Monday, September 10, 2012

Pat Duffy #2.



"It'll last about a couple weeks and then fall apart due to lack of good management. It doesn't really have a chance. The team's not that hot either." - Steve Rocco.

I had my twenty year high school reunion in August and that got me thinking about a few things in skateboarding that would be turning twenty this year. The first one that came to mind was Plan B's Questionable video. There are ten riders in the video and there are ten days in the next two weeks so everything matches up perfectly.

Plan B started at the end of 1991 with a mysterious ad announcing that five of these ten pros would be leaving their current sponsors to start a new company. The list of pros included Tony Hawk, Matt Hensley, Mike Carroll, Jason Lee, Ed Templeton, Ray Barbee, Frankie Hill, Danny Way, Sean Sheffey, and Jeremy Klein. We then had to wait a whole month to find out what this was all about. When the next issue of Transworld made its way to the mailbox, we found out the new company was called Plan B and the team was Matt Hensley, Mike Carroll, Danny Way, Sean Sheffey, and Rick Howard. All of these guys had been riding for H-Street or Life, except for Rick, who had been on Blockhead. The idea for the company was that Mike Ternasky wanted to do something different from H-Street. He partnered with Steve Rocco at World Industries and things took off from there. The team expanded to include Sal Barbier and Rodney Mullen. Pat Duffy, Colin McKay, and Ryan Fabry were the amateurs.

Questionable came out in the spring of 1992 and blew minds in terms of skateboard progression. Since the team consisted of some of the best pros and rising amateurs the calibre of tricks was very high. Overall the format of the video would become somewhat of an industry standard as to how videos would be put together. It still influences video productions to this day.

The first part in the video belonged to Pat Duffy. He was completely unknown prior to Questionable and totally unforgettable afterward. Pat was one of the first to raise the bar dramatically for handrail skating. He took on some monster rails and won, with his last trick being a backside lipslide in the rain.

Thrasher - July 1992 Volume 12 Number 7

1 comment:

C said...

20 years? I remember the issue of Transworld. Thanks for the Plan B evolution based through the time period. Great memories.