Bless up.
In the twilight of the 2000’s a group of lads in London decided to start their own skate and clothing brand. They nailed an iconic logo and began distributing low-fi direct to web videos and “news” that quickly gained them a loyal global following amongst skaters.
With the hungry acceptance of UK Hip-Hop & Grime by the global rap music tastemakers, London was certainly having a worldwide moment through slang, sounds, skate, and street culture. Few mantles were able to bottle this better than Palace, who collaborated with high fashion to tech sport brands to get their triangle logo everywhere, including flagship stores in NYC and London.
Their latest release, Palasonic, keeps with their usual direct-to-video VHS-filmed skate video system. The video is a unique brew of relatable hard-pushing skating on craggy cobbled and tight street spots, as well as top-shelf professional game-pushing at iconic proving grounds like Southbank & Liverpool St.
This crew is good at mixing in candid posturing and hijinks through a tuff but quick-to-be-silly veneer that has typified much of London’s street cultural exports since punk broke.
Although the video dropped free online, they have produced a massive, heavy coffee table book, that in the middle has a hollowed out section that contains another video, only available with purchase.
The outer sleeve of the Palasonic “Zine” has Palace branded rolling papers (“skins”). The publication is filled with epic skate flicks and the grit and grandeur of London streets. It’s a nice document of a place in time when a London-based crew of geezers, youngsters, and Yanks charged at the state of skating and fashion, and wound up changing them both at the same damn time, laughing all the way to the Cashpoint.
