Sheraton Years

THE YEAR WAS 1989 and skateboarding was in a state of deep teenage crisis. One half wanted to uphold skateboarding’s newly achieved popularity while the other half wanted to explore its potentiality to the fullest. A solution was never reached and skateboarding collapsed into a coma-like condition.

But there were a few people who didn’t want to stray from the friend they had just met. They started their teen years by following the remains of the rejected youth culture into the dark. Down there they could investigate both skateboarding and themselves completely undisturbed. Many an odd and short lived phenomenon spawned from the subterranean experiments but the total seclusion would also prove to be the perfect breeding ground for the mature and likeable version of skateboarding which is embraced by a whole world today.

THE BOOK SHERATON YEARS follows the skateboarders of Stockholm on their journey through the 90’s. The rickety ride goes down into the parking garages, over the Atlantic, into cheap beer joints and eventually up to the light at the end of the century. It’s a spontaneous portrayal of people who found so many different things in the semi-extinct skateboard culture. Some found fellowship never felt before, for some it was the perfect hideaway from the dangers of adulthood, others found the wide road out of society and for a few the obscure existence would turn into a future of wealth and fame.

Sheraton Years is also a Stockholm portrait, taken in a time which has just turned to history. A picture of a city in millennial anticipation and a few of its shady inhabitants who regardless of their anonymity would have great effect on today’s people; the clothes they wear, the music they listen to and the hobbies they pursue.

Sheraton Years is 200 documentary photographs taken by Jens Andersson gently merged together by Martin Karlsson’s words made into a unit by the design of Martin Ander. The result is a bittersweet closure of the three originators 1990’s. A time which though it was neglected by the whole world would prove to be at least as important for skateboarding as the Dog Town era of the 70’s.

The Sheraton Years book is produced by Me, Photographer Jens Andersson and Freelance Writer Martin Karlsson.

Sheraton Years is distributed worldwide by Dokument Press.
Get your copy at Colette, ReedSpace, SNS, Presstop, Papercut, Akademibokhandeln, WeSC, Cali, Storm, Myymälä2 or online at Junkyard.se or most swedish online bookstores.
We are still looking for distribution or retaliers outside scandinavia, drop me an e-mail if you’re interested.

There’s also som Sheraton Years merch available in my Artsproject store.