Photo: Stephen, frontside grind on short-lived Lazar Trucks, Senior Citizens ramp, Malvern, circa 1979. Peter Hill.
“Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in you life,” Confucius advised more than 2,600 years ago. The Chinese philosopher understood that when you match your talents with your passion, there’s no limit to how far you can go.
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Perhaps the issue for some is the word “job.” It calls to mind a four-letter word reviled by so many throughout their life. Since we were children, adults made a point of differentiating “work” and “play,” as though this should be the case, asking us to forgo our happiness because they did the same. It’s irrational at best, but few escape the grasp of the fascist thinking that says that following the system is in our best interest.
Sparx Team demo, Vermont South, circa 1979. Left to right: Peter Hill, Christo Vandergriff, Mark Robley, Noel Forsyth, Peter “Egg” Evans, Ian Brown, Bret Connolly, Rob Patton and Stephen Hill. Stephen Hill Collection
But then there are those, true rebels in their heart, who sense the lies and reject the program. Once upon a time in Melbourne, Australia—well, it was the 1970s—the Hill brothers refused to forsake their dreams. Skateboards had made their way from Dogtown to Down Under, and captured the hearts of Stephen, Peter, and Matt Hill in late 1974.
That’s when Aunt Fail handed Stephen his first board, a second hand Sam Surfa that he shared with his brothers. Every day, after school, they’d hit the car park behind the Radio Parts shop, skating for four or five hours at a time, completely dedicated to the sport. It was this dedication that became the hallmark of their lives; over the course of the next our decades, the Hill brothers created one of the world’s biggest skate, street, and surf companies, Globe International.
by Jason Boulter (Thames & Hudson) celebrates the Hill brothers’ extraordinary work. As Peter Hill observes, “We didn’t set out to make a business out of skating. What we did was we set out to make sure we didn’t have to have a job so that we could skate. That’s why we did it. We only knew one thing, which was skating. So our motivation for making money out of skating was to skate, not to make money right? Of course it worked out great for us and there was a lot of luck in that, but it was the commitment to skating that allowed us to do that, not really reverse engineering, ‘Oh, how can we make a business out of skating?”
Peter and Stephen Hill, Patton’s Ramp, Blackburn, 1978. Stephen Hill Collection
Unemployable is a massive tome. It weighs in at 708 pages, 500 illustrations, at 12 x 15 inches, with a glorious red cover and red ribbon to hold your place. It’s the story of sport, culture, and style—but what’s more, it’s the story of a way of life. These are true believers who attracted like minds, committed to doing whatever it takes to stay true to the life.
Unemployable reveals how passion and dedication can snowball into something more, as it is human nature to gravitate towards success. The book features a vast cast of characters who ran Globe’s debauched skate tours, infamous industry parties, exotic surf contests, frenzied stadium events, cutting-edge fashion parades, and red-carpet launches. Page after page is filled with action photographs, product shots, and untold tales from skaters and surfers including Rodney Mullin, Tony Hawk, CJ and Damien Hobgood, among many others.
In total, Unemployable is about building a bridge between work and play, and if we choose wisely, they become that same four-letter word. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to forsake the path we are groomed to pursue and strike off in search of our own inner truth. This happens at all levels of the game, whether a spunky start-up, or a multi-national corporation.
Mark Appleyard is all style and power on this hydrant launch, Fullerton, 2014. Mike O’Meally
As Peter Hill reveals, “There is a level of self-consciousness to a business in the early years of being public that creates problems. You stop following your guy and do things and employ people you just wouldn’t normally because of ‘the market,’ but the market is almost imaginary and you need to stay true to your toots and make good product you core customers ant. They don’t give a shit if you’re public private or based on Mars.”
Ultimately, maintaining your integrity is one of the hardest things to do here on earth—but history teaches us you can only serve one master.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
