How This Shop Is Driving Miami’s Skate Culture Forward

Andrew bridges the gap between Miami’s skate community and the fashion world HYPEBEAST Features - Go in-depth and learn more about the culture. [HYPEBEAST]( [Features]( December 20, 2019 [How This Shop Is Driving Miami’s Skate Culture Forward]( Andrew bridges the gap between Miami’s skate community and the fashion world. Ian O'connor Miami’s reputation precedes itself. Once known primarily for its party scene and year-round beach weather, the multicultural city is now beloved by fashion and art crowds. Thanks to annual events like Art Basel, today’s Miami is home to an array of luxury shopping malls, designer boutiques-cum-art-spaces and independent shops visitors might only find via word of mouth. Quietly nestled in a commercial building in downtown Miami is the Andrew Downtown skateshop, a brightly-lit storefront decorated with a wall of skate decks and carefully-curated racks of clothing. Andrew is far from just a local skate shop or clothing brand — it also oversees an in-house skate team, providing a platform to develop the skills of its riders, allowing them to travel and see the world as well as film and edit videos in the process. The store has steadily become a staple not just for South Florida skaters to congregate before or after skating at the newly-opened Lot 11 Skatepark, but also a point of reference for visitors coming to celebrate the city’s burgeoning art, music and fashion scene. Minimal in design (in the form of white walls, concrete floor) with pops of color (in the form of clothing and accessories), the store contains everything from T-shirts, hats and hoodies from skate brands like Quartersnacks, Fucking Awesome and Alltimers (with whom the shop has just released a limited-edition capsule) to a selection of clothing from the eponymous in-house line. Ricardo Rivera/HYPEBEAST With friends like Virgil Abloh and Angelo Baque, the team behind Andrew are also trusted by the fashion elite for their insider knowledge and good taste. Other previous collaborations include capsules with Awake NY and FriendsWithYou, and in Art Basel 2019 the team welcomed a limited drop with iconic Miami-based Cuban restaurant Versailles. An ode to the great offering of Cuban food the historic restaurant provides, the collaboration features the restaurant’s first-ever line of merch, including a cafecito cup, a tote bag, T-shirts, a baseball jersey and a skate deck. We caught up with co-founders and longtime friends Adrian Douzmanian, Nick Katz and Pres Rodriguez to discuss how they’re bringing Miami into the global skateboarding conversation and the joy of finding somewhere to hang out when all of your favorite bars have closed down. How did you all meet? What roles do you each play in Andrew? Pres: We all grew up in Miami. I was co-managing a bar downtown and Adrian and his friends would come in. When the bar I ran shut down, there was a void and [nobody knew] where to go, what to do. [We thought] “I’ve been at the same place every Friday for the last two years,” and that’s when a friend of ours had a venue that wasn’t being used for anything and we kind of worked it out and created this party called PeachFuzz to provide a place for this community to hang out again – and it worked. Nick: I met Adrian at Grand Central, I had just moved downtown from the suburbs and he was one of the only friends in the area at the time who I didn’t just skate with. Pres and Adrian were doing PeachFuzz [parties] together, so I kind of got pulled into Adrian’s sphere of influence. Now, I see a community tying into each other. We decided to not all live in New York or LA or Berlin, so we thought, let’s do something. Adrian: [The store consists of] me, Nick, Pres and James Kelly, our manager. He runs our shop on a day-to-day basis. Then we have Khari, who is head of all the young kids, a team manager. [READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON HYPEBEAST →]( [banner](   [More HYPEBEAST Features]( [[8 Drops You Don't Want to Miss This Week] [FASHION]( [8 Drops You Don't Want to Miss This Week]( [[THE MOST INFLUENTIAL DESIGNERS OF THE DECADE] [FASHION]( [THE MOST INFLUENTIAL DESIGNERS OF THE DECADE]( [Get The App Free on iOS and Android]( Follow --------------------------------------------------------------- 2019 HYPEBEAST Limited. All Rights Reserved [Manage Subscriptions]( You are receiving this email because you have subscribed to HYPEBEAST's marketing emails. You can unsubscribe from us any time by clicking [here](. It may take 48 hours to complete the unsubscribe process. Contact subscription@hypebeast.com for assistance on any enquiries. Our Mailing Address: HYPEBEAST, 10F, KC 100, 100 Kwai Cheong Road, Kwai Chung, Hong Kong