Dogtown: Hand-Drawn in Venice

Before there were graphics departments there was Wes Humpston drawing on his friends' boards under the Venice pier. The Dogtown cross, the rats, the winged wheels — they were street art before the term existed, and the hand-drawn originals from 1976–1979 are the closest thing skateboarding has to incunabula.

From Zephyr to Z-Boys legacy

Dogtown Skates formalized what the Zephyr surf shop team had started: skateboarding as attitude, not recreation. Jim Muir and Humpston's early production runs were small, screens changed constantly, and no two hand-embellished decks match — which makes authentication both essential and genuinely difficult.

We weren't making products. We were marking territory.

Wes Humpston

Madera treats 1970s Dogtown pieces as provenance-first: we weigh ownership history, period photographs, and construction evidence together before any deck is certified. When you see a hand-era Dogtown listing on this site, the paper trail behind it has been read closely.