{"id":65908,"date":"2025-11-05T12:02:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T19:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/?p=65908"},"modified":"2025-11-05T19:04:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T02:04:36","slug":"rip-skater-writer-kevin-wilkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/?p=65908","title":{"rendered":"RIP: Skater\/Writer\/Artist Kevin Wilkins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65909\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_09_bowl.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"602\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_09_bowl.jpeg 450w, https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_09_bowl-374x500.jpeg 374w, https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_09_bowl-150x200.jpeg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;d like to apologize. <strong>Kevin Wilkins<\/strong> didn&#8217;t like this photo from Huntington Beach summer of 2009. He said his Smith wasn&#8217;t locked in. But blame us for the bad photo because more often than not, Kevin was locked in. He was locked in to whatever he was doing. And it was a lot.<\/p>\n<p>From the &#8216;zine days in Lincoln, Nebraska, to moving to SoCal the first time circa 1987 as editor of <strong>Wizard Publications&#8217; <\/strong>short-lived&nbsp;<em><strong>Homeboy Magazine<\/strong> <\/em>with the Master Cluster of <strong>Andy Jenkins<\/strong>, <strong>Mark Lewman<\/strong>, and <strong>Spike Jonze<\/strong>, to the <em><strong>TransWorld Skateboarding Magazine<\/strong><\/em> days, and being an original member of <em><strong>The Skateboard Mag<\/strong><\/em> team with <strong>Grant Brittain<\/strong>, <strong>Dave Swift<\/strong>, and <strong>Mike Mihaly<\/strong>, Kevin was in it for real.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, Kevin&#8217;s five-year dance with prostate cancer ramped up at the end of October. He moved home on hospice and died on November 4, 2025. He was 58.<\/p>\n<p>Grant Britain summed up all our feelings on Instagram when he said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We will miss you Kevin Wilkins,&nbsp;thank you for your friendship, your humor, your dedication, your laughter, your creative spark, and your incredible spirit. You will always be in my memories, I love you, thank you for the 40 years of being friends. \u2665\ufe0f to the Wilkins family.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Our thoughts go out to Kevin&#8217;s wife Cheryl and the entire Wilkins Clan. If you&#8217;d like to help the family, please <a href=\"https:\/\/gofund.me\/ffd8987f8\"><strong>click here for their GoFundMe<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65927\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4966.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4966.jpeg 450w, https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4966-200x150.jpeg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Kevin Wilkins and Brad Staba.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65910\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_lewen.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"337\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_lewen.jpeg 450w, https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_lewen-200x150.jpeg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Kevin Wilkins with Zumiez&#8217;s Karyn Lewandowski.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65911\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_schmidt.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_schmidt.jpeg 450w, https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/wilkins_schmidt-200x150.jpeg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Paul Schmitt and <em>The Skateboard Mag&#8217;s<\/em> Kevin Wilkins backstage at Grant Brittian&#8217;s Look Show at Subtext.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-65912\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Mark-Lewman-Dork-In-The-Yard-Club-Homeboy-Slam-City-Skates-700x927-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"596\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Mark-Lewman-Dork-In-The-Yard-Club-Homeboy-Slam-City-Skates-700x927-1.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Mark-Lewman-Dork-In-The-Yard-Club-Homeboy-Slam-City-Skates-700x927-1-378x500.jpg 378w, https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Mark-Lewman-Dork-In-The-Yard-Club-Homeboy-Slam-City-Skates-700x927-1-151x200.jpg 151w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Kevin from Mark Lewman&#8217;s <em>Homeboy<\/em> story &#8220;A Dork In The Yard.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;d like to apologize. Kevin Wilkins didn&#8217;t like this photo from Huntington Beach summer of 2009. He said his Smith wasn&#8217;t locked in. But blame us for the bad photo because more often than not, Kevin was locked in. He was locked in to whatever he was doing. And it was a lot. From the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65908"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65928,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65908\/revisions\/65928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boardistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}