Thursday, May 26th marked the 34th birthday of our good friend Dylan Rieder. It’s hard to comprehend that it’s been 6 years since we lost one of the greatest and most influential skateboarders of all time on October 12, 2016.

‘Skate for Dylan’ is an event to celebrate the life of Dylan and create awareness for the Dylan Rieder Foundation and its continued fight against cancer. At the event’s inception, the idea was to invite the skateboard community to show up for the cause and push together. The pandemic had other plans for the effort, however, and the first year’s journey from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica had to be stripped back to just Austyn Gillette and Makenna Rieder (Dylan’s sister); the second year was sidelined altogether due to complications. But finally, this year it seemed appropriate that there was an invitation to anyone that wanted to join us in NYC for the half marathon from the top of Manhattan to the very bottom. After the 14-mile trek to the infamous Seaport Bench, we felt invigorated rather than exhausted. There was no feeling of ‘I can’t believe we just did that.’ Instead, it felt like everyone looked around at each other like, ‘What can we do next?’

To help support the event, Former put out a t-shirt with a photo of Dylan surfing on Monster Children’s Team Average Australia trip from 2012, and all of the profits went to the Dylan Rieder Foundation.

Dylan was a huge and unrepeatable inspiration to an entire generation of skateboarders, and ‘Skate for Dylan’ is a beautiful way to maintain the impact he had on our thoughts and intentions. Mark the date, May 26th, it’s Dylan’s birthday, and we have to keep on celebrating.

You can donate or learn more about the Dylan Rieder Foundation at DylanRiederFoundation.org and follow their new Instagram @dylan_rieder_foundation. For more information on Former or to see the current collection, visit FormerMerchandise.com.