A Brief History of Polar Skateboards | “We’re not like the others.”
We’ve got a mild obsession with the whole Scandinavian skateboard scene over here at Board Rap, so that includes Pontus Alv‘s Polar skate brand. Free Skateboard Mag just interviewed team rider David Strenström and it’s a pretty funny one. In it he recaps a quick history of Polar from how he got on it from before it even existed.
You and Oski were on Polar since before Polar was Polar, right?
Yeah, we were the first guys. I think I’ve known Oski for like ten years or something now; I started going to Malmö a lot and me and him got on the same shoe brand, Servant. It ended up I always slept at his house all the time; we’ve always been good friends. Pontus told me he was going to start a brand at the Swedish Skate Awards – I’m like 15 or something – and he was coming up to me saying I had an ugly shirt on, and I was like, ‘Your shirt is really, really bad!’ and it turns out it was the first Polar shirt, haha. After I told him that he said, ‘You wait and see, this thing is gonna be the fucking shit!’ A month after that we went to a skate contest, me Oski and Pontus, he drew on this board three faces and wrote: Alv, Oski, David, Polar – we’re not like all the others. And (then) when the first board came Oski jumped off, so it was only me. He was saying Pontus didn’t make any clothes, and he wanted clothes – he was like 13/14. I was the only rider for like two months I think. Then Hjalte (Halberg) got on, then Jakke (Obvgren) – who used to draw all the cartoons. The first Polar tour we went to the Bright tradeshow in Berlin and to Hamburg, (then) when we came home Pontus gave Oski a second chance or whatever you wanna call it. I’ve known Pontus since I was like 12 so it’s a long time
Click over to FREE SKATEBOARD MAG for the full David Stenström interview.
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