8/20/1965 - 1/20/2004
Jeff was one of those behind the scene guys who helped shape skateboarding for the better. He was a good example of the all around creativity that grumpy old dudes say is lacking in skateboarding these days. He was in at the start of Deluxe when it was just Thunder and Spitfire before Real was launched. Jeff was an artist and musician. His band, Wonderful Broken Thing, was featured throughout the soundtrack of H-Street's Hocus Pokus video. He did quite a few graphics, too.
Thrasher - March 1990 Volume 10 Number 3
8 comments:
He was in Hokus Pokus doing snap powerslides. And then he tries to coax a rat out of a hole with a stick. iirc he's wearing a red hoodie.
"What are you doing, Jeff?"
"Getting something to eat."
That's what I thought. I wanted to watch Hokus Pokus again before I put this on here, but I didn't have time over the weekend. Should have trusted my memory. I watched Hokus Pokus every single day over the summer of 1990.
I first started working "In the REAL world" right around the time the whole street explosion came, and admittedly, while chasing the all-mighty dollar, my skating time and interest took a HUGE dive around this time---I am REALLY interested ho Spitfire started, and became so (no pun intended, yeesh) hot, so quickly. Back when I was still on board hourly before those days, Bones were the wheels of choice---any chance you can either respond with a miniature history of Spitfire, or even better, a few scans of the early days with how it launched? Heck, salba, one of my favorites as a high school kid is STILL a Spitfire signature wheel pro---Bless that...
A sort of Spitfire history is a definite possibility. I started skating in 1987 and the oldest Thrashers I have are from late 1988. They have what would have to be some of the very first Spitfire ads. This is when they were just half pagers and BW - like the one with guy with the ray gun. I've been meaning to put that one up actually.
Bones wheels were great. The green ones in 95A were perfect for street skating.
It will probably be a couple weeks before it happens, but it will happen. I've gotten kind of bored with the early 1990s stuff and I'm going to do some things from around 2000 or so for the next week or two, like a recent Matt Reason interview for Thursday.
A Spitfire history would be pretty cool. From what I read, these days their wheels aren't nearly as good as they were several years ago. I can't really comment on them personally as I haven't ridden any of the newer ones.
In the first few years I was skating, the most popular wheels were Rat Bones, G-Bones and T-Bones as well as OJ II's, Hosoi Rockets and Bullet's.
Spitfire (as well as A-1) really did come out of nowhere. This one kid in town got a set (with the classic black and white hypnotic pattern) when he was on vacation or something and everyone wanted a set after that. I remember a Henry Sanchez Spit ad... green background, ollieing over a gap wearing a toque. Don't think it's anywhere in blogland. I think it was even before he was on Real.
Here's a funny story about old big wheels. When the small wheel/big pant era started, one of the distributors up here had huge stock of big powell wheels and pink griptape. In order to clear inventory, he had the wheels lathed down from 66's to 45's and painted the pink grip black and sold to shops for what must have been deep discount. One shop in town bought this crap and I'd see kids with pink wheels and black grip with pink wearing through. Brutal!
I've flipped by that Henry Sanchez ad a million times. There's a chance it was from before Real was a company. There's also a green one with John Lucero.
I've ridden nothing but Spitfires for the past ten years or so and they seem fine. Of course, I always have the opposite luck that everyone else has with products. I had a set of Lucky bearing when they first came out. No problems. Everybody else who bought them was hating life. They kept falling apart or something.
That big wheels/pink griptape story is hilarious.
Love that Spitfire history...I remember the first kid in my town had some and they didn't have graphics, just "SPITFIRE WHEELS" stamped into 'em.
straight out of Dog Town
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