Interview: Chris Lipomi on Dear
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. As skateboarders—most of us will forever get the warm and fuzzies when we think of our first few years on board. The clothes, artwork, personalities, and music we were exposed to during those honeymoon years will invariably stay with us for a lifetime. Done right, reissues of those things can take us right back to that sacred place and time. But approached incorrectly, we will immediately resent the new version of the old thing for sullying the temple in our memory that we hold the dearest. I have known Chris now for well over a decade. He was always one of those rare skateboarders who could also articulate what truly made him love riding one. Since launching his fledgling multipurpose company—Dear—earlier this year, the following was an extended conversation on his plans for Nostalgia done right.
How did you initially come up with the idea for Dear?
Well, there are two different things. Story number one is that after I was finishing up my last art show and project, the next project in line that I was starting to work on was having to do more with skating and kind of going back to my own foundation in skating and this kind of disconnect that I’ve always had between my art life and my skateboard life. They had never really crossed over. I had never really done anything that connected both.
So you were going to approach it from the fine art side?
Yeah, and it was actually more sculpture based. I was starting to work on these sculptures and I started to come to the conclusion that an art audience wasn’t the proper audience and a gallery wasn’t the proper forum for the things I was investigating. So I started thinking that a skateboard audience would be better but at the same time realized skaters wouldn’t really care about sculpture.
Unless you can skate it bro.
Exactly. And we’ve all seen what those art shows look like. So that was sort of hovering in my mind, and then story number two is that right around that time, actually even a little before this—this was maybe at the end of summer 2013—and at the beginning of that summer is when Brian (Anderson) told me he was leaving Girl and was going to do something with Brad (Staba). So he was here in LA, staying at my place, when he came down to break up with Rick (Howard) and Mike (Carroll). Also at that time, because Alex Olsen was in the mix for that initial version, we were hanging out with Alex some that week. And as Brian and I normally do when he’s in town—we were watching a bunch of old videos and just nerding out.
This was where the name came about?
Right. So one of the initial names that was sort of thrown around for what Brian’s project would be (Ultimately 3D)—was Dear. Apparently Brad was leaning more towards 3D and so they just went that direction.
So they had come up with it?
It was Brian’s name, amongst maybe three or four others, as potential names for the company. But I think Alex (Olson) was really stoked on the name Dear.
Yeah. He mentioned in an interview that it was almost one of the reasons for him not staying on 3D. That he had really liked the Dear name and was bummed when it wasn’t that.
It kind of seemed like it was strike one a least, to be honest. And what was crazy was that he already had reasons to be grumpy with 3D before he had officially quit Girl (laughs).
So you salvaged this name from that?
So yeah, to sum it back up—basically the three of us were hanging out some at that time. Alex was already fussing that it wasn’t going to be Dear. I think Brian told him at breakfast, and then later on that afternoon we were watching old skate videos. I think we were watching Footage (’90 G&S) and I said something like, “Wouldn’t it be rad to make a bunch of these old shirts.” Not re-issues necessarily tied to any companies or brands but instead remake these shirts that have never really existed. Shirts that were tied to individual skaters. Alex thought that that was a good idea and the three of us sort of riffed for a second at that moment and tried to think of specific shirts and of course the Gonz Israel shirt came up right away. Then I said something like, “We should call that Dear.” It made more sense. It was like an homage type thing. I kinda thought it would make Alex feel better. Brian thought it was rad so right then it sort of became Alex and my little side project.
How long did that last?
That only lasted a couple of months of very thin texting and a few meetings.
So the Dear project sort of became whatever you had been working on in the art world side?
It made a lot more sense. It took the place of whatever I was ramping up with for the next art project. It ended up taking over my time. The last art show and body of work before that I had been involved in making was really kind of centered and focused in fashion. So it got me thinking about clothing and sculpture / clothing AS sculpture and working on that. I had done this whole project on Halston, the fashion designer, which was funny because that sort of became Alex’s thing now—like ‘70s gay New York Studio 54 or whatever.
It’s funny too because it seemed like Brian and Brad were two of the only skaters you were really able to wear your skater and artist hats around. So having Brian sort of be the window to take you fully into skating seems fitting.
Yeah. Totally. I mean besides you and a few others, I don’t have too many friends who know me from both worlds. And Brian and Brad I’ve been friends with for like fifteen years or something so it does make sense. Brian is somebody who understands that there is life and these different lives outside of skateboarding. He understands that people can wear different hats. Not to say that my life is so complex, but he definitely understood that I kept things divided for a long time.
Going back, what was kind of your skate timeline? When did you start?
I actually started skating super late, as far as the standard goes.
X-Games ’99?
Yeah. Totally. Once I saw the Mega Ramp bro (laughs.) No, I didn’t really start until I moved to California in ’89. I stopped living with my mom in Ohio and moved out to LA—to Thousand Oaks to live with my dad. In Ohio, maybe for like six months before that I was interested in skating. I’d pick up a magazine here and there and eventually you get a Christmas board or whatever. But you don’t really skate. Then when I moved to California, I went from occasionally seeing magazines in Ohio that were sort of still in the ‘80s vert era to being on the verge of ‘90s contemporary street era. Everything was so far ahead out here. I was still in like, “Yeah, Jeff Grosso—he seems so crazy, right guys!” And the kids out here were just like eye roll, “What? We like Ron Chatman.” It was all World Industries. All Blind. It was an insane culture shock in general. I was twelve or thirteen and all the kids my age had been skating through the popular Powell years and jump ramp years so they were already way on board and I was just jumping in pretty late.
It seems like that is still your golden era for the Dear stuff. Like ’89-’91.
Yeah. Exactly. And of course, I’m sure psychologically it has to do with me trying to recapture that time where I was perpetually catching up. I always wished that I could have enjoyed it more. But I think that’s like anything with history or memory—looking back you always wish you had the wherewithal or hindsight to enjoy it more. That being said though I still got my licks in. I got to go to Rip City when I did, participate in the scene and see what I saw. I got to spend summers down in Venice Beach, meeting and skating with Jesse Martinez and (Jeff) Hartsel.
What were the biggest firsthand golden memories?
Definitely spending time in Venice. Because that was one of the few places it seemed to me where you had this access to these guys and would see other people skating. Any time you would go down there, of course there was Daniel (Castillo), Davey and Kareem (Campbell) was down there a lot. And Pep and William. But then really casually you would see Jesse Martinez or Tim Jackson or some other pro. That was just amazing to me. But you wanna know what was really amazing about the Venice scene? —it was such a scene, and such a grouping of people that was absolutely based around nothing! Because there was absolutely nothing to skate down there. There was the shittiest slope, you wouldn’t even call it a kicker, with a turned over trashcan. Anything you could do over that can, guaranteed you could also do over it on flat. But it was like a meeting spot. And that was rad. Back then it was hard enough to orchestrate your own session amongst your friends, let alone finding out about something cool or seeing new people. So Venice was awesome for that.
After those golden years, didn’t you work and skate for some companies for a while? I know you worked for Milk right?
Yeah. Towards the end of high school I worked for Milk for a bit. I had a few little skate jobs. I actually started off doing screen-printing. I think the first job I had was at Acme.
See, this is relevant to Dear now, can we expect the same quality in Dear products as we would from Acme?
Yes. Absolutely. You can also expect the same longevity as far as a company lasting as with Acme (laughs.)
So you had some screen-printing gigs?
Yeah. Started off with Acme. I was commuting to Costa Mesa for a little while for maybe $5/hour or something crazy like that. Then Milk in one of its later incarnations. (Ron) Chatman had already left to do 60/40 or ATM Click. Hosoi was long gone. The original Milk was Hosoi, Ron, Chicken and this guy Bob, who ran the business side of it. He broke off from those guys and they became Focus and Bob stayed with Milk. He had this tiny warehouse in Long Beach and it was like Gershon (Mosely) and Todd (Congelliere), who was already kind of over it, and then this guy Dave Griffin was going to be the new pro. I thought I was going to work myself up from warehouse worker to maybe TM, so I started giving Dan Rogers boards after he left Birdhouse. I was really obsessed with trying to get Colby Carter on the team. I remember having these long conversations with him. But it didn’t last that long. Then right after high school I moved up to San Francisco.
Was that kind of when you moved into the art world?
No. I still skated a bunch. But at that point I did get heavily into the music scene. And most of my friends were all musicians.
Summer of love?
(Laughs.) Yeah. Totally. Just flowers in my hair and you know, experimenting. No, but to be honest it was an amazing experience to move to San Francisco at that age. I’ve said this before, because it’s the truth! San Francisco is God’s gift to the eighteen year old. It’s beautiful. It feels like a real city but you can’t really get into too much trouble. It’s wonderful! At that time there were tons of bars that you could go to underage. You could really have this whole urban life experience and for someone who had just kind of danced around on the periphery—being a suburban kid—it just felt really amazing.
This was what ‘94/’95—Stereo was starting, Anti Hero starting.
Exactly. It was exactly that time. I think anyone that was in the city at that point in time was down for those brands. As far as Anti Hero, I had already been a fan of both of those guys for a long time (John Cardiel and Julien Stranger). I first heard of Cardiel when I was getting some boxes flowed from Dogtown. One of the first packages I got had that Dogtown video (DTS, The Video, ‘90) in it where Cardiel had his first part. Before that we knew who Wade (Speyer) and Karma (Tsocheff) were because they had been in ads… but it opened our eyes to John. And of course, everyone has a big crush on Julien Stranger, so knowing that those two guys were together, we were just like, “Oh my god, this is going to be amazing. And it is… Antihero is still my favorite.
When did you move back to LA?
I was up there all in all about seven years. The last two years of it I started art school at the San Francisco Art Institute. That was where I met Patrick O’Dell—he was in classes with me—and that was also how I met Brad (Staba) because he would come and use the darkroom at school once in a while to print photos. After that, I lived in Europe (In Sweden) for a year and then I moved back to LA to finish school.
So at that point you were sort of off and running on your art career?
Yeah. Basically, I think the turning point for me was the year I spent in Europe. In the European schools they sort of treat you more like you’re already a working artist.
Like it’s a viable career path?
Yeah. That too. All of the sudden you start to think like, “Oh wow, I could actually do this.” When I came back, I finished school at UCLA and that whole time I was just itching to get out and start showing and talking to galleries.
You ran in that world for like a decade or so after that?
Yeah. Pretty much. But it’s pretty gnarly. It’s not easy at all, especially if you’re not doing something that’s already established and accepted. I had supporters but no real champions. Some of the people that I went to school with were lucky enough to have a professor or someone who is a prominent artist sort of usher them in. I never really got too much of that. But I did make it my absolute priority in my life so I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. So I did that for a long time.
Back to present. So you’re sitting around with Brian and Olson and you decide to switch gears? I know you had done a couple of art projects that started to tread into skate nostalgia stuff.
Yeah. But in general, nostalgia had sort of been a focus of a lot of my work. Also another main aspect of my artwork has been this sort of denial, or questioning of originality and this investigation into what has been done before and sort of re-doing those things. So all of this Dear stuff absolutely fits seamlessly in with my body of work or whatever you want to call it. But to make a quick sum up, nothing had been the same in my art career since the recession. A few of the galleries that I was working with went out of business. Things just got really conservative and a little timid in the art world. People got a little tighter. So that became really difficult. And it was a struggle. I was going back to working these part time jobs to support myself—which is fine, it’s what you have to do, but just getting older and having it feel like the same struggle you already went through ten years ago kind of wore me down. In the back of my head I had been thinking about getting involved in something else for a while.
I thought it was funny that you sort of landed that desk job right before Dear and then quit that to fully go into this.
For sure. I was trying to find something else in the “real world” that I could apply my skill set to. Unless you’re secretly doing illustrator classes on the side, there’s not a whole lot else your art education applies to in terms of real world jobs. You kind of have to be super high up in an advertising or marketing firm to just be a critical fussy pants. Which is what an art education makes you. Basically I was trying to find a way to short track or carpool lane to that. But the reality of that is that you probably have to be a copywriter for ten years to get to that. Like Peggy Olson (Mad Men).
You mentioned re-purposing and borrowing old art, the Dear shirts and articles you have made seem to obviously tread a fine line between homage and stealing, how have you dealt with the parties involved who generated the OG artwork?
I’ve thought about that a lot and the last thing I would ever want to do would be to bum anybody out or step on anybody’s toes. So I’m trying to be as careful as I can, but also not lose sight of this idea of our shared experience with this imagery and this index of iconography. Some of the companies are long since out of business, others are still around and in a way, sure—of course that artwork belongs to the present owners of whatever company it was—but it kind of also belongs to us. We grew up with it and I think that it’s small enough of a niche pool of people who actually understand and know these things today. The other thing is that I’m not in any way trying to push my own brand—like rip-off those graphics and then just have it say Dear. Like I don’t want to have a Gullwing logo or something that people remember but now it says Dear instead. For the most part, I want this stuff to look as close to the original as possible and I want my branding to be as invisible as possible. I think that in that way, the forefront of the message is to pay homage to the original idea, rather than piggyback off of it. It’s the difference between Warhol and mmm… Fresh Jive.
With digital media now and so-called social media, it almost seems like everybody is putting on this DJ hat. Like everybody can copy and paste anything, but the best are sampling the best stuff. Or it’s sort of like the first person that played you Led Zeppelin or something when you were 13. That person can’t take credit for the music, but they still occupy an important place in your mind because they turned you on to whatever.
Yeah. It might be too much to say that we’re all owners of it. But I think in some regards, it becomes public domain. I’m working from a place where my foundation as a skater and as a person is tethered to these memories, to these images, and the clothing that went along with it. So I’m just trying to do them justice. The last thing I would ever want to do is bum anybody out. For something like the Jason Lee $ shirt, going through Dune and making sure Jason was cool with it was something that was huge to me. I’m not using it to try and buddy up to anybody either. There’s not a whole lot I can offer them at the end of the day. There isn’t really a huge amount of money involved.
It seemed like the Ray Barbee interaction was perfect. He got one of the hats and was just like, “Rad. Thanks.”
Exactly. And that’s how I would hope every interaction could go. I’m just trying to celebrate these people and this period in skateboarding that to me just had very astute individuality and really interesting personalities that came through with the way they presented themselves.
I know you put a ton of work into getting the proper wear on the shirts and screen printing them yourself, can you describe that process for people who might not know how much work goes into these?
Right. That all came about… I guess around the time I started talking about it with Alex and making shirts was sort of becoming a real thing, it really reminded me of this time a few years before that when my parents had recently moved and this box of old shirts got unearthed. I had basically written all of these shirts off thinking that my parents had given them to a thrift store years earlier. But all of a sudden, I was back their place for Christmas and my dad told me like, “Oh yeah, we found this box.” I opened it up and it was seriously like opening the Ark of the Covenant. Just getting such an intense wave of nostalgia and giddiness, it left this huge impression on me, just the feelings it brought out. So I’ve had those shirts around since then and in a way that emotion has been what I really want to recreate for others with Dear. I thought, if the shirts have this sort of simulated wear to match what those original ones were like, they would look and feel right. So coming at it from that idea Alex and I both talked about how we were sort of both were unhappy with the present state of vintage-izing clothes—like jeans with some fake wear, or these gross thin remakes of old concert T-shirts. None of it felt really right or authentic so we started looking for ways to make them look as close to those real shirts I had found as possible.
You have also started a board division. What is the plan on that front? Is it different from the shirts?
At this point, the board division exists completely in my mind and on Instagram (laughs.) It’s just for fun, there’s no real team or anything… But for this Christmas—I’m calling it a Christmas special—I’m doing a really concentrated release of stuff for winter, there is a Stick-O-Rama board along with the T-shirts and stickers for that. All the other boards I have posted are just hand painted one of a kind boards for me. But I’m going to see how the response goes for this one. I’ve been spending a lot of time and energy with getting the right shape and making sure the feeling is right. I really wanted to make a true to that era shape, like a ’90-’91 shape, but still have it be very functional by today’s standards. I’ll get a great response sometimes from people who have bought shirts and feel like they were transported back in time. I wanted people to feel the same way about this board. To stand on it and just feel like you’re standing on a Jason Lee board in your home skateshop growing up.
You should just invent a time machine.
Totally. Wouldn’t that be a great use of time travel? To just to walk into Rip City circa 1990 and buy some bridge bolts. Actually Rip City pretty much is a time machine if you walk in that place (laughs.) If anybody wants to time travel just go to Rip City, park at Carl’s Jr. and walk in and get ignored by those guys. And that’s how I felt when I was 14.
What shirt has had the best response? How has the actual business of it developed?
From Instagram really.
Instagram is basically your business model?
Kind of. That just seems to be the way to go these days. Of course, I don’t have money for advertising or anything like that. I know some people in the industry but not a lot. So Instagram has been a way to sort of give people a daily reminder that you exist, and in my case it’s sort of a daily flashback to the period that I’m interested in. I really wish I could advertize… I have a notebook full of ideas.
What made you quit that day job? Was the Israel shirt the first one you made?
The Israel shirt was the first one I did. I was friendly enough with some of the guys here at Supreme (LA) that they took some and then there was just a little bit of mail order here and there. Then it just sort of slowly grew from there. Really, getting the distribution in England (Rock Solid Dist.) was a big jump for me and that was because Wes from Rock Solid saw my stuff on Marc Johnson’s Instagram. I got the MJ bump! (laughs) …And every time I get the MJ bump I get another hundred followers. But that worked out super amazing with Wes and since then it has sort of gone that way. At first I was thinking that you kind of have to go around and solicit, ask people to carry your shit and all of that. I tried it, and it would result in a few unenthusiastic orders, like a little order here and a “we’ll see” there. And that sort of thing. Since then. I’ve had a number of people just approaching me. Of course, you can’t always expect that, but I think through Instagram or word of mouth people will kind of find out about it and maybe it will click with them and then they will seek me out. Rather than me trying to sell it, I think with something as niche as this is—it’s either going to sell itself or not at all. For the most part, anybody that started skating after say 1993 will not know what this is.
People under 30 need not apply?
Yeah. But it’s funny, and you’ve mentioned this before and I also see it as true—for as big as skateboarding is now, it’s a little vapid in a way. It’s a little empty. I think there are a few people who sort of see what I’m doing, and might not know the references, but sense that it has meaning, and that’s enough for them to be interested.
I know that the kids that roll with you (Alex, Shrimp, Nolan etc…)—your team so to speak—those kids are more into the old stuff than the new shit. To me the metaphor is always like the ‘60s or ‘70s for Rock n’ Roll. Like maybe you weren’t there—I wasn’t there—but you still look back at it and know that you’ll never do better than Hendrix at Woodstock, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, the Stones or whatever. You look to the time when it was the purest too. I think skaters can sense that it was at it’s purest in ’89-’91. They kind of know that that was it.
Yeah. Kind of. Or even if they’re not able to articulate it, they still have some sort of sense about it.
No matter what age you are from you can sort of decipher what’s cool.
Right. Which is why you have all these kids now dressing like they’re on Consolidated in ’93. Or you have another whole group dressing like early ‘80s Duane Peters or something. And then that brings the shaped boards and allows for companies like Welcome to happen. Welcome is new, but it feels old. It’s not like you’re going and buying a re-issue Powell board—you’re buying like a new contemporary board—but it’s coming out of the aesthetic of the past.
Kids want to do new things with old things.
Something like that. It’s interesting though. It’s an interesting time. It’s pretty easy to trace where these things are coming from and what’s exciting to me about it is that for the first time in the longest time, skateboarding is referencing itself. And that’s really awesome. I think for so long, skateboarding has sort of looked to something outside, and then brought that into it’s own world. Which can be interesting but then can also lead to this idea that what we’re doing sort of isn’t good enough.
That’s true. Like we have an identity inferiority complex or something.
Yeah, like we’re not good enough just as skateboarders—you’ve got to be something else too. People should be open and for sure have all sorts of other influences but there was a time, and you remember this, in skating during the mid ‘90s were it was almost like people were embarrassed to be skateboarders. Like you had to dress in all Polo gear or Nautica gear, and the whole like, “Oh, these are my chill shoes” thing. It seemed like we all wanted to prove that we weren’t just skateboarders. Now there’s really an embrace of skater-ness. And I think that that’s awesome. It might just be a passing fad like anything else but it reminds you of the place that we came out of where if you signed on to be a skater—you were a skater. There was no way out of it. In for a penny in for a pound. And that was really what lumped us all together too.
I think a lot of it is timing too. Almost everything going on now in the industry—the companies, the people we celebrate as legends, the lay of the land today pretty much came out of those pivotal years too. But I do sometimes wonder—is it just because we were kids then (‘89-’91)? Like will a kid who started in ’01 one day be making a Dear company for Wet Willy and Flameboy?
I think that that’s part of it. With these past five years and this huge exploitation of the ‘80s and all the re-issues of all of that. I think Dear and the early ‘90s stuff is a lot smaller because skating and the industry was a lot smaller then too. So people who are older than us who romanticize the ‘80s were the same people who were super into Back To The Future and Police Academy IV and the whole Break-dance/Streetplant/neon/Madonna ‘80s thing. For sure I have the relationship with that era because that’s when I grew up. I think that’s part of it but then the eras also stand on their own merits too. Wasn’t the whole point of Flameboy and all of that to sort of remove all of the sentimentality from it? It was Rocco and World Industries’ choice to specifically do something that wasn’t special. It was meant to make it feel like a toy company. That said though, as humans I think we have the capacity to romanticize anything.
I’m just playing devil’s advocate really. Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between us and some midlife crisis dudes at a Star Trek convention or something.
The difference is that we were also ON Star Trek! We were also on the show. And that has always made a difference to me with skateboarding—it’s an active pastime and it’s immersive. We are active participants. You can be a fan but you also still have to do it. There are very few fans who don’t skate themselves. So I think that right there is the difference between us and fans of some TV show.
Yeah. That’s true. I suppose even the way you would tear your shirt. Or skate shirts always had that wear at the bottom from the griptape where you held your board. But you would fall in the shirt, bleed in it, and live it like you said.
Totally. Skateboarding is small enough—and it was especially small enough in ’89-’90 that basically everyone that did it was a star on the show. You were a part of it. And I have to say that most of my audience has had pretty much the exact shirt or something similar to the ones I’m making. So I wanted to recreate that feeling of finding that box in your parents’ attic with all your old shirts in it for as many people as possible. It left such a crazy impression on me. It’s something worth sharing.
What was the best selling shirt? I never heard you answer.
Oh. Maybe the Gonz Israel shirt. Even though it got tempered slightly with an actual war over there. The ones that are the most iconic—like the Jason Lee dollar sign did the best. That one is still edgy but doesn’t get into the nasty politics of the Israel one. The Sheffey Einstein shirt did pretty well. It’s funny too because it’s also regional. The Sheffey shirt was huge with San Diego people but not so much with Nor Cal, which was kind of interesting. Regardless of how well they do though I’ve really only made the same limited amount for each so once they go, that’s it.
Do you get testaments from people buying them that sort of fit with your “finding the box in the attic” deal?
Oh yeah. Tons. And I save them all. I’ll screen grab them from Instagram or people email things. It’s incredible. And some of the things people write—I mean it doesn’t make me weepy—but it’s pretty amazing. It’s emotional. It’s great because maybe I’m acting as a bridge for them to reconnect with something that they really loved. It feels really good in that sense.
Future plans? You mentioned the board this winter.
Yeah. This winter is a very specific board and series of shirts all based around the Stick-O-Rama board, which was from World Industries in 1990. Then for spring it will be just another random grouping of stuff again.
Was that Krooked board still in the works?
I think so. We’ll see. I’m waiting to hear back. I hope so.
Any other collaborations? You’re friendly with The Back Forty dudes obviously.
Yeah. One of the main collaborations so far was the Todd Congelliere stuff. I was super stoked on the way all of that came out and it was just rad to work with Todd who I’ve known for so long. One collaboration for spring that I’m really excited about will be with Andy Jenkins. We’re doing a Wrench Pilot Lettus Bee shirt. He was such an amazing part of old Transworld and that whole vibe. I really associate him, Spike (Jonze), and Todd Swank as being the kind of the intellectual branch of early World Industries in a way. They were kind of the arty Zine makers. And of course, anybody that has seen Glam Boys on Wheels (’90) or any of that knows—it just has like a completely different vibe than the rest of skating had then. There are a few companies that have done a lot of their own re-issuing. Foundation is one of them. They’ve been re-working their own history and artwork for a long time. So there’s not much for me to do there, but Andy and Wrench Pilot would be a way to touch on some of that.
Favorite shirt you own?
Probably something as simple as my gold Jason Lee ‘Cat in the Hat’ shirt. Only because I can picture myself in it always. It was just one of the shirts that was in super duper heavy rotation so there are just so many memories tied to it. Probably the first parties I ever went to I was wearing it. Skating all the time, I was wearing it. I lived in that thing.
For more info on Chris and Dear—
Follow Chris on Instagram: @dearskating
or Email: dearskating@gmail.com for order info.
Also, check out Dear in our “What We Like” section of our Jan. 2015 Issue.
Innovate & Skate 