Jim Muir in his office. May 1st 2025

Above: DTS Skateboard... One of the first Dog Town Skateboards ever made. 

DogTown Complete 1978. Red Dog Designs. Signed by Jim Muir.  Copyright D.T. Designs Inc.

 

Jim Muir. 1st Sequence every published in a magazine. Photo by Stecyk / Skateboarder Mag 1976

Chris Terins (S1 Helmets) and Jim Muir (Dog Town Skateboards)  May 1st 2025

S1 Lifer Helmets available on https://dogtownskateboards.com/

Jim Muir was born in 1958 and started working at the Zephyr Surf Shop in 1974 when he was 16. The Zephyr Shop was owned by Jeff Ho (shaped all the Surfboards), Skip Engblom (assembled the Zephry Team aka Z-Boys) and Craig Stecyk (created graphics and was shooting photos and documenting it all). Jim was on the Zephyr Surf and Skate teams and helped glass boards ."At the Zephyr shop there was a room for shaping surfboards, a room for glassing and a room for sanding boards." Zephyr had the best surfers and skaters that lived near the borders of Santa Monica and Venice Beach (Dogtown). It was a hard core era. Stacy Peralta (a Zephyr Shop Rider) would later explained the vibe perfecty in his masterful documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys" released in 2001.

They would surf in the morning and skate in the afternoon. They would skate the streets, school yards or empty pools. "And then we would hit Hollywood and see bands at night. It was a wild time. The clubs were all ages back then."

Zephyr started Z-Flex, Jay Adams broke off and started Easy Rider and then after Zephyr closed shop (the 3 partners weren't getting along) Jim started D.T Designs Inc. (Dog Town Skateboards). 

As the months went by the Dog Town boards kept getting wider because "we would trace the skate boards to make a template for new boards but each time the marker would make the template wider and wider. That is how we eventually ended up with wider boards." 

Jim enjoyed graphic design classes in high school and learned how to screen shirts. And he was always custom spraying his own boards. "Stecyk has been my mentor and has taught me alot."

Jim's half brother Mike Muir founded the thrash core band called Suicidal Tendencies (pretty much every skater in the US had Suicidal's album "Possessed to Skate" in 80's) and Mike ended up started a band called Infectious Grooves in the late 80's with Robert Trujillo (Rob plays bass for Metallica now). 

Surfing, Skateboarding, Art, Photography and Music were all interwoven into Dogtown fabric which was setting the foundation for the future of skateboarding. I told Jim I was born in 1974 and I felt like I missed alot of the cool stuff in the 70's. "You did. It was an amazing time."

Side note: Skateboarding kind of cooled (died) in the early 80's as alot of concrete skateparks closed and interestingly, Stacy Peralta, former Zephyr Team member linked up with George Powell (made the boards and wheels) and Craig Stecyk (created the Rat Bones graphics and others) and Stacy created the Bones Brigade (a team of younger and super-naturally talented skaters) and filmed the Bones Brigade Video Show (one of the first skate videos on vhs) which would end up igniting a whole new generation of skaters in the mid to late 80's. written by Chris Terins