Profile

This skateboard-centric design studio, service shop, and showroom injects youthful flair into a strip of Orchard Street rooted in street vendors and lingerie shops. Over 40 illustrated boards are displayed on spinning metal rods, from long boards to balance-bolstering wide styles, starting at $52. A staff of tattooed skate buffs will talk serious boarders and amateurs alike through their options, customizing each board with an array of wheels, bearings, and parts from a tall glass case. The pale wood floor is splattered with spilled paint, skate videos play on flat-screen TVs, and the walls are decked with pictures of boarders caught mid-air by photographer Bill Thomas. The downstairs basement level functions as an office and studio, where staff collaborate on new board designs with guest artists like Phil Frost or Lower East Side graffitist Elf. In the rear of the shop, a rack of T-shirts for women and men are printed with stylized versions of the Shut logo. Nearby, an air compressor and pneumatic tools stand ready for upgrades or repairs. — Lauren Murrow