You can take something that was pure thought and you can make it reality
Marc Johnson, 1977-2026
Marc Johnson, a father, friend, mentor to many, and one of skateboarding's most talented, creative, and influential practitioners, as well as one of its most unique and engaging personalities, died this week. He was 49 years old.
Thrasher Magazine broke the news on Tuesday with an in memoriam written by his longtime friend and collaborator, Louie Barletta, who had recently spent time with Johnson.
It was less than a month ago that Marc came to San Jose to hang out. He was sober, healthy and full of life. We had a blast reminiscing about the old days. He seemed genuinely excited about the future. He even extended his ticket by a couple of days so he could explore some of the old haunts around San Jose. When it came time to drop him off at the airport, he handed me an envelope. I waited until I got home to open it. Inside was a three-page list of his hopes and dreams for the future. Never in a million years did I imagine that less than a month later he would be gone.
Johnson's cause of death has not been disclosed. Barletta writes that Johnson "told me he wanted to be remembered for his skateboarding, not for his failures or shortcomings."
For the vast majority of the skateboarders, myself included, who did not know Marc Johnson personally but have been fortunate enough to commune with him through the expansive catalogue of skateboarding media he starred in, that wish is easy to fulfill. Sift through the tidal wave of moving tributes flooding social media in the wake of his death and you'll see it underway. It's a gauge of the seismic scale of his impact that the whole of the skateboarding world mourns as it does, and secular outlets from The Guardian to TMZ, New York Post, and Entertainment Tonight report on his passing to varying degrees of tastlessness.
There are myriad aspects of Johnson, as a skateboarder and as a person, both large and small, that are helpful in understanding his influence. There was, of course, his ability on a skateboard, which for so long would expand and sharpen in ways previously unknown with each new video release. This was complemented and elevated by how his body took shape on a board. Here was a person who made unbelievably technical, even borderline offensive skateboarding tricks look revelatory by dint of his poise. Arms like swan necks, held sturdy and graceful.
Or how he loved to skate junk, taking god knows what refuse leaning against a dumpster behind a strip mall in San Jose to stack and arrange until it fit whatever vision he had formulated in his mind. These ad-hoc obstacles were in almost every video part he filmed, a reminder that this thing we're all doing is made up anyway, so why not make up the spot?
Johnson was also prolific. You can watch him progress in skill and style throughout the decades. It's a remarkable timeline. If you were a kid growing up in the late '90s and early aughts, the soundtracks to his many, many video parts probably introduced you to worlds of new music, from Lee Hazlewood to Built to Spill to Joy Division and New Order. I couldn't tell you how many times I fast-forwarded or rewound through Girl Skateboards' Yeah Right! until I reached Johnson's section. Watching him skate to "Love Will Tear Us Apart" struck an emotional resonance that was rare in a skateboarding video then and remains so now.
If you, like me, spent your Tuesday night watching Johnson's entire oeuvre as the sun set and darkened the room around you, then you know or have been reminded of what he put out into the world. And it would be easy to remember him for his skateboarding and skateboarding alone, but it was who he was as a person — to the extent to which he allowed himself to be publicly known — that made him truly special.
He was outwardly strange, fun, funny, and brooding. He dressed up and played characters. He railed against a flawed industry. There's a whole generation of skateboarders whose first encounter with Johnson is his still incredible section in Maple Skateboards' Seven Steps to Heaven (1996), which ends with a shot of Johnson completely nude and covered in shaving cream.
That energy powered his brand projects, Enjoi Skateboards and Business & Company. They were satirical, biting, and, what seemed most important to Johnson, silly. Because skateboarding is supposed to be fun, after all. When things weren't fun, he wasn't shy about letting people know. He struggled greatly and often struggled openly.
Following the release of Lakai Footwear's Fully Flared in 2007, Johnson was asked by Patrick O'Dell in an episode of Epicly Later'd if the extreme pressure he put himself under to film for the project was worth it.
"Anybody else would probably be like, 'Hell yeah, it was worth it, bro.' I'm not going to say either way. I don't know. I honestly don't know."
During that period of intense travel and filming, Johnson said, "I would come home, get drunk, do laundry, sober up, and go back on the road. That happened for fucking years. The only saving grace is when you land a trick. That's it. The rest of the time, you're going to be so unhappy and so fucking bored. Some fucker might be like, 'What do you mean, bro? You're a pro skater. You should be happy all the time.' Fuck you. I'm a human first. We're all humans first."
Johnson's effort in Fully Flared helped him win Thrasher's coveted Skater of the Year award. His ability to be human helped him connect with others on a level deeper than skateboarding. From sharing his interests in art and literature, his noted generosity, to being painfully candid about what he might have been referring to as his "failures and shortcomings."
In a Thrasher interview titled "From SOTY to Hell and Back," published in 2020, Johnson shares in excruciating detail the difficulties of the latter half of his career and life, from the emotional and financial damage of an extended custody battle, his substance abuse, to the dissolution of his relationships with former friends, colleagues, and sponsors. It's as much an interview as it is an exorcism.
The last thing that I was inspired to do was ride a skateboard, so I imploded... all my hard work, everything I’d worked for was gone by 2014.... I literally had to start over. I had to pick up the pieces and... really look at myself. During those two years that we were going through the legal battle, I had never been squeezed by life before. I just kinda had this, sort of like... 20-year skater ride through life. Just like, Oh, you gotta go on tour, you gotta go to this contest, you gotta film a video, you gotta go out with your friends, you gotta hang out with your friends, you gotta go to the bar.
I got to do that for 20 years and then for the first time ever in my life I was fuckin’ squeezed, dude. I was fucking squeezed. And the interesting thing is when something finally squeezed me in life, I did not like what came out... for the first time, I just had to stop and look at the person I had become little by little... and I fuckin’ didn’t like myself at all. I didn’t like the way I reacted to all of this. I did not like the person that I had become.
You know what’s funny is I was talking to my son’s mother recently, maybe a year ago, and I thanked her. I thanked her because inadvertently she did some shit that just shattered me and if that wouldn’t have happened, who knows? I may have just continued to be the same selfish irresponsible checked-out son of a bitch.
It's a tough read, at times shot through with a real bitterness, but it's also open, honest, and illuminating. Johnson, as a person, like with his skateboarding, wanted only to progress. That process is messy, imperfect, bound to be incomplete.
In the years following Johnson's public fallout with the Crailtap camp over how he handled his move from Lakai to Adidas, what is a surefire Hall of Fame career would, as Barletta wrote, "fall apart." Now that the worst has happened, some are relitigating the merits of that rift. Dredging up the mess and pointing fingers. Blame is one of our ugliest, most human reactions.
Here, it is tawdry, tactless, and unhelpful, siloing those involved from their agency and personal responsibility. Yet, that response is understandable, to an extent. Johnson is, without hyperbole, one of the best skateboarders there has ever been. There are 30 years of records to back up that claim. It is tragic that he isn't here now, living and living out the type of permanent career twilight that a select handful of skateboarding's legends get to enjoy, completing the evolution from prospect to professional to icon to figurehead, forever marketable and deserving of a paycheque.
Johnson grew up poor in rural North Carolina. He's alluded to an abusive childhood. In the documentary Devoted (2017), he credits skateboarding with "saving me from the life I had before."
"That thing. That toy. That stupid fucking toy... changed my life. It made my life so much better... Choosing to skateboard and continuing to skateboard saved my life." He respected skateboarding deeply for what it had done for him and what it could do for others, imploring in his "Pro Files" from 411VM Issue 20 (1997), "Don't ever let anyone tell you that you're not good enough. Be proud of who you are."
Johnson's legacy is rich and complicated. It is built on his otherworldly talent. It is utterly human. "I don’t know why he chose to come visit me," Barletta wrote on Tuesday. "Was there some bigger purpose to it, or was he looking for closure? Marc was a genius and a tortured soul."
His genius came from recognizing the mundanity and magic of this world and, specifically, in that toy. That you can use it to "take something that was pure thought and you can make it reality."
We're fortunate to live in the reality he shaped, the one he shared.
Something to consider: Kyle Beachy sent a beautiful essay on MJ to his mailing list earlier this week. If you want the occasional digital dispatch from Kyle, write him at kylebeachy@gmail.com or DM him on Instagram and he'll be happy to put you on the list. No images, no promotion.
Good thing: "What I Learned About Loss While Skateboarding at Costco" by Conor Dougherty for The New York Times.
Another good thing:
Ted's back:
A "who is this guy?" thing:
Mike Burrill and Village Psychic
Good things about bad things:
Jeremy Appel
"Google hates you" by Drew Magary for SF Gate.
Good pod round-up:
Justin
Until next week… put on sunscreen, go outside, feel the sun.
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