Story Behind the Choking Sign: Merging Skateboarding, Graffiti, and Cartoons with Van Eggers

Van Eggers has been a skateboarder since he was five and a graffiti artist since he was eleven, and the core of his artwork traces back to those two identities. In this episode of the Cultural Fingerprints podcast, Van walks us through his Long Beach years: living in the legendary Winnipeg Street skate house, full of pros sleeping on army cots and exchanging music, art, and skate lore; relentlessly pitching his work to anyone connected to the skate brands he’d grown up admiring; and painting murals at the parks by day before skating under their lights after dark. Those experiences eventually led to Van’s Common Meadows Creamery choking sign, drawn in the spirit of the mid-century advertisement illustrations he loves. Van reflects on how the incredibly diverse mix of communities in skateboarding surfaces in the boards, graphics, and clothing the sport produces, and on why skating, painful as it’s become with his ankle injury, remains his way of staying alive.

Van Eggers: vaneggersart.com

Common Meadows Creamery: commonmeadows.com

For more information: rheakapur.info and culturalfingerprints.com