Anti Hero

Anti Hero is what happened when mid-90s skateboarding started feeling too clean for the people at Deluxe Distribution in San Francisco. Julien Stranger started the brand in 1995 after Jim Thiebaud pitched him the idea, running it under the Deluxe umbrella. Thrasher editor Jake Phelps put it plainly: it came together when he and Stranger felt skateboarding had gone stale. Ask Stranger about the founding concept and you get the whole ethos in one shrug: “there was no concept… well, maybe there was, I don’t know. Just kind of balance out the rest, or something.” Thirty years later, that non-concept is still one of the sharpest identities in skateboarding.

History

Founded in 1995 within the Deluxe stable, Anti Hero found its look fast: artist Todd Francis came on in 1996 and drew the eagle that became one of the most recognizable logos the sport has ever produced, right as the brand caught fire. The videos doubled as a mission statement from the start, locking in a raw, anti-polish tone and then defining the brand’s vagabond touring years, a month spent living out of a van across Australia with Cardiel, Trujillo, Hewitt and Stranger. Around the turn of the 2010s came the odd-couple move: an improbable joint tour with Girl Skateboards that put two opposite aesthetics on the road together. The output never really slowed down through the following decades, with solo parts and full-lengths still landing thirty years in. All along, the decks have run through Deluxe in San Francisco, keeping the brand’s core, independent footing intact.

The eagle that got stolen and returned

Francis has redrawn the eagle endlessly over the years: clean, drunk, hungover, even as a baby bird. Two stories tell you everything. The original eagle artwork was stolen off a wall at a group show in London, and the thief turned out to be such a die-hard Anti Hero fan that guilt got the better of him and he brought it back. And Francis once joked that if he could retire the eagle, he’d swap it for a tapeworm, because he’d rather bum people out than design something just to move merch.

Four SOTYs and a deep bench

Four Anti Hero riders have taken Thrasher’s Skater of the Year: John Cardiel (1992), Brian Anderson (1999), Tony Trujillo (2002) and Grant Taylor (2011), with Trujillo and Taylor winning while on the team. The current roster runs legends alongside new blood: Stranger himself, Taylor, Trujillo, Peter Hewitt, Frank Gerwer, Anderson, Chris Pfanner, Daan Van Der Linden, Raney Beres and Austin Kanfoush, plus a younger wave (Gus Gordon, Cody Chapman, Nick Matthews, Petar Stantchev, Finn Pope) that dropped parts in 2025. Cardiel stays on as a lifetime legend. Among the historic names, Jeff Grosso rode for the brand until his death in 2020, and Max Schaaf, Matt Rodriguez and Tony Miorana anchor the “Tent City” era. Taylor and Gerwer also head up Grimple Stix, the in-house offshoot.

The boards, and who they’re for

Decks come through Deluxe in San Francisco with the house DBX construction; industry sources say they’re pressed at the BBS woodshop, though the brand doesn’t publish those details. This is a core pro brand with a deliberately anti-commercial, blue-collar image, and a team as known for all-terrain, bowls and transition (Cardiel, Hewitt, Taylor, Trujillo) as for street. If you collect, the hyped collabs are the ones to chase: Supreme (2022), Nike SB (2024, around the Dunk High and Blazer), and the near-annual Thrasher pairings like “Cross Contamination” (2024), plus guest boards with a story behind them such as Joe Buffalo’s (2023). If you just want a deck to skate everything on without posturing, few brands fit better.