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After I had been doing this for a while, I kept getting all these random requests for an "About Us" section--actually, it was more like "Hey, who makes this site?" People felt a need to know who does it and why. So here's the why part: A long time ago my friend Rob Bingham and I started doing a skate zine. It was called Bail Skate Mag. We did a few issues--it was a lot of fun to make them, to send them to people, and to get others in the mail in return. After that rag, I started 408. It focused on my view of skateboarding, and the title was the area code for San Jose--there was a lot of San Jose pride going on at that time (there still is, I just don't live there anymore). I really enjoyed doing the mags--it was a great way to meet people, talk to pro skateboarders, do interviews, whatever. I even kept the name 408 for a few issues after I moved to San Diego. My favorite issue ever was the "?" issue, which had short interviews with tons of people--friends and pros alike. I think I did about 6 or 8 issues total of 408, and after that, inspired by the photo issues of Swank Zine, Naughty Nomads, and others, I started Cominform, which ran 22 issues; I did some with the help of Lori Rigsbee. By that point, like everyone else, I had less time and less need to make a zine. There were 6 or 7 skateboarding magazines in the US, everything was bigger and communication on the zine level wasn't as necessary anymore. Even the gods of skate zines were slowly down and stopping at that point. So skip ahead to 1994. I worked at a great skateboarding company that had the insight to get the domain name skateboard.com. My interest in the internet and the web grew, and so in 1997 I started my own website, learning basic programming and html, and it was mostly just friends and family stuff, with a small section of skateboarding and band photos. I really enjoyed it, again, and it was a way to obscure myself behind a creative curtain, although I'm not unaware of my limits as a creative force. So in 1999 I got the name skatepunk.net, which seemed like the perfect name for everything I'd ever been into: skateboarding and punk rock. And I've been building, learning, making friends, and sharing what I think is good stuff ever since. If you've read this, you must have some interest, and so I'm glad to be able to share this stuff with you. As for the who part, my name's Mark. There are a lot of "used-tos" but they aren't really that important to me to share. I've got some photos, stories, and ideas to offer. That's it. To quote Jason Jessee from that "?" issue of 408 I wrote about above, "Maybe you like?" |
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