Daewon Song, the Manual Magician Who Bent Technical Skateboarding

Fifty years old. Thirty-five years as a pro skater. And still the same recipe: a manual pad, an improbable line, a discreet smile under his cap. Daewon Song hasn’t aged, he’s steeped.

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The Koreatown Kid Who Slept in a Skateshop

Daewon Song was born in Seoul in 1975 and arrived in Los Angeles with his parents when he was two. Koreatown, 80s. A rough neighborhood, a working-class family, and a little kid spending his days in front of a curb.

At fourteen, he was already hanging out at World Industries — first the shop, then the brand of Mark Gonzales and Steve Rocco. Rodney Mullen spotted him. Daewon was sixteen when he turned pro. He officially became the youngest pro skater of his era. The iconic photo from that time: a kid in oversized baggy pants, board under his arm, with a gaze already elsewhere.

World Industries, Rodney Mullen, and the Birth of a Laboratory

The Rodney Mullen — Daewon Song duo is the secret equation of technical skateboarding. Mullen invented flatground; Daewon took it out of the garage and put it on the street. Every manual pad becomes an experimental ground. Every curb reads like a score.

In 1997, « Trilogy » was released. Then « Rodney vs. Daewon » in 1997. Then « Round 2 » in 1999. Three cult videos. A simple concept: the oldest and youngest pro, face to face, with impossible lines. Kids worldwide paused their VHS tapes to understand what they had just seen.

That’s where Daewon laid his signature: the manual isn’t a transition trick, it’s a work of art. A well-gripped Almost deck, a neighborhood curb, and eighteen seconds later you still don’t understand how he’s still on it.

Almost, Cheese & Crackers, and the Technical Peak

In 2003, Rodney Mullen and Daewon left Enjoi and founded Almost Skateboards. Three years later, the bomb dropped: « Cheese & Crackers ». Daewon paired with Chris Haslam on ridiculous street furniture — a wobbly bench, a board on a cinder block, an abandoned old sofa. The challenge: transform trash into a dream spot.

The result redefined what technicality in skateboarding was. No need for a huge gap or a 20-stair handrail. A wooden plank, three cinder blocks, and Daewon invents a vocabulary. The kids at Paris’s Bercy skatepark still have tricks inherited from that part.

The Switch 360 Flip Manual: His Ultimate Signature

Ask any skater who grew up in the 2000s to name a Daewon trick. Nine out of ten will say the same thing: switch 360 flip to nose manual. A combination no one thought possible before him. He landed it, filmed it, and the rest of the world took ten years to recover.

What Daewon Left to Modern Skateboarding

Past 50, Daewon still skates. No longer for Almost — he joined Thank You Skateboards in 2020 with Torey Pudwill. He’s been skating for Adidas Skateboarding since 2009. His Instagram keeps dropping weekly clips. Same rhythm, same precision, same cap.

His legacy? An entire generation of skaters no longer afraid of manual pads. Look at Ginwoo Onodera in SLS: his game plan, his ability to string together long combos, that’s pure Daewon. Look at Shane O’Neill, Paul Rodriguez, Luan Oliveira. They all have a line in their DNA that traces back to World Industries 1996.

Daewon’s real tour de force is making technicality cool. Not boring, not academic. Joyful. You watch a Daewon part in 2026 just like in 1996: with a smile, nodding your head, and telling yourself there are still decades before we exhaust what you can do on a board.

Rodney Mullen once said Daewon was his only equal in technique. Coming from the inventor of the kickflip, that’s worth an Olympic gold medal.