About BadBillys.com

BadBillys.com is a history and culture site dedicated to Bad Billy's — the skate and streetwear sub-label that Billabong launched in 1987. The brand captured the raw energy of the late-80s skate boom before the mainstream caught on, and left behind a legacy that collectors and skate historians still chase today.

This site covers the brand's origins, its aesthetic, its place in the broader surf-to-skate crossover movement, and the culture it helped define. Bad Billy's didn't exist in isolation: it sat inside an international surf-and-skate story that ran from Hawaii to California to Australia and New Zealand, and that wider context — the surfboard shapers, the skate-graphic pioneers, the coastal retail networks — runs through everything covered here. If you grew up skating in the late 80s or early 90s, or you're researching that era now, you're in the right place.

What you'll find here:

• Brand history: where Bad Billy's came from and what it stood for
• The 80s/90s skate scene context: Powell Peralta, Vision, Santa Cruz, and where Billabong fit in
• Apparel and design history: the graphics, the cuts, the logos
• Collector guides: what to look for, what's rare, what's reproducible
• The Australian angle: how surf culture shaped the skate crossover differently Down Under

The site is run by a single editor. Content is researched and written to be accurate; if you spot an error or have archival material to contribute — original pieces, receipts, old ads, catalog pages, or photos — please get in touch through the contact page. Everything helps build the record.