Thrasher was founded in 1981 by Eric Swenson and Fausto Vitello in San Francisco, California.
First it was just a way to promote their nowadays worldwide famous skateboard truck company Independent Trucks, which they found with Richard Novak and Jay Shuirman.
Beside the Magazine, Thrasher also runs a skateshop with museum part named 66 6th St. and an indoor skatepark named Double Rock in San Francisco where Skateboarder are invited for filming sessions.
From 1983 to 1990, Thrasher released the Skate Rock Punk Rock music compilations which often were folllowed by tours along the United States and worldwide.
Mostly the bands were partially created or staffed by skateboarders like Steve Caballero, Tony Alva, Bob Denike, Brian Brannon, Mofo, Pushead, Chuck Treece, and Claus Grabke.
Since 1990 Trahser annually designates the most relevant trophy in the skateboard business... The Skater Of The Year (SOTY).
In 1999 a PlayStation game called Thrasher Presents Skate and Destroy appeared.
In 2003, Thrasher started the King of the Road (KOTR) skateboard contest series in the United States and 2011 one time in China.
The idea of the contest is to invite a group of professional skateboarder teams and hand them out a booklet full of several challenges which all teams work off at the same time in a two week period traveling across the US.
For each challenge every team gets points so the goal is to accomplish as many challenges as possible.
For hardcore fans..:
The main Thrasher logo uses the Banco typo from Roger Excoffon and Skate and Destroy is an expression used by 70ies skate punks.