Wednesday, September 6, 2017

California Cheap Skates Summer 1992.








Twenty five year high school anniversary.

Skateboarding was getting lean and mean in 1992. Powell and Santa Cruz were still going fairly strong, but a lot of the other big dogs had fallen off. Upstarts such as Real, Black Label, Acme, Milk, Alien Workshop, and Small Room were gaining a lot of ground. Slicks were popular. I like how Santa Cruz and SMA had the same graphic on the bottom with different art on the top. The top graphics for the SMA decks are great. The Real costume series of slicks hit the market and Acme was making racing car inspired board art. Two of my favorite boards ever are in this catalog, the Neil Blender speakers deck and the Salman Agah camel stripes board. I also really like the extra minimal Andrew Morrison from the New Deal.

In terms of trucks, there is a decent variety, although a few of the brands shown were on the verge of extinction. Deadbolt and Gullwing were keeping plastic baseplates alive. Tracker, Indy, Thunder, and Venture were well represented. The new San Diego Trucking earned a big rectangle in the catalog, too.

The wheel choices have slimmed down in both size and number of companies from 1991. Santa Cruz still had the most choices. Acme, Deluxe, and Toxic were providing more options to put over your bearings. I dig how the Spitfire Buffered Tablets look. I was riding some Spitfires and Acme Formula One wheels around this time.

My class didn't have a reunion this year. I was a little surprised since our twenty year was a fun time. My friend from the next town over said his class didn't have a reunion either. They had tried to get one organized, but it never panned out. I don't think my school even bothered. I supposed we're finally living up to being a bunch of slackers.

Note: That's a Chet Thomas deck without the caption on page five. I'm keeping the interest in the Public going.

The Gershon Mosley cover photo was provided by Santa Cruz.

5 comments:

Henry said...

I had an SMA everslick board. One day I got mad and tried to break it. I couldn't do it. Then I propped it against a tree and tried to break it with running karate kicks. It would not break. That thing was indestructible.

Unknown said...

I really liked slicks, notably had jovantae patch board till it snapped. Thanks for posts, loved catalogs. Like poor man's free mag subscription. Just remember trying to order tho, everything was out of stock cause of how long they took to make ha

Rikku Markka said...

I had the Salman fairy slick, the Black Label crutch, and those Vision 49er wheels. Plastic nameplates sucked. I had Tracker Six tracks, and the kingpin was cast into the plastic, so when the kingpin broke you had to buys new trucks.

Unknown said...

Ha yeah, I had tho trackers too, my base cracked. Garbage

Unknown said...

I got my hands on a brand new Eric dressen everslick , in 91 I think . on my way skating home I bailed and it shot into the street n car ran it over same day . I rode the shit out of a second hand nautas everslick though!