Chicken Fingerboards, ten drops in: three molds and a $35 deck

Charlie grew up skating in Culver City, on LA's west side. On the podcast he traces the decks back about eleven years: after buying a round of Tech Decks at Target for his friends, years after he had last played with one, he found out wooden boards existed and "right off the bat" decided to make his own, starting with a resin mold bought on eBay and a Tech Deck traced as the template. At 26 he paid about $250 for a custom NFB mold and pressed boards in his backyard.

The name came from a friend: "You should call them chicken. Like chicken fingers." It started as Chicken Finger boards and later lost the Finger. "There was never any names in consideration other than chicken," he says. The finger in the logo is his friend Townsend Madix's; Madix and another old friend, Skyler Molina, draw most of the brand's art.

For most of that decade the boards went to friends. Then: "I've invested so much money in this just to literally make boards for myself, my friends. Like, maybe I should just sell them and see." He dates his first sales to "two years ago or something or honestly maybe even less"; the host puts the brand's first Instagram post at 24 March 2024.

The website followed. The earliest copy in the Internet Archive, crawled on 16 February 2025, reads CHKN FINGERBOARDS and "STOCK COMING SOON…". On 7 August 2025 the brand announced its first website drop on a new Reddit account ("Been makin', sellin', and givin' away, decks for years now"), and the 24 August capture shows the shop open with Rainbow Chicken, Tickle Monster and Chicken Fire decks. The next release was billed as Drop #2. Tickle Monster, Charlie admits, is "the most hated one": "maybe one sold and then I just straight up gave all the rest out for free."

The 2026 milestones are in Chicken's r/Fingerboards posts: a local skate shop picking the brand up in January; Dungeon Crawl's Goblin Grip on every deck from April; ads in Plies, the fingerboard print magazine, in April and July; and in July, Slushcult stocking Chicken. All of it came out of Los Angeles, where "my apartment was just a fingerboard workshop." He has since moved to the Seattle area and is still adjusting: "I just want this to be a SoCal brand so bad."

For most of Chicken's life a deck cost $30, and the reasoning was short: "$30 sounds right to me. And that was literally the extent of it." Charlie tells FB.Christopher he moved to $35 after Slushcult started stocking the boards, and that when he did the math on time, molds and materials, "I think I'm making less than minimum wage." The Sicky Chicky's product copy still offers it "for the low low price of thirty 1 dollar bills".

A week after the interview, price came up on the show again, in the Bigspin deck maker episode with Stefan of Devise Fingerboards (making decks since 2012), Manny of Dungeon Crawl and Preston of Prest Decks. Opening the segment on price, the host says the base price for a board seems to be $40, and names Chicken among the companies that charge less, at "like 30, what, 34 bucks for a board." The panel then argues over what a new maker's deck has to deliver before it earns $30 or $40.

A maker who spent most of a decade giving decks away went from a first website drop in August 2025 to a tenth in September 2026, held his price under the figure a panel of deck makers calls the base, and got onto the rack he named as one of his biggest goals, with other small makers alongside: Dungeon Crawl's grip on every deck, Clairvoyant's wheel under his logo. Asked what he wants riders to take from a Chicken, Charlie says: "Like I want you to wear that graphic away until there's nothing left."

Next is a cruiser. On the podcast he rides an unreleased "pool cruiser shape", 34 mm over the axles and 36 mm in the center, and asked in r/Fingerboards on 13 September when it would drop, Chicken answered: "Soon! Moving apartments right now but steadily pressing decks so they'll be ready to cut out." There is no date yet. When there is, it goes up on Chicken's shop first.