Keys To The City — The Making of Palace’s ‘DETROIT 313’ with Lev Tanju

🔑 Story and Art Direction by Farran Golding
📷 Photography by Alex Pires and Polaroids (background images throughout) by Jack Brooks, originally published in the PALACE DETROIT 313 Photo Book

In the summer of 2026, an exhibition on the history of skateboarding at London’s Southbank Undercroft took place in a subterranean venue next to the world-renowned spot. In this corner beneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which was once part of the Undercroft itself, short films from communities connected to Southbank’s past and present played on loop. They were directed by and featured skateboarders the spot had incubated: the professionals whose careers it has been intrinsic to, the filmmakers whose archives present an ethnography of the area, the 100-strong crew of skate moms who meet regularly, and an atmospheric work by Lev Tanju, the founder and creative director of a generational entity born out of the brutalist landmark: Palace Skateboards.

More »

Innit — Palace’s ‘Beta Blockers’ Video

Was under the impression that Beta Blockers would be A Small Palace Video — maybe because it’s August and the skate media mental calendar often saves the year’s blockbuster releases for the holidays — but no, Beta Blockers is A Big Palace Video spanning the whole team, and at a Palasonic-equivalent runtime. In August! What a world.

More »

Deeper Understanding — An Interview With Charlie Birch

Interview by Farran Golding
Collages by Requiem For A Screen
Original Photos by Marimo Ohyama & Alex Pires

It seems like just the other day that Palace was a small U.K. brand buzzing with montages filmed on VHS tapes, and P.W.B.C. news segments aimed at a skate industry still coming to grips with how to use the internet. In the ensuing decade of successes, it has remained unshakably English in its vision — even the fact that Jamal Smith is the only American to turn pro for the brand rings of a certain “foreigners appreciating your homeland in a better way than you do”-type thing.

To the American eye, Palace rose to prominence in that void left by Blueprint at the onset of the 2010s. In the time since, the world of U.K. skateboarding feels like it became closer intertwined to our own. This of course is thanks to Palace, yes, but also because of things like Isle’s unanimously adored “Atlantic Drift” series, the Yardsale videos, Free becoming one of the best alternate channels for skate media, and the inspiring success of the Long Live Southbank campaign.

With little context for how the U.K. scene actually operates, we asked Farran Golding — the man behind many of the deep-dive features on the Slam City Skates blog — to interview Charlie Birch, Palace’s newest teamrider, who we don’t know all that much about on this side of the Atlantic ;)

More »