Cold Starts, Eastwood Heat, and the Skater Who Outworks the Clock

Cypress Grind Co has been running hot.
Boards coming in. Safety gear stacking up. eBay orders running laps around the workbench. Shipping boxes everywhere — the kind of mess that means things are growing faster than the schedule can keep up.

And somewhere in that chaos, a new wax was born.

 

Cold Start: Built for Winter

The newest batch is Cold Start — a softer, winter-weight formula meant for cold concrete and early sessions. No scent. No gimmicks. Just glide.
A few sticks went out to @crisrod77 for testing, and so far he hasn’t thrown any of it back at me, so I’ll take that as a win.

Emily’s artwork is on the label now.
And on the buttons.
And on half the things leaving the shop at this point.
When you’ve got good art in-house, you use it.

 

Eastwood Skate Jam: Where the Scene Shows Its Heart

The Friends of Eastwood annual skate jam pulled the Houston crew together again — vendors setting up, kids warming up, boards cracking against concrete, that familiar feeling of a community held together by grip tape, bruises, and stubborn love for this thing.

That’s where I caught up with Brandon and the Wrong Money team again.
And it’s where I met someone who really caught my attention: Trenton, known online as @trentonuppersk8.

He wasn’t skating the contest — an ankle sprain kept him grounded — but he was there for his crew. Pushing them, spotting them, laughing with them, yelling from the edges of the park. The kind of presence you only get from someone who’s put in a lifetime of hours.

When I asked for an interview, he pulled me aside like we were about to film something for a skate documentary.
Instead, I pulled a pen and notepad out of my pocket.
Old-school journalism. He looked confused for a half-second and then started talking.

 

The Skater Who Lives on His Board

Trenton is 23, but his mileage is closer to someone twice his age.
He skates twelve hours a day — and somehow still runs his own window-tinting business, @wrap.werx, in between sessions.

He rides a Wrong Money deck reinforced with a fiberglass layer — not for style but survival. He breaks boards the way other people break shoelaces. Thunder 8.25 trucks, 52 Spitfires, and a quiet nod toward Bones wheels, but Spitfire “feels right.” You can tell he’s thought about all of it.

His sketchiest moment involved a homeless woman who wouldn’t leave him alone and eventually keyed his car. He told the story with that half-laugh skaters get when they’ve survived something annoying but too weird to forget.

As a kid, he was convinced only one shop employee — a guy named Ian — could grip his board without cursing it. If Ian didn’t touch it, he swore the deck would snap faster.
He doesn’t believe that anymore… probably.

His current obsession is fiberglass-reinforced decks. They last. They fight back. They stay with him as long as he needs them to.

The last trick that actually took him more than a day? Big spins down sets. He said it depends on the stairs — height changes the whole rotation. A very skater thing to say.

If his board needed a theme song, he picked Cemetery Gates by Pantera without blinking. Heavy metal. Clean choice.

If a portal opened mid-ride?
He wouldn’t even hesitate. He’s going through it.

Gas station comfort pick?
That one took him a minute.
Then his eyes lit up like he’d been waiting years to talk about it.
QuikTrip cheesy breadsticks.

Not the Texas ones — he said he’s only ever found them back in Wisconsin.
Talked about them like they were a rare collectible.
The kind of snack you remember because you can’t get it anymore.

Before we wrapped, he gave a shoutout to his friend Brad Bushman (@_beardsweird), the guy who pushes him just hard enough that Trenton feels the need to prove him wrong.

 

Back to the Shop

Meanwhile, the store keeps growing.
Wax is selling.
Emily’s art is multiplying.
Buttons are going out in orders.
Trenton stickers are floating out into the world.
And the workbench is buried deeper every time I turn around.

Cypress Grind Co is slowly turning into the real thing — not a hobby, not a side thought — an actual, breathing skate shop built one box, one board, one wax stick, one conversation at a time.