Skateboarding was going through a period of growth in the late 1990s. It had weathered the lows of the early 1990s and there was expansion in the industry. Part of the upswing in popularity was caused by ESPN's X-Games, which gave skateboarding increased visibility and a degree of credibility to non-skaters. You were even getting people who were fans of skateboarding that didn't actually skate themselves. Street skating was bigger than ever. More cities were building skateparks, which theoretically provided hassle free new terrain to ride. Sometimes this was successful and other times resulted in what Thrasher called certified pieces of suck.
Due to this economic expansion, there were lots of new companies popping up. For probably the first time since the 1980s, there were watch sponsors in skateboarding. Some of these were outside companies like Casio, who sponsored a few pros, including Dan Drehobl, Ed Templeton and Willy Santos. At the same time, Nixon and Diakka were more skater owned and operated. Diakka had a team of Chad Muska, Rune Glifberg and Clyde Singleton. I don't think they were around all that long, but they gave us this ad which only the Muska could pull off.
Thrasher - October 1998 Volume 18 Number 10
No comments:
Post a Comment