BBC

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BBC *

Carlsbad, California

Founded in the mid-1980s

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11 skateboards in collection

Overview

Bad Boy Club emerged from the same California action-sports world as Life’s a Beach, a Carlsbad-based clothing company that developed a strong presence in surf, skate and BMX culture during the mid-1980s. Unlike companies that began strictly around skateboards, BBC grew from a broader clothing and lifestyle identity before developing a more focused skateboard presence.

That background gave BBC a slightly different character. Its familiar logo and clothing could be seen well outside skateboarding, while its skate team remained relatively compact. Riders including Reese Simpson, Bill Danforth and Jeff Phillips helped establish the company within skateboarding, and BBC produced distinctive late-1980s shapes and graphics during a period when deck design was beginning to change rapidly.

BBC boards still belonged unmistakably to the shaped-deck era, but some models were developing larger, more functional noses and deeper contours. Those changes became increasingly useful as ramp skating grew more technical and skaters began demanding more from both ends of the board.

BBC was a company I knew before I really connected with it as a skateboard company. Bad Boy Club and Life’s a Beach were already part of the larger surf and action-sports world. You saw the stickers around, sometimes on the back window of pickup trucks even, and the whole thing had a slightly sporty quality to it.
The reason I ended up riding BBC had much less to do with the image and much more to do with the board.
I rode two Reese Simpson decks, first a blue one and then a green-stained one. The shape was what kept me coming back. The nose was unusually large and noticeably upturned for the period, with strange little angles worked into the outline. The concave also had an almost rocker-like quality that seemed to cup my feet. By then I had built my half-pipe and was becoming increasingly interested in ramp skating, and the Reese Simpson simply felt right there.
The decks had the Reese Simpson dragon graphic with a fire ball containing the initials “SMP” in it. I cut the grip tape on the blue one to echo some of the imagery from the bottom. On the second, green-stained board, I cut a hornet out in grip with a dripping “Peace” detail toward the tail.
Both boards were ridden on the street and ramp, although by this time I was beginning to separate the two more deliberately. Eventually I preferred keeping a dedicated ramp setup cleaner and more intact, while another board took the abuse of street skating. The BBC decks were part of that transition.
I also remember them holding up well except for a few big chips. That mattered to me because I had already formed opinions about the durability of different companies’ wood. With BBC, what stayed with me most was not the advertising or even the team. It was the shape. At a moment when ramp boards were beginning to grow more useful noses but had not yet become the narrower, more symmetrical shapes of the early 1990s, the Reese Simpson felt like a board that I wanted under my feet.