Keith Hufnagel #5.

Real did a lot of ads in the mid to late 1990s that would be spread out over a couple of pages in Thrasher. This one the showed the spot first and then when you turned the page, you would get to see what trick Huf did.

Thrasher - December 1997 Volume 17 Number 12

Meshach Harrell.

This is a rad photo. I've never heard of Meshach before and didn't remember the ad at all. I found it when I was looking for Freedumb stuff.

Slap - September 1997 Volume 6 Number 9

Rob Carlyon.

Straight from the Hawaiian Islands, Rob rode for New Deal and turned pro for ATM. I'm not exactly sure what he is up to these days.

Rob's a hard guy to find coverage of. I've been looking to see if he had a New Deal ad and couldn't find any other than a group am one. I'm wondering if he had a truck or wheel ad ever.

Theo Hand was the photographer.

Slap - August 1997 Volume 6 Number 8

Javier Nunez.

I watched R.B. Umali's NY Revisited 1996-97 the other night to make sure Javier did do the perfect switch kickflip over the wall at the Brooklyn Banks as the ender. He did.

NY Revisited is a good video since it has a ton of different skaters on the streets of NYC. I'm sure most of the footage has been in other videos. There's some cool stuff with the Cardona brothers and Keith Hufnagel. Keenan Milton has a few tricks and there's one trick from Gino. Peter Bici is underrated. Andy Bautista isn't afraid of blasting some big street grabs, which seems oddly out of place for the vid, but at the same time provides a nice variety.

I always get requests for Menace. I liked the company, had a board or two and never really thought much about them after the name changed a couple of times. Menace always seemed like another World Industries subdivision to me. Here today, gone tomorrow. That apparently is not the case as I was surprised at all the fans who were super into the company when I started doing Vert Is Dead back in 2008. It's fascinating what parts of skateboarding history stick with you compared to what registers with other people.

Thrasher - August 1997 Volume 17 Number 8

Gino Iannucci.

Gino turned pro for Black Label a long time ago now. He switch kickflipped the stairs at the now demolished Hubba Hideout and backside heelflipped the Gonz gap at EMB during those days. He moved onto 101 before settling in at Chocolate for the last fourteen years or so. He runs a skateshop in Long Island called Poets.

Dimitry Elyashkevich took the action photo and Michael Burnett took the lifestyle photos.

Big Brother - September 1997 Issue 28

Zoo York Assassination Squad.

Fully equipped with an army of lawyers.

I don't think Zoo York would try this ad again today. It totally taps into the mid 1990s hip hop influence that was central to the image of the company. I don't think anybody would publish it either. Even back in the day, Big Brother was probably the only mag that was cool with it.

Eli Morgan Gesner took photos.

Big Brother - June 1997 Issue 26

Freedumb Clothing.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Freedumb was Dan Drehobl's clothing company. It was distributed by Think, Dan's board sponsor at the time. In addition to Phil Shao and Tim Upson, Jim Greco and Ed Templeton were on the team. All the graphics were Dan's dumb little drawings. It was awesome and gave us this gem of advice from Dan:

"Whatever you do, don't get a piss cat tattoo."

Vert Is Dead will be back on Monday, February 21st. I need a break from the internet.

Slap - January 1997 Volume 6 Number 1

Jamie Thomas #3.

I think somebody had requested this or it came up in the comments a long time ago. I tried looking for it at the time, but couldn't find it and then forgot about the Chief skating barefoot.

Around this time in skateboarding was when Jamie started to blow up, based in part to Toy Machine's Welcome To Hell video and due to his work ethic. He developed Zero from a t-shirt company into a board company, assembled a team and put out the Thrill Of It All video later in 1997. The rumor was that Jamie wasn't too happy at Emerica and he left for Adio. He was one of the original three pros at the brand with Steve Berra and Jeremy Wray.

Chops has a great interview with Ronnie Creager at Already Been Done.

It's supposed to be almost 40˚ F next week and skateboarding somewhere outside seems like it might actually happen.

Transworld - February 1997 Volume 15 Number 2

Scott Bourne.

Black Arms.
White Heart.

Scott turned pro for Consolidated and later went on to start his own company called the Unbelievers. He had a shoe on Puma and was even in a TV commercial with other pro athletes sponsored by the company. These days he's living in Europe, writing and showing up in films made by Pontus Alv. He had a book of stories published by Carhartt. I found an interesting interview with him about his book Cheating on the Metronome. He typed out all the pages on a typewriter and then the pages were scanned for printing. That's a commitment to analog if there ever was one.

Oh yeah, there's a slight chance that Scott is very easy to recognize because both of his arms are tattooed in solid black. This took a few years and you could monitor the progress in the mags. Initially, he only had his right forearm all black. The common first response to seeing some of his early coverage was wondering if that was a cast on his arm. It wasn't. Oddly enough, this tattoo trend never caught on in skateboarding.

Theo Hand took the photos.

Thrasher - October 1997 Volume 17 Number 10

Jasin Phares.

Skull Chest.

At some point in time that "o" turned into an "i" and Phares went from riding for Deluxe to being a team manager there. The Real am tour video, Recipe For Disaster, is always a fun one to watch. Phares' voice mail message at the beginning about how the team has upgraded to a luxury hotel suite is funny. I'm sure it probably wasn't funny at the time to Mic-E and Jim.

Thrasher - December 1997 Volume 17 Number 2

Jeron Wilson.

J - Dubs.
Girl OG.
Jovantee board.

Thrasher - May 1997 Volume 17 Number 5

Chet Childress #2.

Chet back in the Creature days. I wish Venture still made trucks without any graphics printed on them.

It's going to be stuff from 1997 for a while. No more two page shoe scans. Well, one more for this week and I told somebody I'd put a Carl Shipman DC ad up if I found one from 1997.

Thrasher - February 1997 Volume 17 Number 2

Jeremy Wray #2.

Rooftop to rooftop.

Dukes was a shoe line by Plan B with Jeremy Wray as the main rider. Pat Chanita and Jerry Fowler also rode for the company. I did some YouTube research over the weekend and Chanita was a ripper.

Daniel H. Sturt was the photographer.

Transworld - November 1996 Volume 14 Number 11

Kareem Campbell #2.

The switch frontside flip over the picnic table is gigantic.

Duffs started out as Steve Rocco's shoe company. Most of the early team consisted of assorted Blind/Plan B/World Industries riders like Ronnie Creager, Kris Markovich, Rodney Mullen and Daewon Song. Willy Santos was on the team and Deanna Templeton was even in an ad. I would assume she got paid and/or free shoes. They had two models initially - the Strombollie and the Cobnobbler. I had a pair of each and both were solid shoes that lasted a long time.

Kareem was also on the team and this was his debut pro model. I think he was the first person on Duffs to have a signature shoe, although Markovich's might have come out slightly before. I never had a pair of KCK's and I remember thinking at the time that I wasn't super into the design. Looking at it now, it seems like a good looking piece of footwear.

Transworld - November 1996 Volume 14 Number 11

Sal Barbier.

Swamp rat. Super good.

Work's hectic today.

Much thanks to the crew at Crailtap.

Slap - September 1996 Volume 5 Number 9

Eric Koston #2.

Holy crap. Rick Howard was on eS?

Obviously it wasn't for long as he never had an ad and was on DC by the middle of the year, if not sooner. Howard's name also appeared in the previous month's ad with Bob Burnquist. That was it. I checked the eS website with the history of the brand and could find nothing. Does anybody from Girl actually look at this site? Can we get the story behind this?

As for the Koston One, it certainly was a classic. I think it was the perfect mix of a more technical design while still remaining a very functional and comfortable shoe. I had a pair and thought they were great. I never bothered with any of the reissues in case they weren't the same, which they probably weren't.

Slap - January 1997 Volume 6 Number 1