My history with the Taylor’s goes back a long way. Grant’s dad Thomas Taylor opened Stratosphere Skateboards in Atlanta, Georgia in 1986. I started shopping there when I was eight, got my first job there at fifteen and by the time I was was seventeen I had moved out of my mom’s apartment and moved in with the Taylor family to help manage the shop. Grant was seven years old.

If there was one thing that defined the Taylor household it was hardcore skateboarding. There was no pretense or peacockery about it.  If you were hardcore you were in. If you were a poser, a kook, a goon, a whiner, a showboat, a talker, an idiot, or anything less than 100 percent—you probably weren’t skating there—at least not for long. That’s how it was, that’s how it was kept and that’s the only thing any of us ever wanted it to be. The house was a pressure cooker for the purest kind of skateboarding and there was something special stewing there. Everyone knew it, but it was something that was rarely talked about. It was almost as if talking about it would somehow disturb the magic of what we were witnessing — this quiet little kid with a chest-high stalefish, cabs on vert, grinds on handrails, a flip trick bag that trumped the grown folks and a fearless, aggressive style that could have only been forged by the skate gods themselves.

As of yesterday, Grant rides for Anti-Hero. The Taylor house is stronger than ever. Happy New Year from Atlanta