The story of Quasi Skateboards is a warped one, so let’s start at the beginning: Remember when Alien Workshop was one of the hottest companies out there? With videos like Photosynthesis and Mindfield, the company inscribed itself into the history books of skateboarding. When Alien disbanded all of a sudden in 2014, a shock went through the skateboarding community. Everybody was like “What the fuck?!”. And understandably so: Alien had a great team, awesome graphics and a shitload of devoted followers. Now, of course, they’re back. But with their disappearance, they also lost the cult status. A year later, in 2015, former Alien team manager Chad Bowers took matters into his own hands and started the Mother Collective. Enlisting former Alien riders like Jake Johnson, Tyler Bledsoe and Gilbert Crockett, Bowers took Alien’s core personnel and gave them a second start with his new brand.
Within weeks, the Mother Collective went through the roof. Their success, however, was somewhat thwarted by an undisclosed company that owned the rights to the name “Mother Collective”. Bowers fought long and hard to keep the name but he eventually lost. With bills to pay and checks to write, Bowers brainstormed like a madman to come up with a new name that would save his company. Ultimately, he decided on the word QUASI. In a Jenkem interview, Bowers states that he liked the sound of it and its ambiguity. Quasi, he said, can be whatever the fuck it wants. It will “redefine over time,” allowing the brand to go in whatever direction it wants to. Looking at their products and graphics, you can see the resulting anarchic attitude of QUASI. Their skateboard graphics are frantic collages of typographies, photographs, numbers and colors, bearing more similarity to modern art than to traditional skateboard designs. Likewise, their clothes vary from season to season and will always take you by surprise.
Quasi, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, means “having some resemblance usually by possession of certain attributes,” as in quasi-company or quasi-boyfriend. Quasi Skateboards makes skateboards, rendering it an actual skateboarding company. However, their approach has some resemblance with art by possession of disruptive, anarchic forces. It’s quasi-art. But it’s called Quasi Skateboards, so we are quasi-confused. Anyway, you can buy Quasi both online and in-store.
