Darkstar

Darkstar does make decks — one of the few brands on this list that does — and it has since the late nineties, always inside the Dwindle galaxy, the El Segundo, California distributor that also runs Blind, Almost, Enjoi and Tensor. It’s a broad-catalogue, sensibly priced brand, better known for staying power than for any mythologised founding moment.

History

The founding year repeated everywhere is 1997, but we could not find a primary source confirming it. What is documented is that Darkstar was already buying advertising in September 1997: the index for that issue of Thrasher lists a Darkstar ad among the Titan, Menace and Thunder pages. The name always attached to the origin is Chet Thomas, who still had his own part in the brand’s videos years later — but we could not verify his status as founder from any open source, and we’d rather say so plainly.

The corporate side is clearer. In 2002 Globe International bought Kubic Marketing, the holding company behind World Industries and Dwindle, and Darkstar was already in the stable. Globe sold Dwindle in 2019, and from there sources contradict each other on who owns it now. Today the brand has no working website of its own: the historic domain doesn’t respond and Dwindle’s is an expired Squarespace page.

The team

The roster that defined the brand through the 2010s appears in full in “Autotelic”, the 2019 video: Ryan Decenzo, Greg Lutzka, Dave Bachinsky, Cameo Wilson, Manolo Robles, Reemo Pearson, Santana Saldana and Ke’Chaud Johnson, plus then-ams Joe Hinson and Mike Berdis. Bachinsky joined in February 2015; Ke’Chaud Johnson turned pro in January 2018. Before that, “Forward Slash” had Adam Dyet, Tyson Bowerbank, John Hanlon, Pierre-Luc Gagnon and Chet Thomas himself.

The decks

Darkstar has built its catalogue in two directions at once. On one side, higher-end constructions like the Armor Light, which by the mid-2010s was the board the whole pro team rode. On the other, a Standard Lay-Up line introduced in 2013 explicitly as a low-cost deck — the one that made Darkstar a fixture in complete packages and on general-store shelves.

Graphically the house works in series — Metal Series (2013), Shrine Series (2014), Black Pearl (2015) — and it has played the outside-licence card: in 2016 it released what Thrasher called the first official Harley-Davidson skateboard collaboration.

Videos

Three titles mark the run: “Battalion” (2003), a thirty-five-minute full-length with Chet Thomas, Paul Machnau, Gailea Momolu, Mike Hastie and Chris Dobstaff; “Forward Slash”, premiered in July 2012; and “Autotelic” (2019).

Who it’s for

Darkstar is a sensible buy if you want a recognised brand without paying cult-brand money, and it’s one of the most common decks you’ll find on a beginner complete. It isn’t for anyone after a small, authored brand, or for anyone who wants a team to follow: the brand hasn’t put out anything major in years and doesn’t even have a site of its own.

You can weigh it up against the rest of the deck catalogue.