A Ten-Inch Board and a Phone Camera

Most skaters his age ride popsicle sticks. Victor Garcia rides a ten-inch-wide Steve Saiz Totem reissue, a board shaped like 1989, and he makes it look like the future. Originally from Huntington Park, California , Garcia is a Powell-Peralta team rider whose short-form video clips have turned him into one of skateboarding’s most watchable presences online. His YouTube Shorts channel is a rolling archive of what happens when someone takes boards most people hang on a wall and actually skates them, hard, in the street.

What makes Garcia compelling isn’t just the trick selection. It’s the commitment to gear that conventional wisdom says you shouldn’t be able to do modern tricks on. Shaped decks, wide noses, fish tails, old concaves. He takes all of it to ledges, stair sets, and DIY spots around Los Angeles and treats it like it was built for exactly this.

The Powell-Peralta Connection

Garcia appears on the official Powell-Peralta team page alongside riders like Brandon Johnson, João Lucas Alves, Mason Merlino, Cy Romano, Sakura Yosozumi, Kilian Martin, and Isamu Yamamoto. That’s serious company. Powell-Peralta isn’t a brand that hands out spots casually. Founded in 1978 by product designer George Powell and professional skater Stacy Peralta , the company carries decades of credibility built on the Bones Brigade era and a lineage of riders who changed what skateboarding could be.

The brand has leaned into Garcia as a living argument for its classic deck line. The Powell-Peralta blog has documented him in connection with the blue stain Saiz ‘Totem’ Classic skateboard , and he’s been featured in sessions at Steve Caballero’s ‘Panda Ramp’ alongside CAB, AJ Nelson, Chris Hiett, Matthew Wilcox, and Hericles Fagundes. When a company puts you on a ramp session with Steve Caballero, that’s not a marketing test. That’s family.

Why the Shaped Decks Matter

Here’s where it gets interesting for anyone who cares about the physical objects of skateboarding. The boards Garcia gravitates toward aren’t modern shapes. They’re reissues and classic models, boards like the Saiz Totem, originally designed for Steve Saiz, the fourth Powell-Peralta street pro to receive his own deck model, featuring a distinctive Native American “totem pole” graphic by artist Sean Cliver that debuted in 1989. That’s a 10 x 30.81 inch deck. For comparison, most street skaters today ride something around 8.25 inches wide.

Powell-Peralta’s re-issue decks are described as close reproductions of their 1980s counterparts, featuring the original top and bottom graphics, shape and concave. The Saiz Totem shape is the original “282” shape with “SP3” concave , which means Garcia isn’t just riding a board with a retro graphic slapped on a modern mold. He’s riding the actual geometry from 37 years ago. And he’s switch heelflipping on it.

There’s a deeper story in the Saiz Totem itself. In the late 1980s, Powell Peralta had an established vert team maxed out with Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, and Lance Mountain, and began adding street pros to expand into that growing market: first Tommy Guerrero, then Mike Vallely, then Ray Barbee, with Long Beach local Steve Saiz coming fourth. His totem graphic was Sean Cliver’s second illustration for the company, and Saiz continued riding for Powell-Peralta into the early 1990s until his knee gave out. Garcia riding this particular board in 2026 draws a direct line from the birth of street skating to its present tense.

The Content Machine

Garcia’s social media output is prolific and distinct. His TikTok account, @garcias_finest, has built a massive following, and his content goes well beyond standard skate clips. He posts grip tape application videos with an almost meditative quality, board setup content, DIY projects, and of course the skating itself. His sponsors, listed on his @garcias_vids Instagram account, include Powell Peralta, Mainline Skate Shop, Flip Strips, and Independent Trucks.

His YouTube Shorts channel functions as a highlight reel with no filler. Every clip is tight. The skating speaks. There’s no overproduced intro, no podcast-length preamble, no narrator explaining why what you’re watching is impressive. You just see a guy on a giant shaped board doing things that shouldn’t work on that shape, and then the clip ends. It’s the purest version of skate media: see trick, feel something, move on.

What Garcia has figured out, maybe instinctively, is that the visual contrast is the hook. A shaped deck looks different from everything else at a skatepark. When someone kickflips a board that wide and that old-school in outline, your eye catches it immediately. The silhouette is wrong for what the trick demands. And then the trick lands clean. That dissonance is what keeps people watching.

More Than a Gimmick

It would be easy to dismiss the shaped-deck thing as a novelty act if Garcia weren’t also deeply embedded in the Powell-Peralta squad’s actual skating life. The brand’s blog documents him going from the streets to the park with the squad, in Los Angeles DIY sessions, and at Sheldon Skatepark. He shows up in the company’s ‘Parks n Wreck’ video series alongside riders like Zach Doelling, Andy Anderson, and Chris Hiett. This isn’t an influencer arrangement where someone holds a product and smiles. Garcia is in the van. He’s at the session. He’s one of the guys.

Asked on his Powell-Peralta team page about his favorite skater on the roster, Garcia said: “They’re all my favorite. Especially Kenny Martes!” That kind of answer tells you something about where his head is. No politics, no positioning. Just genuine enthusiasm for the people he skates with.

A Board Is a Thing You Hold

There’s a reason this column exists at Hyperlific. We care about the physical objects that carry culture forward. A shaped skateboard deck is not just a piece of sporting equipment. It’s a designed artifact with a specific history, a specific artist, a specific concave pressed into its maple. Powell-Peralta’s decks are made using custom-designed AirLam low pressure air bladder presses to laminate 7 plies of American hard rock maple with high-strength, water-resistant glue. The Saiz Totem reissue carries Sean Cliver’s artwork and Vernon Courtlandt Johnson’s Winged Ripper top graphic. These are real objects made by real people, and Victor Garcia treats them that way: as things meant to be used, not preserved under glass.

You can find Garcia’s clips on his YouTube Shorts channel and across his social accounts. His official Powell-Peralta team page collects his appearances in brand content. If you’ve been sleeping on shaped decks, or if you’ve been quietly riding one and wondering if anyone else out there gets it, Garcia is your answer. He gets it. He’s been getting it. And he’s putting it on camera for everyone to see.