A "Sneak Peek" into the future

About a month ago Eric Mathews from Launch Memphis put me in touch with a lady by the name of Salisha (a.k.a. Petey) Franklin who along with her husband Kevin recently opened up this ultra cool hip-hop store just down the street from Sun Studios on Marshall. The name of their store is Sneak Peak The store features urban clothing apparel, which includes stuff on consignment as well as ultra hard-to-find sneakers.

Last Friday I met Shalisha and Kevin at their store where they were hosting a skate deck art contest. Wow! The artists did some amazing work on those decks. Some decks were airbrushed and looked like pictures you would see off a pink floyd album ( showing my age) and others were beyond description. Many hip hop themes as well. The message I gleaned the from the artwork on these decks is that skateboarding has firmly established itself as integral part of the urban scene. Check out some the decks on the Sneak Peek site

Since the Friday Sneak Peek event fell right on the heels of the FedEx Skatejam demo, Shalisha was kind enough to lend here artistic skills and made the informational flyer (see below) that I handed out for the next Mud Island public meeting coming up in May. We can all thank Carly Knight of the Memphis Grizzlies staff for putting the Fedex SkateJam together. There are pictures of the event online in the skatelife gallery.

We had a lot of skaters ,between 100-120, show up for the event with only a brief stint of myspace bulletin time to get the word out. The skaters are hungry for skate space! Shalisha said she had a large number of skaters come to the Sneak Peek event afterwards. I was happy to hear that her event was a success.

Look for more about Sneak Peek on Memphis Connect. They may post an interview with the them. For those of you that have not heard of Memphis Connect, their mission is to provide an online presence where "diverse city-shaping Memphians discuss the opportunities, organizations and activities that inspire them to make Memphis home." It's a site well worth book-marking and if you have something to share they would welcome your thoughts. They have allowed us to write a number of posts on our Mud Island skate park efforts.

See you all at the next Mud Island meeting! See below for details.




Feel free to download the poster and give it to friends.