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Nov 14, 2005 4:17:11 PM
By RYAN PEARSON
LOS ANGELES



An unidentified man holds two "My Chemical Imbalance" decks by skateboard artist Wes Humpston, 49. (AP Photo/HO/Courtesy Wes Humpston and Bulldog Skates) At some point in the mid-1970s, in that not-so-tony section of Los Angeles known as Dogtown, Wes Humpston discovered the Sharpie. And it was good.

Humpston had become a resident artist of the loose crew of pioneering pool skaters that included Jay Adams, Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva. He used ball point and felt-tip pens, along with the occasional spray paint from his dad's garage, to create flashy skull-and cross-dominated insigne for their board bottoms. It took hours of etching to make designs bold enough to stand out in that instant the boards rose above the lip of a pool.

"Then when the Sharpie came out, it was unreal," Humpston says, recalling the ease of marking boards with the gee-whiz technology of permanent marker.

Dogtown's Z-boys and others in their era were first to put thought into the graphics and writing on their decks, albeit the chip-on-their-shoulders thought of teen rebels, leading to slogans like "Dogtown skates dominate."

Ray Flores, one of the Dogtown skaters, says prettifying boards was only natural when the guys spent so much time with them.

"You have to love the skateboard. Because that thing abuses you," he said. "That thing treats you worse than any woman in your life. So it better be good lookin'."

Flores preferred religious symbols on his boards like the Star of David, Celtic crosses, or the swastika.

Wait -- the swastika?

"Not used in the Nazi way, but as a religious symbol used by the Hopis, Navajos, Maya, the Aztec. It basically means the four corners of the universe are stretching." The winking embrace of political incorrectness eventually led to hard work. He had to color in the edges to make a square "because the photographers wouldn't take pictures of you."

Graphics got even darker in the decades that followed. The black-and-dark red 101 Natas Kaupas Devil Worship deck from the early 1990s depicts a demon and six bodies hanging from a cross. Other board titles: Napping Negro and Challenger Explosion.

These aren't exactly Norman Rockwellian images. But such boards -- subversive and wry, in the way of the skate world -- are now going the way of original Star Wars toys or Rockwell figurines.

Skaters of the '70s, '80s and early '90s have grown up and acquired real jobs along with nostalgia for the devil-may-care (and devil worship) attitude of skate art -- a blend of graffiti, cartoons, Harley-type graphics and the smoother style of wave-focused surf art.

They're spending surprising amounts of money for boards that once sold for under $100. One collector paid $6,000 for an original Tony Hawk pro model made by Powell-Peralta.

At least two of the rare Natas boards have sold for more than $5,000 apiece, according to Sean Cliver, a skate artist who in 2004 wrote the book on the subject -- "Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art." (One of Cliver's own designs depicted serial killer Charles Manson smiling among the Peanuts characters.)

The rush for way-back graphics has spurred companies like Powell-Peralta, Vision, and G&S Fiberflex to reissue old boards, and the new "Tony Hawk" video game features throwback-style cartoon graphics drawn by Jimbo Phillips, son of skate artist Jim Phillips.

"All the old companies have come back," Humpston says. "It's a full-on industry thing."

He's now doing new designs in his old style, and has sold around 500 limited edition boards for $300 each, all to collectors.

Nobody knows exactly how many board collectors are out there, but there are more than 10,000 registered users at the dominant Web site, artofskateboarding.com.

Cliver estimates there's also more than 10,000 different designs on skateboards around the world.

"There's every kind of art, from really adolescent to really demonic. It's just too much," says Flores, who sells five to 10 decks a day from his The Board Gallery shop in the Venice section of LA.

With such diversity, some are focusing on the art of the boards themselves, which are sometimes sculpture-like with wood inlays and complex concave sections for wheels.

But mostly, collectors are searching for those rare mint condition decks from the '70s or '80s that somehow escaped the thrashing inherent in skating and skaters' general lackadaisical attitude toward such things.

"People skated the boards and scratched 'em and wrecked 'em, so a lot of the boards didn't get saved," Jimbo Phillips, 36, says. Phillips, who lives in Santa Cruz, says he went on eBay four years ago to test out the market. He got $600 for one of his first boards, a wide 1982 Santa Cruz Steve Olsen with a checkerboard pattern. Immediately, he regretted it.

"I just thought, aw man, that board is cool," he said.

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asap staff reporter Ryan Pearson's first skateboard was a thin, clear plastic number. No art.