This board is an exact replica of Mike Vallely's very first professional model for Powell Peralta, featuring the iconic Elephant artwork originally created by master illustrator VCJ (Vernon Courtlandt Johnson). This was the actual deck handed to Mike on his front steps as a teenager, which he unboxed and immediately rode in the classic street skating video Public Domain. During a recent trip to archive Mike's personal history, I took 20-30 high-resolution macro photographs of that original board to capture the physical history written onto the graphic by Mike's skating. Working directly with the Powell Peralta art department, I used VCJ’s original template as a guide to warp and map my texture composite perfectly over the deck's exact shape. The final result is a brand-new, rideable board that carries every single scratch, gouge, and early-run top sticker detail from 1988. It completely tricks your brain because it looks decades old, but feels brand new the second you run your fingers over it. A few months later, I took a trip with Mike back to Edison, New Jersey, where he lived as a kid at the beginning of Public Domain, and filmed a video project with him back where he first got the board.
