Alva Wheels.

Wheels for Daggers.

This ad is a good sampling of the Alva team with Dave Duncan, Chris Cook, Eddie Reategui and Jim Murphy.

Notice the wheel sizes range from 60 mm for street and 63.5 mm for ramps and pools. The wheels also come in a variety of hardnesses - 92A, 95A and 97A. I think whether wheels were hard or soft used to be a much bigger factor back in the day. These days everything is pretty much the same. I'd like to think that the technology behind wheels has improved. This morning I watched Neil Blender's part in Footage, Jeff Phillips' part in the Tracker Brotherhood video and Jason Jessee's part at the Sadlands from Gullwing's Full Power Trip. Neil's part got me thinking about how wheels probably had to be bigger and softer back in the late 1980s and very early 1990s because we were skating some uneven plywood monstrosities of mini ramps. You needed those extra millimeters to get over the cracks and seams.

I also watched Neen Williams' part from the Shake Junt video. That kid brings a large degree of style to the heelflip.

The photos are by Joe "Xeno" Lloyd.

Poweredge - July 1989 Volume 2 Number 6