Artist Mark Gonzales skating inside the Dead End exhibit. June 7 2025, Syracuse, New York. Credit: Maddi Jane Brown | Central Current

As a teen in Syracuse in the early 1990s, William Strobeck had an innate desire to be different. He would occasionally try sports to conform to the “follow the leader” culture in high school, but couldn’t summon the interest. Simply doing what his peers did wasn’t appealing, so he turned to skateboarding.

“I wanted to be different from everyone in my school and skateboarding gave me that option first,” said Strobeck, who, 35 years later, is curator of the skateboarding-focused “DEAD END” exhibit currently on view at the very place he first discovered skate culture: Everson Museum of Art.

The exhibit runs through Aug. 31. 

Featuring Strobeck’s own work and work from 11 other artists, including Larry Clark, Tobin Yelland and professional skateboarder Mark Gonzales, the exhibit deals with skateboarding as a sense of identity. It explores major themes of skateboarding — youth, its uncertainties, boundaries and possibilities — and highlights how far skating has come as a culture.

But back in the day, before skateboarding became a mainstream activity, embracing it as a passion meant taking on a difference that peers could ostracize. Strobeck and others did it anyway; they embraced standing out in school because of what they wore and how they acted.

“It’s kind of normal now to be a skater in school, I think, but back then, on the East Coast, you were a weird outcast,” Strobeck said.

Strobeck considered skating a form of self-expression. And he eventually found fellow skateboarding extraordinaires at the Community Plaza behind the Everson Museum — which has been the “unofficial hub” for skateboarding in Central New York for years, according to museum director Elizabeth Dunbar. 

Years went by and Strobeck realized he needed to make a change. As much as he loved skating, he didn’t want to take the time to become a professional. “I’m pretty impatient,” he said. He saw filmmaking and photography as a way to stay in that world, the skateboarding universe.

William Strobeck helped put together “DEAD END.” at the Everson Museum of Art. Credit: Maddi Jane Brown | Central Current

Three decades later, his passion has formed a solid foundation for success. He founded Violet Skateboards, an influential brand with nearly 66,000 Instagram followers that aims to bring creativity to skateboarding, in 2018. He’s moved between cities — from Syracuse to Philadelphia in 1996 and to New York City in 2003 — and at least visited almost every US state, China, Israel, France, Spain, Australia, and beyond. And the exhibit has given him the chance to return to the Everson with the same passion but a different purpose.

It’s an exhibit that exemplifies both how Strobeck has learned to pursue skateboarding — and the “language of the culture,” as he considers it — though photography and how skateboarding itself is a cultural movement. 

For Dunbar, having Strobeck plan this exhibition was a no-brainer. He grew up skating at the Everson. He does work around skateboarding. Nobody could organize it more authentically, she said.

“That said, I think it is also a deeply personal show and provides a window into how his work and worldview have been shaped,” Dunbar added.

Overall, she said, the exhibit exudes a rebellious undertone — exactly what Strobeck aimed for.

Strobeck added that some work can be traced back to those early days when he discovered skateboarding and it was seen as “lawless.” He designed the exhibit to be a juxtaposition between past and present, to show “the vibe of what it was and how things were at the time,” he said. He wanted to show the culture, like how skateboarders dressed and gathered back in the day. 

“The exhibit shows rather than tells how these skateboarders express themselves,” Yelland said.

Strobeck said even the work from when he originally moved to New York shows how “free and unparalleled” skateboarding is. That work reflects a time when skateboarding was like its own world, a time when few people had cameras to document the culture, he said. Today’s work is much different, as technology allows skateboarders to share their experiences from coast to coast, Strobeck said.

“All the technology has made it easy to be faster … HD cameras log onto hard drives within a minute and you don’t have to sift through tapes to find stuff,” Strobeck said. “Now you can log tapes onto hard drives and have them accessible but in the early days of doing this you couldn’t. I still love all the looks of older stuff but I am lazy at times and just wanna make it easy on myself.”

Tadashi Yamaoda, who attended the exhibit when it opened, said the atmosphere felt nostalgic. Outside the exhibit, around the Community Plaza, attendees were skating and obstacles dispersed. Skate videos from the ‘90s and the Trilogy video soundtrack played — “they were actually literally playing the audio from the video because you could hear the skateboard sounds that went along with it,” Yamaoda said.

Skateboarders line up their boards at the opening event for the “DEAD END.” exhibit. Credit: Maddi Jane Brown | Central Current

He added that pictures of the skateboarding pioneers from the 1990s brought him back to a time that skating felt more mainstream and a time when he skated often and consumed all things skateboarding through videos, magazines, even gossip. 

“Seeing those old pictures, I just imagined back then those pros were more just living in the moment,” Yamaoda said. “Somehow living the dream, to be a pro skateboarder; it’s what every kid wants.”

Strobeck wants young viewers to feel inspired, to see skating and the work as a sign that “you can do anything to express yourself for good or for bad,” he said. In the case of a show, it’s not about what others want; it’s about deciding “what you want to express.”

He believes skateboarding is more about youth, especially as it relates to filmmaking. When he was younger, he was drawn to “tough, fierce, and edgy” energy, he said, and that guides his perspective on work and life. He specifically wants youth to document moments in their teens and 20s, when life is more unfiltered.

He hopes young people see the exhibit and cherish those moments. 

“Everyone wants to be young. Getting old is cool but looking back at being that age it’s unbeatable” he said. “Power to the youth.”

“All I have to say is be yourself, no matter what slack you get for it. If people are weird toward you, that’s their problem,” Strobeck said. “Took me years to see this.”

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Giuseppe Pagano is a writer from Central New York with published work on Syracuse.com, Yahoo, Central Current, and other publications. With a magazine journalism degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of...