On Andy’s letter, and on his freestylin’ legacy.
Los Angeles, California
July 26, 2000
Dear Readers,
Today’s letter is by Andy Jenkins, the creative director of the Girl Skateboard Company in Torrance, California, and the publisher of Bend Press.
I got an email from Andy on day three of Open Letters, which was an odd bit of serendipity: when I was leaving Toronto back in April to move to San Francisco to work up Open Letters, I brought with me only a dozen or so books, as inspiration; one was a somewhat obscure paperbackcalled “I Check The Mail Only When Certain It’s Arrived,” which is a collection of letters that Andy Jenkins edited, culled from mail he’d received during the late 80′s and early 90′s.
The book covers, in epistolary form, road trips and drug trips and personal revelations; it also chronicles Andy’s involvement in developing some of the most innovative magazines in recent publishing history. He was the founding editor of Freestylin’; one of the founding editors of Dirt, the Sassy spin-off that defined a certain skateboard/indie-rock/Southern California aesthetic off of which others have made millions and millions; and, along with Bob Mack, Spike Jonze, Mark Lewman, and the three Beastie Boys, he edited the first issue of the legendary Grand Royal.
I’d never corresponded with Andy before, but when I got his email, I invited him to write an open letter. Today’s letteris what he came up with, one day in the life of a corporate office full of skateboarders.
It is the third letter in our week-long series of letters about life at work. Tomorrow: laboring in the salt mines of Christian publishing.
Yours truly,
