The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Eastern Revival skate shop rolls into city
Eastern Revival Skateshop rolled into Painesville just over a month ago and its owner Donovan Knebusch is determined to make his skateboard and apparel shop the beall-end-all for the region’s skateboarding needs.
There’s no doubt that Knebusch knows his way around a board. As he put it, “Since I was 12 I’ve been skateboarding. Eat, breathe, skateboard.”
The transition from enthusiast to business owner is no small leap, but it was one aided by Knebusch’s former experience as a partial owner of a nearby pizza shop where he first learned many of the skills that would serve him well establishing his own business.
The Painesville local reminisces how he and his friends spent their formative years at Ohio Surf and Skate, the area’s premier skateboarding specialty shop until it closed its doors roughly nine years ago.
Since, there’s been a void in the skating community waiting to be filled.
“There’s a ton of skateboarders around here, but there’s no skate shops around here,” Knebusch comments. “You’d have to go all the way out to Lakewood or Parma. People come in and say ‘I’m so happy I don’t have to drive an hour and a half away to get a new deck or a set of bearings.’ ”
His shop at 216 Main St. offers a wide array of skateboard decks, each with its own dynamic artistic design, along with apparel, equipment and hardware, shoes, hats, and more.
As his merchandise stock grows, Knebusch plans on offering curated lines of apparel, recently landing a deal with HUF Shoes to that end. Ohio Surf and Skate’s former owner Tim Rigby has even dropped in to contribute vintage apparel for sale in a sign of support for the successor to the next generation of skateboarders.
This wide reach of Eastern Revival sees Knebusch catering to the quality and expertise that savvy veterans of the subculture have come to expect while still taking the time to show young skaters how to perform maneuvers like kickflips and ollies and help create beginner boards for them.
He admits, “Skateboarding can be clique-y. It’s its own animal, but we’re willing to help anybody get into skateboarding. If you’re on a skateboard trying something, we’re with you.”
He adds, “We’re not here to judge. We’re here for everybody.”
Looking ahead to 2019, Knebusch is eager to utilize the second floor of the building, which is currently empty, to expand floor space and the amount of skateboarding merchandise he can offer.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony has been planned for the latest Painesville addition but Knebusch wants to wait until he can stock more merchandise and for city planners to approve the sign he wants to hang above his storefront in order to give the event more of a substantial presence.