I can't remember what year it was… maybe somewhere around 2008? But I attended some X-Games fiasco in downtown LA and ran into Ryan Kingman, team manager for Element Skateboards then, who I'd first met back in the mid-90s when he was a mere shoulder-bruiser from Hawaii. Anyway, Ryan said he'd just quit Element to join a startup company specializing in socks. "Socks?!" I thought, "What a fool!" Well, needless to say that company was Stance, I am a goddamned idiot, and here we are fashionably 2000-late to the sock game. —Cliver