Dogtown ― The Legend of the Z-boys

"[Friedman's] knack for being in the right place at an extraordinary amount of right times, coupled with his ability to size up noteworthy characters and scenes, has secured his place as one of the most important and recognized photographers of youth culture...If it wasn't for these photos and these words, the story of the Z-Boys may have never been told, and the impact skateboarding's had on the world would have been significantly reduced."
--Strength Magazine

"[An] amazing collection of images from Friedman, who was a skater and friend of the Z-Boys and managed to be there for a ridiculous amount of the important sessions (Tony Alva’s first frontside air ever?!)...The book picks the best of the best from [Stecyk's] articles and photos, and coupled with Friedman's you get a very personal and complete sense of what the whole deal was really about...[A]s a skater, you not only owe it to yourself to check these things out and learn what went down way back when, but you owe it to these guys who changed skating forever."
--SLAP Magazine

"Fueled by Stecyk's often cryptic prose and stark black-and-white photography, these pieces of poetic propaganda proliferated the defiantly aggressive Dogtown skateboarding style that flew in the face of the more wholesome image propagated by the media and then fledgling skateboard industry. With help from prescient (yet barely pubescent at age 14) photographer Glen E. Friedman, who published iconic shots of the Z-Boys for SkateBoarder, the Dogtown scene set the gritty, urban, counter-culture tone that would come to define modern skating...A must-have companion piece."
--Surfer

In the early 1970s, the sport of skateboarding had so waned from its popularity in the 1960s that it was virtually nonexistent. In the DogTown area of west Los Angeles, a group of young surfers known as the Zephyr Team (Z-Boys) was experimenting with new and radical moves and styles in the water, which they translated to the street. When competition skateboarding returned in 1975, the Z-Boys turned the skating world on its head. DogTown: The Legend of the Z-Boys is a truly fascinating case study of how an underground sport ascended in the world. These are the stories and images of a time that not only inspired a generation but changed the face of the sport forever.

This volume has been described as "the DogTown textbook" and an indispensable companion piece to the Sony Pictures Classics film Dogtown and Z-Boys. Now spanning 1975–1985 and beyond, the first section of the book includes the best of the DogTown articles written and photographed by C.R. Stecyk III as they originally appeared in SkateBoarder Magazine. The second half compiles hundreds of skate images from the archives of Glen E. Friedman--many of which appear in the movie. (Stecyk and Friedman acted as executive producers and advisors for the film.)

The bigger, newly designed edition of the book includes many never-before-seen Friedman photos, along with a new postscript by Stecyk.