I reached out to my long time friend and world renowned street photographer, Anthony O'Donnell to help create this VERY SPECIAL CAPSULE.
Anton and I grew up in Atascadero, CA together, and in 7th grade, we founded the Many Stylez Crew or M.S.C. as we were better known, which was a collective of skaters, musicians, photographers, filmmakers and creatives, that shared a common bond of wanting to create more HARMONY, WISDOM, SOVEREIGNTY, PEACE & LOVE upon this planet.
As we grew older, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in Audio Engineering, and Music Production, whilst Anton, opted to move to San Fransico, to pursue his love of Photography and Fashion.
Time passed and we both kept in touch, sharing our ups and downs with one another, and always encouraging and motivating each other to continue to pursue our passions.
Fast Forward to 2021, I am now on my 3rd Collection of Hood Ritual Decks and i wanted to do something special. I wanted to use my platform that I had been growing, to introduce Anton's incredibly unique and beautiful STREET PHOTOGRAPHY to the Skateboard world! So, I reached out the mythical man himself, and within weeks we were working on the capsule that you see here!
Each deck features a Photo taken by Anton on a vintage Haselblad point and shoot camera, which gives the photo's a "SOUL" and "FEELING" impossibly difficult to recreate. At this point, Anton then developed the film, and converted the images to high resolution digital format files, which were then printed on our signature 7-ply Hard Rock Maple Skateboard Decks.
For this first deck in the series we have the extra spicey image entilted "Bearded Lady" and c'mon, What says San Fransisco BETTER than bright vibrant colors and bearded men frolicking about in the Castro District!!?
This glorious and mesmerizing photo is printed onto our decks, which we pre-color treated with 3 color stained veneers that match the color pallet of the photo, bringing the whole piece together where we finally have our H666RITUAL heritage logo screen printed in "Orchid White" just above the back truck.
On behalf of myself, and Anton O'Don, we would like to thank you for taking time to read all this, and we truly hope you love these boards as much as we loved creating them for you!
Cheers,
R.j Whittacker.
(To see more of Anton's work, check his website at: www.antonshootsfilm.com )