Eric Swenson, 64, walked to the front of the Mission Police Station early Monday morning wearing a black shirt and black jeans, and carrying a high-caliber gun. It was 8:30 a.m. and few people were around.
One witness told police that Swenson sat down, pulled out the gun, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Up to that moment, Swenson’s life had been a successful one. In 1981 he helped found the legendary skateboarding magazine Thrasher, and for the last 20 years had lived on Potrero Hill with his wife, Linda McKay.
“He was just an incredible person,” said McKay in a phone interview with Mission Loc@l.
He encouraged her to learn to paint and speak Italian, she said. “He was a great partner and really smart.”
McKay doesn’t fully understand why Swenson decided to take his own life, but said that a motorcycle accident had left him in terrible pain that he found increasingly difficult to bear. “He thought he was being a burden to me,” she said.
A neighbor told Mission Loc@l that he was shocked by the news of Swenson’s suicide.
“I just heard him playing guitar last Saturday,” said the neighbor, Kelly, who had known Swenson since 1993.
Swenson was an avid guitar player, Kelly said, and he often heard him playing.
Both owned Mercedes, and they talked about cars whenever they had the chance. Swenson still rode around the city on a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
Kelly said his neighbor loved a good cigar, but that his true passion was skateboards. McKay said, “He really knew how to make wheels. He knew about engineering without going to college.”
When Swenson recently renovated his home, he decorated some of the rooms with skateboards, Kelly said.
In 1970, before Swenson’s success with Thrasher Magazine, he and Fausto Vitello, an Argentinean who immigrated to the United States to escape political persecution in Buenos Aires, worked at Santa Cruz Skateboards with Richard Novak and Jay Shiurman.
Swenson and Vitello came up with the idea to found the Independent Truck Company, a skateboard manufacturer, in 1978.
With the company’s success, Swenson and Vitello co-founded Thrasher in 1981 with Kevin Thatcher. There they published the latest skating tricks, interviews, photos and competitions. The magazine grew thanks to the resurgence of skateboarding culture in the early ’80s.
The trio produced several movies, and created the skater-of-the-year award and the famous skateboarding competition “King of the Road.” The latter continues to this day.
Vitello died in 2006 from a heart attack while riding his bicycle.
For the next five years, Swenson continued to work at Thrasher and lived with his wife in their $1.2 million home on Potrero Hill.
A notice on Thrasher’s home page said today that “Eric Swenson got things done. Never one to clamor for the spotlight, he preferred the hard work, orchestrating the show from behind the scenes.” The website noted that he is survived by his wife Linda and his sister Rebekah.
The writer may not be a skater. And def not from SF. The skating community is small when you think about it here, but thriving. Independent, venture, thunder, thrasher were as part of skating as wood and bearings. So glad I started in 95 and got to experience so many sick spots and cool ppl. Those men added so much to the culture. A culture that needs to be respected and protected frm time to time.
I’d love to contribute an article to Thrasher one day. Would be an honor. Rest up Eric, Fausto & Jake. Gone but never forgotten.
Re: value of the home comment.
I agree with D. Olson.
I think mention of him owning a Benz and Harley, and the fact he enjoyed a good cigar were enough facts to subtly indicate his financial situation.
Am I alone in thinking that the mention of the monetary value of this man’s home is in bad taste?
I am with you, but i believe it was a resource to show that this man had his act together, in case someone starts stereotyping skateboarders as stoners, lazy dudes…
Showing what we as skateboarders and lost souls built and ended with. Is the most up lifting thing on this entire reading. And what will be left for the remainder of the family is the goal. Rip fasuto phelps and swenson
It may be irrelevant to the story, but I’m not sure why it would be in bad taste. Can somebody explain?
Absolutely not! This writer apparently got caught up in their reporting/writing abilities and allowed something totally irrelevant to the tenor of the story be featured. Remember this is a neighborhood “news” entity.