In spaces, some not much bigger than a large walk-in closet, entrepreneurs and artists alike sell their wares in the MacArthur Annex. One such artist is Jeffrey Cheung. Cheung along with several other artists use their space to sell their zines, prints, tapes and numerous others under the moniker Unity Mart.
Cheung is a 27 year old, up and coming queer artist and lifelong Bay Area resident. He is the creator of Unity Press zines, the organizer behind Unity Mart, and recently started his a skateboard company not surprisingly, named Unity Skateboarding. Unity seeks to provide representation queer culture and underprivileged communities through various artistic media.
Stylistically, Cheung's work is reminiscent of Picasso's sketches and Quentin Blake's paintings. The caricatures in Cheung's work are painted in vivid flesh tones set on varied solid color backgrounds that emphasize their naked bodies.
Cheung, Stevie Shakes, and Trevor Strawb realized, as queer skaters, they were a rare group. According to Shakes, that's how they became the first Unity Skaters. "It was New Year's Eve and Jeff sent us this drunk text that said 'hey I want to start a queer skateboard company, would you guys want to ride for it?' And we were also drunk so we were like 'yeah, sure,'" Shakes said and Trevor Strawb confirmed. According to Stevie Shakes, a week later they all had boards.
Trevor Strawb said that he stopped skating after he broke his leg in his teens, but maybe he would have continued to skate if not for the hyper-masculine intimidation of skate culture. "Kids at the skatepark suck, in my opinion. I don't think its very welcoming. Its pretty cold...Most of the kids growing up were not friendly, they're not trying to, like, help you, really," said Strawb. If there was a queer skate-group when he was growing up, maybe he would have had queer friends, said Strawb.
According to a KQED article, Unity tries to give preference queer and femme skaters and give them free decks. At The Hashimoto Contemporary Gallery Cheung sold paintings for over $1000, but Unity now sells Cheung's decks for $55 and, according to a KQED article, Unity tries to give skate decks away to queer and femme youth.
On June 16th, Cheung and his skate team met at a "jam," as they called it, at Rockridge BART parking lot. There was definitely that "jock," "competitive" atmosphere that Stevie talked about, but newcomers to the sport also came to skate and said they felt welcome because of Unity. The majority of the skaters were men and not on the Unity Team, but Unity was still a sizable chunk of the people who were there that day. They commingled with other skaters, people drank beer, screamed their affection at nice moves, and one passerby in a suit shook his head as he walked to his car. It was just another skate party with skaters who came to skate, together.
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