Public Housing Skate Team
Volunteer redesign and development to move Public Housing Skate Team off Big Cartel’s template — custom layouts and routes built, shop migration from Big Cartel to Shopify still pending.
Public Housing Skate Team (PHST) is a skateboarding brand founded in the Bronx in 2016 by neighbors Ron Baker and Vlad Gomez out of Gun Hill Houses. Their goal was simple and specific: make “AUTHENTIC HOOD SKATE WEAR” that represents New York City hood culture and skateboarding together — something they felt was missing from the scene.
Life in the projects shapes the aesthetic and the stories: decks, videos, and graphics pull from NYCHA buildings, working-class neighborhoods, and the idea that every project can have a skate team the way it has a basketball team. Clothing sales help fund the team’s skate content — a feedback loop more skate-crew than pure streetwear hype. The brand’s reach grew fast: stocked overseas and in Supreme’s stores, worn publicly by A$AP Rocky and Virgil Abloh, and covered by outlets like StockX, Nowness, Cultured, and Hypebeast.
I volunteered on a full redesign and development of their site to get them off Big Cartel’s template. We’re still awaiting the shop migration from Big Cartel to Shopify before the storefront is fully switched over.
Merch in the culture
A$AP Rocky has worn PHST on stage — here in a white tee with the housing-block-in-crosshairs mark and “PUBLIC HOUSING SKATE TEAM” wordmark. That kind of cosign sits alongside Virgil Abloh spotting the brand and HBX capsules that pushed the same graphic language into global streetwear retail.
On film
Two films that put the crew and the Bronx on a wider stage: StockX’s Off the Top profile (with Giovanni Reda and RB Umali) and Nowness’s Portrait of a Place: Family Over Everything, which centers PHST in a story about family, the projects, and staying true to the Bronx.