Waffle Outsoles and Anaheim Concrete: Skateboarding Culture is on Display at Muzeo

Mackenzie Motsinger
13 hours ago
6 min read

The exhibition, ‘Concrete Wave: 60 Years of Vans and the Culture Born on Broadway,’ not only celebrates the legendary shoe brand, but also the local skateboarding culture that spawned legends.

A collection of artistic Vans shoe designs on display at Muzeo. Photo by Mackenzie Motsinger, Culture OC

In 2004, an exhibition called “Beautiful Losers” opened in Cincinnati, Ohio, and went on to tour museums for years, including a stop at the Orange County Museum of Art from Feb. 6-May 15, 2005, redefining the skateboard as art and bringing counterculture into conversation with fine art.

In its wake, numerous other skateboarding-related exhibitions have been shown around the world and locally in spaces like Laguna Art Museum, the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum and Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, among others.

The most recent example is Muzeo’s “Concrete Wave: 60 Years of Vans and the Culture Born on Broadway,” presented in collaboration with the storied skatewear brand and the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in Simi Valley. The exhibit is on display through July 12.

Todd Huber, Skateboarding Hall of Fame’s founder, was instrumental in selecting and loaning items from his extensive collection to display at Muzeo.

“We can still be a counterculture and go to a museum with a tie on and look like an artist. We can do both,” Huber said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to clean up nice, but then be the same raunchy punks that we are.”

At the April 25 opening, cleaned-up raunchy punks greeted each other as brothers while enthusiasts looked on in the margins, treated to tales of the scrappiness of early skateboard culture in Orange County.

Someone shared about a relative who used to make rails for skaters. Another group gathered around a model of the Fruit Bowl, reminiscing about the days they would spend in the famous abandoned Garden Grove pool in their youth.

Yet another crowd formed around projected videos from Anaheim skateparks, with the occasional gleeful shout of “That’s me!” carrying across the space. A guest commented to her friends that she wore her favorite Vans for the occasion.

“Vans did start here in our city and that’s something to be really proud about,” said Muzeo executive director Kelly Chidester. “Once we started digging around the idea of this anniversary, we realized Anaheim had a major impact on skateboarding. The story just blossomed from there.”

PHOTO 1: A model of the Fruit Bowl, an abandoned pool in Garden Grove, frequented by local skaters in the 1970s. PHOTO 2: A group gathers around a model of the Fruit Bowl, swapping tales. Photos by Mackenzie Motsinger, Culture OC

Counterculture’s Shoe of Choice

Plenty of surf- and skatewear companies – such as Stussy, Oakley, PacSun and Hurley, to name a handful – trace their origins back to sunny Southern California.

Few have had the impact of Vans.

Muzeo’s exhibit tells the story of how, long before it became the brand that defines skate culture to this day, a small shoe shop opened at 704 E. Broadway in Anaheim in 1966.

“It’s just a really happy coincidence,” said Vans global brand archivist and historian Catherine Acosta.

A mold used to craft the revolutionary rubber waffle outsole for Vans shoes. Photo by Mackenzie Motsinger, Culture OC

The shoes caught on quickly due to their innovative rubber waffle outsole, which allowed skaters the durability and grip they needed along with the laid-back, California style they quickly adopted. Anaheim had become the launching pad for what would soon be a global movement.

As skateboarding grew throughout the 1970s, with skateparks popping up all over Orange County and beyond, so did Vans, launching its first official skate shoe in 1976 and sponsoring early skateboarding legends like Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta.

By the 1980s, skateboarding was tied up in a veritable youth counterculture, and Vans was part of the uniform. The shoe cemented its iconic status when Sean Penn sported them in 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

In the intervening years, Vans has become the shoe of choice for skaters, of course, but also punk kids looking for footwear for mosh pits, and surfers who need a slip-on to get them from the beach to the pavement.

“The product was made in a way that was really agreeable to skateboarders and therefore got very organically adopted into that culture that ushered in a whole new set of cultural associations and values that was not even on the table of intention when the company was founded,” Acosta said.

In 2020, skateboarding was included for the first time in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

Three years later, the Design Museum of London hosted a major exhibition titled “Skateboard,” featuring over 90 unique boards. Over 50 of those boards were on loan from the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.

For Huber, the inclusion of skateboarding into these institutions puts a well-deserved spotlight on his longtime passion. “If the Design Museum in London is going to take 200 of my pieces, this is a real thing. You can’t laugh at us anymore,” he said. “It’s not just some kid’s toy, it’s not just some fad. It brings more credibility to skateboarding when it’s being featured in quality museums.”

For all its success, however, the scrappiness inherent to skateboarding culture is not invalidated by the growth the sport has experienced.

“I’m 60. I still jumped the fence to skate in a backyard pool last weekend,” Huber added. “We still have to do the work. We still have to run from the cops and we still are the counterculture. We just get to do it with a little more pride.”

PHOTO 1: The evolution of the skateboard covers a wall at Muzeo. PHOTO 2: Skateboards have become canvases for works for art. PHOTO 3: Also included in the exhibit are practical items, like this chair, make from repurposed skateboard decks. Photos by Mackenzie Motsinger, Culture OC

From 1966 to the Future

Walking through the galleries, viewers are presented first with relics from the 60 years of Vans shoes, beginning from the brand’s early days as the Van Doren Rubber Company. In addition to a range of notable sneakers, on view is a mold for the revolutionary rubber outsoles.

Continuing through the space also takes viewers onward through the timeline, and as the 1970s arrived, so did the legendary Anaheim skatepark Concrete Wave near Ball Road. Taking up an entire wall of the main gallery space is a video loop of skaters zooming through the iconic twists and turns of the Wave.

In later gallery spaces, the focus shifts to the art of the board itself. One corner features a veritable timeline of skateboards undulating across the wall, starting with some of the earliest models.

Huber explained that many of the boards chosen for the exhibit were iconic designs that were meant as a nostalgic appeal to the veteran skaters. “That’s where the feel-good stuff comes in, when you see the boards you actually know or had.”

Another area highlights the art of the decks, with their colorful and eye-catching designs on full display.

Skateboarding Hall of Famer Freddie De Sota shared that being around all of this skateboarding history brings a smile to his face. Photo by Mackenzie Motsinger, Culture OC

Among those at the opening reception taking a ride down skateboarding memory lane was Freddie De Sota, the second Black skater to turn pro and a 2025 inductee to the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.

“I've been skateboarding for 50 years and I have friends here today that I've known from that timeframe. We’re all still closely bonded,” De Sota said, in between receiving handshakes and greetings from others at the museum. “In a lot of other sports, you don't have the opportunity to continue a friendship for this long. Skateboarding is really a great family.”

As much as De Sota enjoyed the look back in time, he didn’t dwell on the past for long, quickly pivoting the conversation to the joy he finds in bringing skating to the younger generations. “One of the reasons that I do that is because of what skateboarding has offered me.”

With a smile on his face, he shared about how he travels to Egypt to teach kids how to skate, creating an inclusive environment for everyone – regardless of gender, race or any other barrier – to join in. “Skateboarding is a really all-encompassing, all-loving, everybody-related sport that allows people to express themselves freely. And the best part of all this is the family, the culture of skateboarding.”