--- title: Steve Van Doren and Tony Alva on the Early Days of Vans description: From "Damn Daniel" to pro skating, the brand celebrates its 50th Anniversary canonical: https://time.com/4261248/vans-50th-anniversary-tony-alva-steve-van-doren/ author: Kenneth Bachor article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-16T22:41:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:41:50.947Z article:section: History og:title: Steve Van Doren and Tony Alva on the Early Days of Vans og:description: From "Damn Daniel" to pro skating, the brand celebrates its 50th Anniversary og:url: https://time.com/4261248/vans-50th-anniversary-tony-alva-steve-van-doren/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22f088a5b8702190/69888b59ab6d77cb4e6a8e1a/vans-lead.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1876 og:image:height: 1055 og:image:alt: vans-lead og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Steve Van Doren and Tony Alva on the Early Days of Vans twitter:description: From "Damn Daniel" to pro skating, the brand celebrates its 50th Anniversary twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22f088a5b8702190/69888b59ab6d77cb4e6a8e1a/vans-lead.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Go Inside the Early Days of Vans with Steve Van Doren and Tony Alva > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Story of Vans [Watch (HLS stream): The Story of Vans](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EeAF2p0L.m3u8) (1:40)  _Published 2016-03-16. The Story of Vans_ by [Kenneth Bachor](https://time.com/author/kenneth-bachor/) ## Kenneth Bachor Mar 16, 2016 10:41 PM UTC  Courtesy Vans by [Kenneth Bachor](https://time.com/author/kenneth-bachor/) ## Kenneth Bachor Mar 16, 2016 10:41 PM UTC A lot can change in 50 years. Since Vans was founded 50 years ago on March 16, 1966, they’ve gone from skateboarding staple to [J. Crew collaborators](https://www.jcrew.com/mens%5Fcategory/shoes/sneakers/PRDOVR~70806/70806.jsp). One thing that hasn’t changed much: the shoes. The Van Doren Rubber Company, later shortened to just Vans, started about a mile from Disneyland, in Anaheim, Calif., under brothers Paul and James Van Doren and partners Serge D’Elia and Gordon Lee. The first day the store opened, around 16 people came in to purchase shoes. “We did anything we possibly could to try and get a customer,” says Steve Van Doren, son of co-founder Paul Van Doren, who began working for the company at age 10 and retains a Vice President role with Vans, even though the company was acquired by VF Corporation in 2004\. “So if someone wore a size 9 on one foot and an 8 on the other, we’d sell them a 9 right and 8 left and wouldn’t charge them extra.” In the beginning, the [Vans Authentic](http://www.vans.com/shop/shoes-classics-authentic) shoe, which still sells today, retailed as $4.49 for men, and $2.29 for women. By the early-1970s, Vans had become popular with Santa Monica and Venice-area skaters, like the [Z-Boys](http://www.z-boys.com/)‘ Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta, due to their durability and thick rubber sole. As Alva explains, skateboarders at the time didn’t use grip tape on their boards, and they noticed that the rubber-soled Vans stuck well to the wood decks. “It’s just a practical product that really works for what we like to do,” Alva says. “They are by far the most functional and best shoes for skateboarding.” The company responded to their popularity in the skateboard market by introducing a dedicated skate shoe in the mid-1970s—[the Era](http://www.vans.com/shop/shoes-classics-era), first known as “Style #95″—and letting boarders like Alva request custom shoes made out of their own custom fabric choices. Skaters were also the source of the iconic checkerboard pattern, which Van Doren introduced after seeing kids drawing on their shoes. In addition to the rubber sole, the Era offered skaters padding and greater protection around the ankles. In 1982, with the release of _Fast Times at Ridgemont High_, the popularity of Vans exploded in response to the [checkerboard slip-ons](http://www.vans.com/shop/checkerboard-slip-on) worn by Sean Penn’s character, Jeff Spicoli. In the years that followed, the company continued to move beyond the skateboard market and cement its place in pop culture: Since the early 1980s, Vans has hosted the [Triple Crown of Surfing](http://www.vanstriplecrownofsurfing.com/) in Hawaii, and since 1995 have sponsored the [Vans Warped Tour](http://vanswarpedtour.com/) music festival.  Michael Rozman—Warner Bros. The latest step in the Vans story is one that nobody could have predicted back in 1966. In February of 2016, the “[Damn, Daniel](http://time.com/4232465/damn-daniel-viral-twitter-video-white-vans/)” viral video, featuring high school student Daniel Lara wearing a pair of white Vans slip-ons, brought the shoe a fresh round of attention—and even got Lara and his friend Josh Holz an appearance on _Ellen_. His [gift](http://www.today.com/health/damn-daniel-teens-donate-vans-shoes-young-patients-t79536) from the company in honor of his new? A [lifetime supply](http://time.com/4258291/30-most-influential-people-on-the-internet-2016/) of Vans, naturally.  House of Vans was the first store away from the Anaheim, Calif. factory in Costa Mesa, Calif., in the early 1970s. Courtesy Vans  Paul Van Doren, co-founder of Vans and father of Steve Van Doren. Courtesy Vans  Professional skater Tony Alva skates in Toronto, Canada on Sept. 17, 1977. Fred Ross—Getty Images  The Old Skool was the first skate shoe to incorporate leather and the famous Vans Sidestripe in the 1970s. Courtesy Vans  Steve Van Doren in the 1980s. Courtesy Vans  Sean Penn, left, wears his Vans checkerboard slip-ons in a scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982. Universal Pictures  Professional skater Steve Caballero skates wearing a pair of Vans checkerboard high tops in 1984. Courtesy Vans ## Transcript So there's this guy, yeah this guy. And this guy decides to make a better deck shoe, this better deck shoe, with a rubber sole that looks like waffles and stuck like syrup. And a custom upper made of whatever fabric you were feeling, and surfers dug that. So pretty soon these shoes started. Popping up all along the coastline including a little surf shop in Santa Monica where some hood rat kids had started surfing asphalt, carving banks, hijacking pools and reinventing skateboarding in the process. So by the time they showed up to Delmar in matching blue 44s these shoes were as essential as the boards themselves. Then the guys were like, hey, can you make them like this? so we did, which lead to this shoe, which lead to this shoe, which lead to a stripe down the side, and kids sketching up the uppers. then this guy took over and got the shoes traveling off the wall and into the ruckus, sticking to the floor and bouncing around pits before ending up in Blown up in a movie the lawyers say we can't mention. Whatever. You know the one. From there, we took it international, while uniting kids from Sao Paolo to Shanghai under a checkerboard flag and bringing the underground to the main stage. Stage one show at a time. Creating the House of Vans to give a nation of millions a place to come up just like those that came before them. So while groupies line up to chase the next fad, we'll keep rocking our Vans just like we have for the last 50 years, same as it ever was, only sometimes a little different. This is our story. And we're sticking To it because we're The Van Doren Rubber Company but you can call us Vans. 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