I told you Sean Malto repped KC hard.
The 20-year-old skateboarder wasn't named Thrasher magazine's Skater of the Year (it went to Chris Cole, again), but so what? He has something in common with Tony Hawk now -- his own skate shoe.
Etnies, the company that has sponsored Malto since 2007, flew him out to its Lake Forest, California, headquarters a little more than a year ago to start working on a custom design.
"Obviously, from skating, you know what you like and what you don't like," Malto says of the process. "Say I liked the toe of one shoe and the back of another shoe, we'd combine those. Then we'd say, 'Let's change the stitching.' They also have designers hired for that, who say, 'OK, you should change this to make it better,' so it was kind of a group effort."
Malto's etnies come in Royals blue with a "KC" stitched on the back. He also has a Chiefs colorway that's red with a white trim and a yellow sole.
"My first board was a Girl board, and it was blue for the Royals," he says. "It's just a given for all my boards, all my shoes. I always have KC colorways. I love representing Kansas City."
Malto has a house in Leavenworth and is looking to move into a two-bedroom loft in the River Market. Not that he'll be at
either residence much in 2010, given his hectic travel schedule: He's off to
California for a couple weeks, then flying to Australia in February. At
the end of March he's going to the Cayman Islands, and in May he has a
trip planned to visit Copenhagen and Sweden.
"Last year I was gone for, like, eight months," he says.
Though he was passed over for the SOTY honor, Malto handles it with the
grace of an Academy Award nominee. "It would have been nice, but it's
just one of those things," he says. "The guy that won definitely
deserved it. I was excited to even be on that list. That was cool. And
all my friends voted for me."
He laughs. "Well, they could not have, but they told me they did."
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