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Thrasher magazine co-founder ID'd as suicide in front of Mission Police Station

The man who ended his life in front of the Mission Police Station on Monday was a skateboarding icon and co-founder of San Francisco-based Thrasher magazine .

Skaters worldwide are mourning the loss of Eric Swenson , 64, of Potrero Hill, whose local manufacturing and publishing ventures helped launch a massive and lasting subculture.

Swenson shot himself around 8:30 a.m. without going inside the police station or talking to any officers. Loved ones believe the longtime San Franciscan's struggle with a debilitating motorcycle injury led to the suicide.

A "very private person," Swenson may have chosen the police station to end his life in order to spare his loved ones from finding him, said Gwynn Vitello, Thrasher's publisher and wife of Swenson's business partner, the late Fausto Vitello.

Swenson leaves behind his wife Linda and sister Rebekah, "along with a tremendous number of admirers," Thrasher magazine said in a statement.

"Eric was not a person who wanted to burden anybody," Vitello said. "In my mind this was the most unselfish way he could do what he had to do."

When he was about 20, Swenson severely injured his leg in a motorycle accident that kept him at Laguna Honda Hospital for more than a half year, Vitello said. Years of pain stemming from that injury might have become too overwhelming for Swenson, she said.

"Toward the end, walking was kind of a struggle for him," Vitello said, who added that friends and loved ones can only speculate as to why he took his own life.

Swenson co-founded High Speed Productions Inc., which includes magazines Thrasher, Juxtapoz and Slap. He also co-founded Independent Trucks in 1978, the manufacturer of skateboard trucks and other parts that helped launch the sport.

Eben Sterling, advertising director for Thrasher and Slap, said Wednesday Independent Trucks marked a “sort of a BC/AD kind of event in skateboarding.” 

The skateboard trucks allowed people to skate vertically, which “moved skateboarding from the sidewalk to what it is today,” Sterling said. Skateboarders wouldn't have been able to scale pool surfaces without the high-performance technology, he added.

Steadicam BlackBird Stabilizer on Electric SkateBoard » CheesyCam

A friend asks about shooting a commercial following a fast Parkour runner with a long and continuous Steadicam shot. I’m an old fella, so I guarantee I can’t keep up especially while trying to fly a Steadicam. So of course i’m thinking up different ways to pull this off, but one requirement was being able to cover different terrain. Grass, dirt, gravel, uneven pavement, and more. A Segway was my first thought, that’s already being done. Besides the price (maybe I could have rented one), the problem is that the Segway is also very large, heavy, and would need a way to transport it to a location. I needed something I could ride while keeping my hands free, so I decided to test out an Electric Skateboard. My ideas aren’t always well planned, as I quickly found out, my skateboarding abilities

@Matt – Segway is hands down the best system for what we’re trying to do. Footage can be better than what we achieved, but the day was extremely windy (as you can tell by the trees). Any small stabilizer with or without a Segway is effected greatly by wind. We’ll have something more soon. Some of these boards you can find under $200 and traveling is definitely much easier than Segway.

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