Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Louie Barletta #2.



"I love it! I only did what I saw guys like Neil Blender, Lance Mountain, and Jeff Grosso doing. Blame them! No, seriously, having fun comes in all forms from all different angles. To some, fun is big handrails. To others, it's a tall can and a red curb. The fun and satisfying thing about it is self-expression. The only thing that would bum me out is to see people doing it 'cause someone deemed it a hot new trend."

Rocking the Sketchers. Sorry, Lou.

An interesting note about this ad is that Sonic ran an ad five months later introducing Louie as a new team rider. He was doing a hurricane at Hubba Hideout.

For the quote: Thrasher - December 2014 Volume 34 Number 12

Thrasher - April 1997 Volume 17 Number 4

10 comments:

Justin said...

The introduction ad from five months later:
http://vertisdead.blogspot.com/2011/03/louie-barletta.html

SP said...

Neat tidbit about the ads and spot-on quote selection.

Anonymous said...

Dark times in skateboarding with companies like Skechers having a team and trying to cash in.

Speaking of lame companies, I saw a youtube vid about JNCO jeans being shown to today's teenagers, and they were dumbfounded as to why they were such humongous pants, and how could such a trend become so popular; to the point demand outpaced supply so briskly, the lack of product on the shelves caused people to buy other jeans, and the company went under as a result. Sadly, JNCO will be on the market again in 2015.

--Rikku Markka

Justin said...

In his TWS Pro Spotlight, Alex Olson said huge jeans are coming back.

The JNCO team was an interesting thing. They sponsored all the gnarly Burnside and hesh dudes. Out of respect for the skaters, I will not scan those ads in. I want to say JNCO maybe donated some cash to Burnside for construction.

ilana said...

Circa 1994 JNCO was available at my small-town Wisconsin JC Penney for $30 while Blind jeans were $50 +shipping via CCS. Outside money, cash-in, call it what you will but for a kid with little income and parents who couldn't understand why someone would pay $50 for jeans to tear up while skating, JNCO was a way to be current while the big trousers trend lasted.

Anonymous said...

Anything clothing out of the World camp (blind jeans, fuct) were way overpriced. But I was never one for skate jeans. The last pair I had were Evol jeans, back when it was all about light blue denim, navy tees, and white Stan Smith shoes. Dickies or Levi's have always lasted me, though.

As for the big jean trend, my friends and I would just go to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. What a scene that must have looked like to the employees; a bunch a scrawny 14-year-olds buying size 44 waist jeans.

--Rikku Markka

stephen said...

Remember that Brent kronmeuller dude in all those sketched ads? I always felt bad for him. Haha

Justin said...

I think my friend got some JNCOs at Penney's, too. Cheers to small town life.

We all now know that World's policy was to use the cheapest materials put together with cheap labor and sell the product at a high markup. We got duped.

I think Brent won a contest of some sort, possibly something on the first Warped Tour that got him some sponsors. Poor guy was probably pretty good, he just got hooked up with maybe not the best companies.

Anonymous said...

Brent Kronmueller went on to be a skatepark builder. he designed and made the park for Zero. Vans had a series of contest in the mid nineties, if you won you went pro. Brent won the street part. Interesting too, PLG won the vert portion of that contest series...

nonickname said...

to add to the big pant/poor childhood flashback we'd buy baggy cheap pants and then chop them into long shorts and use the extra material taken from the bottom and sew it into the inseam making them even bigger. We thought it made us look like Markovich from that A1 ad.