Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Spitfire #3.



Keith Cochrane was the first rider to appear in a Spitfire ad. That's a bit of skateboard trivia you can use. I believe that Keith either rode for or worked at Dogtown for this photo. I don't think he was ever pro. He went on to start Think Skateboards with Greg Carroll and Don Fisher. Keith was also involved with Venture.

Top: Thrasher - July 1989 Volume 9 Number 7

Bottom: Thrasher - August 1989 Volume 9 Number 8

7 comments:

Old School Sammy said...

Does anyone know who the names behind Spitfire originally were? Was it done out of Deluxe?

justin said...

Yes, Spitfire was done out of Deluxe. It was their second skateboard company after Thunder.

I don't know a hell of a lot about the names behind the scenes. Fausto probably had a lot to do with the start up. This stuff was kind of a gray area. I'm sure the names were in Thrasher as to who did what, but it was written in a cryptic way by C.R. Stecyk III. The internet is spotty on details.

Brian Ware did Beware Records. I know nothing about him.

Jeff Klindt was involved with getting Spitfire going from the beginning.

I think they probably wanted to expand to do a board company at some point. A wheel company was a good idea to build on the name before tackling decks. And if it goes under, then there isn't a huge investment lost.

I'm curious if Keith and Don still have anything to do with Think. What happened to Greg Carroll? Didn't he start a distribution company for Force Trucks? Is that even still around?

justin said...

It looks like Force is still going strong, on the internet at least. They've got their bases covered - blog, Twitter, MySpace and website. I've never seen anybody riding their trucks, but that doesn't mean much.

Keith said...

Back in the day, it seemed like a lot of Spitfire logos and stuff were based on car racing logos.

They had the STP in the oval (Spitfire Team Pride) and the #1 with the USA red/white and blue (logo in Henry's old Spitfire ad with the green background).

justin said...

The number one Evel Knievel style logo had a good run after the first year and a half of Spitfire. I don't think I've ever seen a Spitfire Team Pride sticker. I remember the Gullwing GWP sticker.

I'm so tempted to keep Spitfire week for another week since there are a bunch of good ads from 1990, too.

Keith said...

yeah. There was STP and GWP=Gullwing Pride or Gay white pride 8^)

Unknown said...

Oooh, I've seen someone with Force trucks at bixby park in long beach. At first I thought he was riding ventures for some reason. I don't know where he got them.