OUT & ABOUT JART SKATEBORDS & 5BORO NYC SKATEBORDS.

JART SKATEBOARDS started out in 2001 in Irún (the Basque Country) as a business project led by the Iraola brothers. Coming from a family with great experience in the Wood Sector located in a coastal area were board sports are almost a must, these young skaters aimed to apply their traditional knowledge of wood to innovation in the skateboard factory.
After a period of experimentation and adjustment, the brand began to establish itself and develop a positive outlook for the future. In a very short time, thanks to the individual drive of the Iraola brothers and the workforce that backs the JART SKATEBOARDS adventure, they were able to revitalise the Spanish skate scene and people began to look at it in a different way, both at home and abroad. The philosophy of skate “Made in Europe” was being defined.
The logo is JART SKATEBOARDS’ most visible mark, and a clear sign of the corporate identity that has gradually been consolidated. It represents the annual rings on the tree trunks that provide the wood, as the raw material to make a skateboard.

At present, JART SKATEBOARDS is one of the brands with the greatest presence at the main European skateboard scene. This merit is mainly due to the quality obtained in the manufacture of the boards, the effort and capacity of the team of professionals that support the every-day work and above all to the trust placed in us by our public.We would like to thank you all very much for your unconditional support.

I guess you could say the history of 5Boro is the history of me as a skateboarder, skateboarding in NYC. Even though the company has only been around for 14 years, the whole idea behind the company has been developing since I first skated in the great city of New York 26 years ago. In 1983 my Mom managed a store on the corner of 6th Avenue and Downing St. in Greenwich Village. At the time, I lived in New Jersey and my Mom used to always ask my older sister and I if we wanted to help out at the store to get some extra money. I would go in on weekends and my job basically consisted of skating around Greenwich Village running errands. I would deliver things, go out and get lunch for the employees and I got to explore the village on my way to and from place to place. The winter came and I stopped going in because I hung out with my friends in New Jersey. At this point, I really did not skate all the time it was more of like transportation and occasionally I would bomb hills in front of my house. The spring of 1984 came and the BMX craze was dying and kids started skateboarding. Everywhere I went I would see kids skating. I started to go into the city on weekends again and was less interested in running errands and more interested in exploring the city. I would skate downtown and uptown, farther and farther every weekend, and I used to get so lost I would just keep going till I saw something I recognized. I discovered so much that summer. Soho, Tribeca, Chinatown, the financial district, the L.E.S., Chelsea, pretty much all downtown. By this time skating had gone mainstream and I had met some kids in my school who skated. We skated through the winter and snowboarded behind the Garden State Arts Center when it snowed. Eventually I lost interest in snowboarding and skated in my basement when it was too cold or snowing outside. A few of my friends would come over and we would session this parking block four of us had carried from a shopping center 2 miles away. By now I was only into skating and it was my life. I really did nothing else but skate. On the weekends we would all pile into my mom's car and head for the city. We skated everywhere we looked for stuff to hit and a whole other world was in front of us. The spring of 1985 came and skateboarding was still going strong but this time when it got warm even the BMXer's were buying boards. We would go into the city on weekends and one time we got ballsy and hopped on the train right after school and headed for the city. This is when we were introduced to midtown. We got off at Penn Station and we had never really been up this far. My mom's store seemed like a world away. The sidewalks were so wide and the buildings and plazas were endless. We skated around and around till dark and hopped on the train back home. The rest of the week we spoke about skating from downtown to midtown.The weekend came and we skated from my mom's store to Central Park and back. We still had time so we headed downtown and ran into some guy named Christian. He asked us if we were going downtown and tagged along with us. The guy was so much better than we were. He was just flowing so easy and doing slappies so easily. He brought us to the Brooklyn banks and we nearly pissed our pants. There were about 30 kids sessioning and I looked around and could not believe I had never seen this place before. It was tucked away behind the Brooklyn Bridge. Well we sessioned the banks, which at that time consisted of carving and an occasional boneless or slide. Packs of kids would come and go on little missions throughout the city. From that day on we had an inside connection to all the spots that I would be skating and still skate to this day. Since my mom came into work every day I would come in with my friends as much as possible and we ventured farther and farther, still with the help of the subways. We would go up to the Bronx and skate the hills people would tell us about. Go into Brooklyn for these weird contests where kids wore costumes. So many cultures, so much to skate. Each borough offered something new. Even after all these years, I find new things to skate almost every time I go out thanks to the never-ending construction and reconstruction of buildings, streets and plazas all around the city.

Thanks to all who support 5boro- you make it all possible.

Steve Rodriguezsteve@5boro.com