SANTA MONICA AIRLINES Skateboard Natas Kaupas Kitten 9.89" x 29,82"

Natas Kaupas (born March 23, 1969) is a former professional skateboarder from the United States. He grew up in the Dogtown neighborhood of South Santa Monica, California, and is of Lithuanian descent. He is widely regarded as one of the first true professional street performers.

Kaupas began skating when he was a child. Kaupas won a local Santa Monica surfing contest in 1983 and received a Santa Monica Airlines (SMA) skateboard as a prize. SMA operated out of the back of Skip Engblom's surfshop. Kaupas approached Engblom about joining his skate team, which did not yet exist. Engblom, on the other hand, was impressed with Kaupas' skating ability and offered to sponsor him.

According to Kaupas, he was clueless and uninterested in the mainstream skateboard subculture. He honed his street skateboarding skills by making use of his surroundings, rather than riding ramps or parks. Kaupas had discovered riding walls by the mid-1980s, where he would throw his skateboard up against a wall and ride off of it. He then honed the technique by riding up the sides of walls without using his hands. Thrasher Magazine photographer and skating commentator Craig Stecyk took a photo of Kaupas riding off a wall in 1984, which appeared on the cover of the September 1984 issue of Thrasher Magazine. Kaupas began to receive more magazine coverage and recognition from professional skaters after this cover photo.

In 1984, SMA also released Kaupas's first pro-model skateboard, which featured an image of a panther drawn by Santa Monica artist Kevin Ancell. At this point, Kaupas was regularly skating with such notables as Mark Gonzales, Julien Stranger and Jim Thiebaud and pioneering what would be known as 'street skating'. Many new skateboarding tricks and ideas were developed by Kaupas and Gonzales, the first of which was transferring Rodney Mullen's kickflip from freestyle skating to street skating.