So long and thanks for all the shoes that were on sale.
The catalogs from the former California Cheap Skates have been a mailbox staple as long as I've been skateboarding. Around about 1992 or 1993, the company shortened their name to CCS. Now if you live in an area that has a real skateboard shop, then there wasn't much of a point to shopping at CCS. However back in the 1990s when skateboarding was much less visible and there weren't as many shops, particularly in small town USA, you were stuck going the mail order route to get new gear. A few times a year, you would get a new catalog of board porn to drool over. As the years passed and skateboarding grew, CCS was acquired by Foot Locker in 2008. The catalogs kept coming, but they were more focused on lifestyle brands that usually left me scratching my head. Earlier this summer, CCS was shut down and you can now get skateboard gear from Eastbay. Yeah, right, like that's going to happen.
Top to bottom, left to right:
1. Drake Jones, Pepe Martinez
2. Brian Childers, John Reeves
3. Scott Johnston, Andy Roy
4. Jeremy Klein, Josh Beagle
6 comments:
I can't lie; I ordered plenty of boards from CCS. And not because I thought they had the best prices, but because there really wasn't any other option. When I moved from NY state to the South in '94, there were no shops in the little town I lived in. Myself and two other kids were the only skaters in our town, the closest shop was 80 miles away, and none of us drove yet.
But, now I'm back to mail order since the one true shop in town closed up after being in business for 15 years. The alternative is a mall shop (basically a Zumiez), but being a skater growing up with the whole "Support your local skateshop" campaign, I cannot nor will not set foot in that place. Brick Harbor has a fulfillment and shipping center in my state, so I get my orders from them in a day or two.
--Rikku Markka
I want to say at some point in the last 7 or 8 years CCS had a warehouse in Pennsylvania so I would get shoes extra fast instead of waiting on UPS from California. Then they switched to somewhere in Wisconsin, which was still fairly quick.
I'll usually order from Theories of Atlantis or Skate Park of Tampa. There's two shops in my area - one's a half hour drive, the other an hour. I finally hit up Sunday in Buffalo for my current board. I'm too fussy about things so I don't want to make the drive only to discover the shop doesn't have a board I like or I picked the one day they happen to be closed.
Can you scan the board sections of these catalogs?
Maybe. Is there one catalog in specific that you wanted to see? A lot of the pictures are small and not really worth the effort of scanning, but I can probably come up with something.
The 1996 Fall catalog would be very cool to see
I'll do a post with the Fall 96 catalog. I don't have much mid 90s CCS on here.
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