Alva The Company
In 1977, at the age of 19, Tony Alva shunned the major skate companies to form his own, Alva Skates. It was the first company ever run and owned by a skateboarder, as well as being one of the first to use layered Canadian maple plywood in skate decks. In December 2005, Alva opened two stores in Southern California locations—Oceanside near San Diego, and on Fairfax Ave in Los Angeles. In December 2006, he celebrated the first anniversary of the stores with a party at the Los Angeles shop, which was attended by some of the old Z-Boys, current Alva Team members, MySpace friends, skate fans, and other minor celebrities. Tony signed autographs and served as DJ for the catered event. The bad boy image of the legendary Z-Boy was present in the publicity postcard invitation, which featured a drawing of a hand flipping the bird with a lit wick coming off of the end of the middle finger as if it were a birthday candle. Tony Alva also pioneered the first Rip Grip product, a material that could stick onto the underside of a skateboarder's deck making it easier to maintain grip.
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“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)