I never met Jake Phelps, but like any skateboarder, I knew Jake Phelps. Some knew him as The Phelper; some knew him as T-ed; some knew him from KOTR. No matter how you knew him, we all knew him as a skateboarder. Jake’s unapologetic love and admiration for skateboarding, for skating and destroying, for not giving a fuck, for telling it like it is, is the reason why I can feel comfortable being openly sappy about skateboarding, because I knew he was out there being tough about it. I gleaned his appreciation for skateboarding through things like the Max Schaaf 'Epicly Later'd' episode where Max shows the photo from the ‘80s of Jake’s board collection, which he wanted to document since he figured he’d never have that much shit again. I picked up on his confidence in being himself, not just in how he spoke and wrote, but in how he dressed. He didn’t need to wear any sort of skate-branded uniform made up of the newest and freshest. Black frames, vest, MJs and then Busentizs, and a skateboard. Straight up. It was a reference point for me, that you could do what he does but wear sweater vests instead of hoodies. And while his dedication to skateboarding was glaringly obvious, and you’d see him out with Hellride or the 18, that dedication was most apparent to me in just how often he seemed to pop up skating the streets of San Francisco on his own. If you want to be involved in skateboarding for the long haul, you’ve got to be a skater, and that means you’ve got to be down to go it alone, like Jake did. I'm thinking of everyone out there, especially the crew in SF and Thrasher. RIP Jake Phelps.
—
Words by Jeff Thorburn
Photo by Andrew Paynter, as seen in this great article by Will Staley in The Californa Sunday Magazine