Stefan Dukaczewski’s Raging Wheelers available Sunday! We heart collaborations.

Kick this weekend’s ass everyone!

The Walbats cap is our second Skate Shop League team and the first cap designed by Joshua Slay of Syracuse, NY. Clinkers from around the world submitted an imaginary team name, backstory and cap design for our fictional “Skate Shop League.” Josh’s Skate Shop cap was voted as a winning design by The Clink Room community.

Crafted by New Era and features an exclusive sleave-patch sticker.

The Skate Shop League was named by Joshua Slay, also born of a Clink community collaboration. It provided fertile territory for Clink’s designers to create another great League, this time, celebrating Skate culture.

And, Slay being the promoter that he is, took one of his 5 caps that he got as apart of his royalty package and took these excellent photos of one of his buddies skating in the cap. If you want to see a larger version of these go to the Clink Flickr pool to see them up close. Slay, I love these they feel grimy, and Gotham-esque. Excellent work!

AND, we’re working on a video for this cap. This week, promise. Just running a little behind. Swamped! Just Swamped.

This is one of the best looking caps that we’ve seen come across our desks in a longtime. No lie. It’s one of those designs that looked good on the page but really blossomed into an all-star once it was on a cap. It’s like a cross between a superhero, big league club, and a horror flick.

AND! From now on, each of the collaboration caps includes an exclusive sleeve-patch. We’ll be designing each of these to fit the cap logos theme. Think of it as a small token of thanks for the designers of the cap as well as everyone who buys one. It’s got an adhesive back, so stick it anywhere. We’re super excited about this addition to the culture of the Clinkiverse.

I couldn’t wait on this…Henning, Clink’s #1 fan from Germany posted this great little snap shot of his Clink collection. So cool Henning! If you guys haven’t done it lately, go check out our Clinkers Around the World Flickr pool. It’s looking good.

Bill’s Chicklets now available here…

If there can be one thing said about this cap, it’s that Grandma is going to love it when you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner sporting it across the table from her.

The Chicklets cap is our first Skate Shop League team, designed by Bill Riggins of San Diego, CA. Clinkers from around the world submitted an imaginary team name, backstory and cap design for our fictional “Skate Shop League.” Bill’s Skate Shop cap was voted as a winning design by The Clink Room community. The Skate Shop League was named by Josh Slay, also born of a Clink community collaboration. It provided fertile territory for Clink’s designers to create another great League, this time, celebrating Skate culture.

Crafted by New Era, this cap features a bigger-badder removable patch sticker with each purchase. Guess where it’s designed to fit.

Why no tee to match? We’re instituting a new policy for now. If your hat sells out and we reorder, then well do a tee. This will let us get through more contest winners, more quickly. Cool?

First drop from the Skate Shop League competition/collaboration, Bill’s Chicklets, available Sunday!

Kick this weekend’s ass everyone!

Sam gives us the Scrapes. I love that name. We need to do t-shirts with that across the chest. Great concept, great execution. Captured the spirit of the contest really well. This cap also got a ton of votes. Not much that I would change about this one either. Great job Sam!

Chris gives us the Grind. Also a great name and a solid design. I want this big on the cap. It feels like Sim-City or who’s that one artist that does the posters of the cities in that Sim-City style? E-Boy? It’s iconic, it’s simple, I think it could be a classic.

Tyler gives us the Street Carvers. So fun. Love the hidden skateboard/ knife handle. Love the “S” made out of knives. This thing needs to be done in silver thread only. It would be amazing. This one was picked because of it’s iconic quality. Great work!

NOTE: I need Sam and Tyler’s email. Will you guys hit me up? I have T.J., Stefan, and Chris’. Email us here…

Casey & Jason

Got break this into three parts, give everyone their due.

Stefan, the Duke, Dukaczewski gives us the Raging Wheelers. Ok the name is awesome. Every entry that Stefan has submitted has been awesome. I loved Gnar, it was a great design and idea. But the wheelers got a bunch of votes and I think that it’s a great design. I still want to make the face bigger maybe the whole wheel bigger. Maybe mess with the colorways. I want it to be more candy-coated too. That might mean simplifying it. We think it has a real iconic quality, and that’s hard to do.

T.J. Monteiro gives us A.C.I.D. I love this colorway. And this entry received a ton of votes. It’s a great “A” that he came up with. There is some simplifying that needs to happen. And I like the idea of the slick of Acid being more streaky. But all around this is a great design by one of my favorite Clink designers.

More breakdowns tomorrow.

We thought we’d give a quick run down of why these caps were picked for first run production. Jason and I picked them on our own this time. Nai, from Strictly Fitteds, will play a big role in the next league. It was his idea and so he’ll be the commissioner. First of all they’re all different looking, which is a big goal.

Bill Riggins gives us the Chula Vista Chicklets. This is probably the only entry that came in and right away we knew it had to be made. We love the colors, the concept, the name. It’s ready for embroidery, it’s simple and clean and that always helps. We also love hats that look like a creature that you’re putting on your head. The Lake Elsinore Storm eyes cap, the Mishka Keep Watch eyeball.

We’re going to call Aaron Bird’s team the Tube Sox. It was the best representation of the Dogtown and Z-boyz skate era that we got AND it has a sweet baseball reference built into it. Couple things that we’re going to change. Sock are going to be longer, I think that needs to be exaggerated. And I think we’ll get rid of the toe or any skin showing for that matter. It’s about the sox, and if Aaron thinks that it’s important for them to have holes in them cool, but no flesh. Maybe mess with the colorway?

Josh Slay’s Wall Bats. We liked this one for it’s simplicity. The idea that we could do an animal, in the shape of a “W”, as a silhouette was exciting. We need to mess with the silhouette of the bat. It needs more hints that it’s a bat. And then, we’ll go nuts with embroidery detail in the white area. It’s going to be big, it’s going to be graphic, and we think it could be a classic.

Tomorrow we’ll break down the second production run.

Congrats to our first and second production winners. This contest ended up being about ideas and Jason and I are looking forward to sending all these designs over the top as we move towards production.

AND, speaking of production, we should have samples of our first round of the Taco Shop League this week. The amount of detail that we’re putting into these things has really held everything up. But they’re going to be amazing. The SSL production will be much quicker due to all the pioneering that the Taco Shop League caps has done.

This is going to be a great week. We’re back from our long trip. We have new Editions that will be launching next week! Jeff is going to be especially excited about this edition, being from Clearwater. Sneak-peaks galore. So glad to be back. Congrats again to everyone.

Sorry for the radio silence. We’ve been in the middle of this big tour. Been a ton of fun.

These are not the winners, just the semi-finalists. Congrats to everyone for making this list. Jason and I will discuss and pick our top three. Looking like that will be on Monday.

We’ll be back in full effect next week. I miss you.