10 best skateboard stickers for defiling your new 16-inch MacBook Pro

Stickers are great, and skateboard stickers are the best of all. Which is why, when it comes to decorating/ruining/improving your new 16-inch MacBook Pro, you should be covering it with badass skate designs.

Even if you’re not a sticker kind of person, there’s an argument to be made that the MacBook needs at least one sticker, just to fix the stupid upside-down Apple logo on its lid. So, without further rambling, here are the 10 best skateboards stickers to stick on any MacBook.

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Why skate stickers?

Any sticker can be cool, but almost all skateboard stickers are cool. They’re colorful (or not), they’re often funny (or at least witty), and you have years and years of great designs to choose from.

But even among skateboard stickers, there’s a hierarchy. The best of all designs, in my opinion, come from the 1980s and 1990s, with some classic designs coming from the 1970s. That’s when the iconic Santa Cruz screaming hand was born, and Powell Peralta’s Bones Brigade was riding, along with an absurd number of amazing deck and sticker designs.

This list takes stickers from all these eras and skate companies, and adds in some relatively recent designs from Toy Machine and Real Skateboards. But whatevs. Let’s see the damn stickers already.

Santa Cruz Screaming Hand

This might be the classic skate sticker design from Santa Cruz Skateboards. If you pick only one sticker, pick this one. Oh, and you probably do need at least one sticker. After years and years using Apple’s iBooks and PowerBooks and MacBooks, I still place the computer down so that the Apple logo is right-side up as I look at it. And, of course, this means that the hinge is at the front edge.

So, my first step upon getting a new MacBook is to cover up the logo with a sticker, stuck the other way around. This is easier on new machines, because the Apple logo no longer glows through the sticker.

Bones Brigade Ripper

You could say that the Bones Brigade Ripper is more iconic than the Screaming Hand. If you did, I wouldn’t argue.

Toy Machine Monster

It’s hard to miss this one, and it looks killer either on its own in the middle of the big space gray MacBook lid, or in the middle of a crowd of stickers. I have this one on the back of my iPad.

Toy Machine Knuckle Tattoos

This one’s just funny. Good for filling in a long, thin space.

Skateboarding is not a Crime

Another classic, seen on stickers and T-shirts or scrawled onto mini-ramps with a marker. Even XKCD has featured it.

Real Skateboards Blow Me

Visual puns. Who doesn’t love them?

Real Skateboards Pest Control

How do you catch a cop?

Bones Brigade Tony Hawk Skull

Another classic, from a company that seemed to design nothing but classics. Powell Peralta’s Tony Hawk Skull is just plain badass.

Thrasher logo

Where would skating be without Thrasher magazine?

Animal Chin

If you know what this sticker is, then you probably already have a pile of skate stickers. Maybe even some skate sticker tattoos.

Where to buy skate stickers

In the United States, Amazon seems to be a good bet. In Europe, you can buy from SkateboardStickers.com. It’s based in the United Kingdom, but offers free worldwide shipping if you spend enough. And for everyone, everywhere, there’s the amazing sticker book from Sticker Bomb. It’s called 150 Classic Skateboard Stickers, and is full of high-quality, peelable stickers from Girl, Santa Cruz, Real, Alien Workshop and Toy Machine. It’s totally rad.

Buy from: Amazon

A word on MacBook stickers placement

There are no rules on MacBook sticker placement (or for iPads, either). Or rather, there’s one rule: Don’t make them too neat. Lining up stickers is the equivalent of ripping the sleeves off your denim jacket, only to find your mom has sewn hems on them to tidy up the ragged edges.

My own strategy, as you can see from the photo at the top of this post, is to make it look as awkward as possible. With just three stickers, I have managed to make the layout look both off-balance, and slightly annoying. And that’s before I use the thing, whereupon everyone looking will see the designs upside down, and get doubly annoyed by them.

The only trouble is, I have a spare Screaming Hand sticker that would fit perfectly in the bottom right corner. Must … resist …