Ryan Lay #3.

The heavenly option.

The photograph is by Matt Price.

Thrasher - April 2014 Volume 35 Number 4

Brandon Perelson & Daniel Vargas.

A change of speed, a change of style. A change of scene, with no regrets.

I simply liked both of these pics. Brandon is the brother of noted vert ripper Alex Perelson. Daniel is currently pro for Welcome and has an effortless mastery of skating parks and bowls.

Brandon's photo is by Tim Hardy. Daniel's photo is credited to MRZ.

Brandon: Thrasher - September 2014 Volume 35 Number 9

Vargas: Thrasher - May 2014 Volume 35 Number 5

Chris "Mango" Milic & Jesse Alba.

Frogmen.

Chris and Jesse were a couple of the riders who helped make Welcome a household name in the mid 2010s. They hopped off to start Frog Skateboards in 2017 or 18. Jesse is Steve Alba's son, in case you were wondering.

Jesse's photo is by Pep Kim.

Chris: Thrasher - March 2014 Volume 35 Number 3

Jesse: Thrasher - October 2015 Volume 36 Number 10

Erick Winkowski #2.

Unwelcome.

Before becoming the Santa Cruz pro who rides the old school decks, Erick was on Welcome. He decided that he didn't fit in there and split after a little bit. I found the stair blast ollie while browsing and figured it had to be included since Erick was still relatively unknown to the skate world in 2014.

Remember that photo of Drake Jones from Ed Templeton's Programming Injection column I posted a few weeks ago? The same photo gets a full page treatment in the newest issue of Thrasher as part of a retrospective article by Atiba Jefferson. The new issue as a whole is flat out amazing and inspiring.

The Photo Graffiti picture is by Min Maeweather.

Welcome: Thrasher - February 2014 Volume 35 Number 2

Photograffiti: Thrasher - September 2014 Volume 35 Number 9

Welcome #2.

Welcome to Welcome.

This is a look back at the early days of Welcome. I was getting a tad bored of posting stuff from the comfort zone of the 1990s, but couldn't figure out what to do next. After recently watching a newer video that wasn't so hot, I decided I had to watch something that made me happy about skateboarding. I browsed the DVD library and picked Welcome's Fetish video from 2017 to feel better. It then occurred to me that I should do a week of the makers of the magical shaped decks. I initially planned on the riders in Fetish until I started digging back through the stacks and came up with this batch of scans. These would be their earliest ads in Thrasher. I found a lot of stuff to use so there will be another week of Welcome in a few weeks.

The company was started by Jason Celaya in 2010. They initially made both popsicle and shaped decks. However, Jason noticed that only the shaped decks were selling and decided to abandon the regular boards. The rest is history.

I went Chrome Ball Incident style with multiple scans for the first post so I didn't have to come up with stuff to say about guys I've never really heard of. Sorry, dudes.

Logan Devlin took the photos of Kody Carnahan and Nolan Johnson. Logan's photo is by Alex Cooper.

Boards: Thrasher - January 2014 Volume 35 Number 1

Kody Carnahan: Thrasher - July 2014 Volume 35 Number 7

Logan Devlin: Thrasher - October 2014 Volume 35 Number 10

Nolan Johnson: Thrasher - November 2014 Volume 35 Number 11

Jaya Bonderov #7.

A green tinted room.

The late Jaya Bonderov floats a lofty ollie at an indoor skatepark. He would have been riding for Adrenalin at the time.

Summoning something on Monday.

The photo is by Tobin Yelland.

Transworld - July 1995 Volume 13 Number 7

Tony Cox #3.

"I like to do a lot of other stuff besides skate. I take photographs a lot. I like to take pictures of what is going on around me; documentation of people and friends and time and what is happening in the streets. Music is really important, too. It is kind of like therapy for me, just like skating. I play keyboards and other percussion instruments, like drums."

The skate photo is by Paul "Skin" Phillips and the street photos are by Tony.

For the quote: Slap - July 1999 Volume 8 Number 7

Transworld - August 1995 Volume 13 Number 8

Alien Workshop Team 1995 #2.

Limitless by design.

This ad is more or less a teaser for the Workshop's Timecode video from 1997. Even though the video was roughly two years away, some of the images here are used in it. There's the classic Alien vibe with a mix of pictogram graphics, skateboarding, and Midwestern weirdness.

Happy 20th anniversary to Photosynthesis. I was toying with the idea of a feature on it, but I figure enough has been said already. It's hard to believe two decades of summers have passed since A.V.E., Dill, Pops, Wenning, Kalis, and the Habitat squad exploded everybody's minds.

Transworld - October 1995 Volume 13 Number 10

Chet Childress & Remy Stratton.

Two for Tuesday.

A couple of Vert Is Dead favorites double it up on one of those big ramps back when they both rode for Acme.

How do people skate in shorts? I completely understand if you live someplace where it is 90˚ F (32˚ C) with 90% humidity and pretty much have to, but beyond that, shorts are too dang weird.

Transworld - June 1995 Volume 13 Number 6

Elissa Steamer #7.

Toy Machine, we're cool as hell.

I think this trick was in Jump Off A Building.

Big Brother - June 1997 Issue 26

The Price of Style.

As I was picking out stuff to scan, I saw an ad for Street Machine with the cost of all the different shoes. I thought it was interesting to see exactly what we were paying for footwear back in 1995. I soon decided to add in two other mail order companies for the sake of comparison. You've got most of the staples of the time - Airwalk, DC, Duffs, éS, Etnies, Evol, Simple, and Vans, along with non-skate brands like Adidas and Puma. I could go for another pair of Duffs. I had both the Strombolies and the Cobbnoblers. I think the Strombolies were the slightly better model. I miss how much simpler things were back then.

It rained yesterday. The last day I didn't skateboard was May 15th. It rained that day, too.

Sartorius: Transworld - July 1995 Volume 13 Number 7

Intensity: Transworld - August 1995 Volume 13 Number 8

Street Machine: Transworld - February 1996 Volume 14 Number 2

Jason Bickford.

The unknown.

Jason rode for A1 Meats, Street Rod Clothing, and probably Tracker Trucks since Tracker owned both of those brands. I don't know much else about him. I kept flipping by this ad and finally decided to scan it.

Anybody know what contest this is referring to? I did a little browsing of Transworld last night and I didn't find Jason mentioned in the 1995 contest circuit. My educated guess is that it was one of the European events, although there's a slim chance it might have been Slam City Jam in Vancouver.

I have discovered that I don't have the September 1995 and January 1996 issues of Transworld. They got lost in the mail way back when and I never noticed back when it would have been possible to get replacements from TWS. Whoops.

The photo is by Marc Hostetter.

Transworld - December 1995 Volume 13 Number 12

Jimmy Chadwick #2.

Recreational logging.

I like the design on this. It's got a nice blend of more contemporary elements with the vintage photos.

The photo is by Dave Swift.

Transworld - November 1995 Volume 13 Number 11

Willy Santos #4.

Willy levels out a proper frontside noseslide. I know the trick has a bit of a bad reputation, but a well done one that actually slides does look good.

The photo is by Atiba Jefferson.

Thrasher - November 1996 Volume 16 Number 11

Jon West #4.

The debut of everybody's favorite Canadian horror movie enthusiast.

Transworld - October 1995 Volume 13 Number 10

Programming Injection.

Skate at night when the sedated robots are watching the television.

Programming Injection was a column by Ed Templeton that ran in Transworld in the 1990s. You youngins might know the name as the title of last year's Toy Machine video. The editors gave Ed two pages each month to do whatever artiness he wanted. I cannot believe I have never scanned one of these before.

What caught my eye about this episode was the photo of Drake Jones. It's kind of an odd pairing with Tony Tieu and Geoff Rowley, but that's sort of how Ed's brain puts things together.

The skate photos are by Atiba Jefferson. Everything else is by Ed.

Transworld - December 1996 Volume 14 Number 12

Jason King.

Unknown entity.

I like the design of this ad. I know nothing about Jason beyond that he was pro for Planet Earth. His part in Silver featured a ton of switch street skating and some mini ramp hi-jinx.

Chris Ortiz was the photographer.

Transworld - September 1996 Volume 14 Number 9

Chet Thomas #6.

Spin cycle.

Chet was the undisputed mini ramp champ of the 1990s. He was riding for Channel One at the time of this trick. Check the Sal Barbier's on his feet, too.

The photo is by Chris Ortiz and the video is by Steve Black.

Transworld - August 1995 Volume 13 Number 8

Oli Buergin #2.

Oli is from Basel, Switzerland and started skateboarding in the 1980s. He has ridden for or worked with Este and Sole Technology over the years. Oli is involved with building skateparks and doing video production. He had one of my favorite video parts ever in the Strongest of the Strange.

Thrasher - November 1996 Volume 16 Number 11

Mike Daher #4.

Florida Gator by way of New Jersey.

Mike snaps a big ollie over a cone on the streets of San Francisco during the Stereo days. A different photo of an ollie at the same spot ran in Mike's 1994 Transworld Pro Spotlight.

The picture is by Gabe Morford.

CCS - Fall 1995 Catalog

Chris Genty #2.

Two bucks for a CD.

Chris was the mastermind behind Global. This was the first ad that I could find. He later started Kingdom after winning some cash from the X-Games. I wanted to include Chris when I did the two weeks of vert skaters to start June, but I didn't stumble upon an ad of him at the time. I figured to even that out by doing a week of Global after finding yesterday's George Nagai advertisement.

Random Odds & Ends

Thrasher Subscription Check: I got the August issue the other day with Nyjah Houston on the cover. I have the July issue with Tristan Funkhouser on the front. That was the first one I received since March. May and June are understandably still missing. I know May's edition was for Milton Martinez's SOTY victory. Did they have Jeff Grosso on the cover for June? I thought I saw that at the Skate Park of Tampa's website recently, but couldn't find it again.

Speaking of the new Thrasher, I dug Evan Smith's interview. Especially the part about how he doesn't exactly have a board sponsor right now and is simply supporting the companies he likes by riding their decks.

Polar Vortex: There was this gem from a recent Pontus Alv interview at the Slam City blog:

"Skateboarding needs to not put out skateboarding because people are tiring of watching it. Instagram every day is flooded with skate clips, daily clips on Thrasher. It’s cool that there is stuff and the possibility but I don’t think it’s healthy. I kind of stopped following and watching things because I don’t find it that interesting any more."

With everything that is going on in the world these days, it's overwhelming to keep up with it all. There's too much of everything (and that's not just for skateboarding) that it becomes impossible to deal with. I identified with this quote because I've hardly felt like watching any skate videos or clips the last couple of months. It's like, "Yippee, another new one. Yawn." Less is often better.

I went skateboarding at least a little every day in June. It's mostly been solo driveway sessions during the week. I've been hitting up the park early in the mornings on the weekends when nobody is around. I think I'm going to be building some new ledge in the near future.

Sound Zone: The new Bill Nace record on Drag City is a great slab of experimental guitar work. C. Lavender created a fine collection of spooky drones with her Myth of Equilibrium album. The Telematic Concert reissue by Pauline Oliveros and Alan Courtis is a fascinating long distance live performance. I've also been listening to a bunch of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine.

Vert Is Dead will be back on Monday, July 6th with more stuff from the middle of the 1990s. Have a safe and happy weekend.

Chris Ortiz took the photo.

Transworld - August 1995 Volume 13 Number 8

George Nagai.

The carwash at night.

George is from Goleta, California. He had been sponsored by Acme before riding for Global. His other sponsors included Venture and Vans.

Happy Canada Day to everybody up north!

The photo is by Chris Ortiz.

Transworld - October 1995 Volume 13 Number 10