duffs.

The first Droors shoes did look like Chucks. I remember thinking how odd they were compared to what was popular.

Anonymous said...

I had a Mike V. Ghetto Wear shirt. It was the backside of an elephant. This was around 1989-90. Later I got some orange Ghetto Wear shorts around 1992 or so. They were embroidered with their logo(remember when everything was embroidered for a bit). World had something to do with them I think. Can anyone find out exactly. I been going crazy trying to find out.
Bill

Anonymous said...

Ghetto Wear was definitely World, and Dukes was for sure a sister company to Duffs, which was also out of World.