Zak Grove.

Ending the year with Blockhead.

Dave Bergthold's company has become one of my favorite things in skateboarding. I always dug them back then and I appreciate what they did even more nowadays. The team ripped. The graphics were well done and stood out from what everybody else was doing, too. I also like how they are making reissues of their boards, shirts, and stickers. In fact, I usually put a Blockhead sticker on my board.

Vert Is Dead will be back on Monday, January 20th, 2020. It's winter break time.

I'm doing a haphazard look back on 2019 so feel free to leave suggestions in the comments on what you were excited about in skateboarding from the last 12 months. I'll see what I can come up with. All the year end lists coupled with the best of the decade lists have exhausted my normal fascination with lists to the point where I don't care about making one or reading any.

Have a safe and happy new year! Thanks for all the support.

Transworld - September 1990 Volume 8 Number 9

Nicky Guerrero #4.

It's a slightly different angle of a Smith grind by Nicky. I picked up a Powell Peralta reissue of his pro model a couple of years ago. I was always a fan and had the t-shirt back in the day so it's nice to have this board hanging on the wall. It looks great.

The photo is by Sin Egelja.

Thrasher - December 1989 Volume 9 Number 12

Hugh "Bod" Boyle #6.

Merry Christmas!

Hugh hangs onto to the edge. This is a sick angle of a layback grind.

Thrasher - October 1989 Volume 9 Number 10

Jake Phelps #5.

The Cardinal Movements

When you know they won't show up
When you think it might rain
When you get it in your mind to live again

Got no tolerance for nonsense
You just get tired of pain
When you get it in your mind to live again

Those dreams are never ending
I know it's always hard to hear
Sometimes they're good
Sometimes they're bad
We always want some better way to say it
Sometimes it's best just to lay it bare

Our book has been written
You find yourself at the end
Turn it over and it disintegrates in you hands
What your touch can turn to dust
It doesn't matter very much
Because there's more time to take more past
And make more time to pay

Those dreams are never ending
I know they're always hard to hear
Sometimes they're good
Sometimes they're bad
We always want a more elegant way to say it
Sometimes it's best just to lay it bare

- The Bottomless Pit

Always remember those who have left us too soon.

Thrasher - November 1989 Volume 9 Number 11

Eric Nash #3.

The Crusher frontside grinds a pool.

I finally set up some new Ventures this year. The old ones broke after a decade of steady use, which is maybe a little too long to ride the same set of trucks. I actually put together the new set from two different pairs. My pet peeve is trucks with graphics printed on the hangers so I grabbed a pair of all silver Ventures last year. I then randomly discovered an all orange pair with no graphics at CCS of all places. After riding silver hangers with orange baseplates for so long, anything else just looked wrong to me for trucks, hence all the extra work. I'm happy with the results of my effort. I might get a little crazy and go with the reverse of these the next time I need trucks since I've got the parts. Who knows?

Thrasher - October 1989 Volume 9 Number 10

Tom Knox #6.

Are you still doing the eight-hour skate day?

Yeah, I usually wake up around eight-thirty or nine. I hate waking up past nine. I'll eat, take a shower, and then everything I do all day has something to with skateboarding. I don't drive anywhere, I just skate around everywhere. Skating all day.

Tom used to put in a full day of work for skateboarding. I think everybody does when they get hooked on it and are younger. Nowadays, I max out at the three hour mark. I still have the energy, but my ollies are not getting off the ground by the end. I usually skate about two hours a day during the nice to not awful weather. Sometimes a little more or less depending on grown up life and how much I skated the previous day.

I'm usually moving the entire time, no stopping. I know there are those all important sessions where you end up chilling and talking to everybody, but I'm going skateboarding to skateboard. This is my exercise, dang it. It's funny because I went to a park with my friend a couple years ago and he's skating, but he's also chatting it up with everybody while I'm focused on figuring my three tricks out and avoiding the BMXers. It's an interesting contrast because I'm not remotely thinking about being social.

I am slightly curious to see if I could pull off a teenage skate rat day, but it would take some planning and a couple different spots to hit up. I sort of make a parallel to a basketball game for skateboarding: you're on the court for two hours and then it's time to hit the shower before doing something else. And let's face it, when you are old, you've got a slate of household chores to get done each day, too.

*

This is a little on the late side, but congrats to Milton Martinez on winning Skater of the Year. My sleeper picks for SOTY were either Ronnie Sandoval or Collin Provost. I was hoping Alexis Sablone at least made the nominees list, but that didn't happen. She gets the Vert Is Dead Skateboarder of 2019 Award for being awesome.

For the quote: Transworld - May 1991 Volume 9 Number 5

Thrasher - December 1989 Volume 9 Number 12

Mike Conroy #4.

Never Follow.

Mike is from Virginia Beach, Virginia. He was pro for Santa Monica Airlines. His other sponsors were Gullwing and Airwalk. He had a strong bag of vert tricks that included big airs, fastplants, and seriously contorted inverts.

Here's a sticker of one of Mike's graphics from 1990. This wasn't his debut pro graphic, but probably his second or third model. I got it in 1999 at Uprise Skateshop in Chicago. They had a bunch of vintage stickers for some reason.

Transworld - August 1990 Volume 8 Number 8

Kevin Harris #2.

Royal Canadian Freestyler.

I liked his part in Ban This. Kevin did a lot of manuals and shove-its around the Rose Bowl in Pasadena with some sort of sound collage for the music. There's an AC/DC riff and spoken word news snippets set to a hip hop beat. It's maybe not actually an enjoyable tune, but it showcases some deft late 80s sampling skills and fits with the editing.

How is Ban This thirty years old now? That's a rhetorical question that does not need an answer.

Thrasher - December 1989 Volume 9 Number 12

Monty Nolder #4.

"Relax. Just relax and take your time growing up. Don't get hurt. Learn the basics, get your balance. Don't be scared, skate tough. You just gotta know where you are, and learn to fall. Someday you'll get there."

The inventor of the backside Smith grind offers up some life advice.

For the quote: Monty's Transworld Pro Spotlight. If somebody has an issue number, let me know and I'll cite it correctly. The interview was emailed to me a long time ago without such data and it's from before I started skateboarding.

The photo is by Jamie Mosberg.

Transworld - September 1990 Volume 8 Number 9

Jason Lee #8.

Brodie ollies a trash can behind the dirt mall.

The photo is by Christian Kline.

Thrasher - May 1989 Volume 9 Number 5

Jeff Grosso #9.

"Oh, yeah, with Lance Mountain's little jump box. The Grossman ollies over trash cans, with the aid of a four-inch ramp."

Mothra was taking flight in the streets thirty years ago.

For the quote: Transworld - September 1990 Volume 8 Number 9

Thrasher - October 1989 Volume 9 Number 10

Mike Vallely #8.

Oblivious.

I don't think I initially realized that this ad meant Mike had left Powell Peralta and switched to World Industries. I thought it was a neat photo. As someone who works in the printing industry, I am amused by the jab about the cost of full color.

Thrasher - July 1989 Volume 9 Number 7

Mark Cernicky.

Cernicky of Death.

Mark was one of the Chrome Dome crew and rode for Vision. As vert started to fade, he became a motorcycle enthusiast and pursued a career in the industry that is still going to this day. His son Eddie is on Krooked.

Transworld - August 1990 Volume 8 Number 8

Limpies #3.

The weirdness that was Chip Morton's oddly eccentric clothing company. This probably wouldn't fly today, would it?

Transworld - October 1990 Volume 8 Number 10

Ross Goodman #3.

The Gravedigger takes flight at Jeff Kendall's warehouse. I like that he's wearing a Lucero shirt.

The photo is credited to a Kobata. I'm not sure on a first name or if that is a nickname.

Thrasher - September 1989 Volume 9 Number 9

Chris Miller #13.

"Do you think I'm cool? Is my hair cool? What about my car?" - Chris Miller

It's cool that Jason Celaya at Welcome is making Chris Miller decks. Jason has said in interviews that he is a big fan of the art Chris does and you can see the influence on the graphics he draws.

RIP Jon Comer.

The quote is from the Best of Skate Fate by Gary Scott Davis.

Transworld - October 1989 Volume 7 Number 6

Danny Webster.

Long distance talk ain't cheap.

Danny is from England, was pro for G & S, moved to Texas for a spell, and then moved back to England. He also rode for Deathbox, the original version of Flip. Danny is apparently a drummer who played with the Anti Nowhere League in the 1990s. His first pro model for G & S featured a graphic of him talking on the phone from Texas to the UK. He racked up an enormous long distance phone bill on the company's dime and they took some of his board royalties to cover the cost. Fortunately the decks sold like hotcakes and Danny did fine for himself in the end.

Transworld - August 1989 Volume 7 Number 6

Matt Hensley #13.

Step off a curb street style.

I'm sure Matt helped sell a lot of Gullwings during the heyday of H-Street. It's also cool how he stuck with the company over the years, even when their trucks fell into the "not-fresh" category during skateboarding's painful growing phase of the 1990s.

Transworld - April 1989 Volume 7 Number 2

Ken Park #2.

Ken rode for G & S, Vision, and Planet Earth in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1992, he took a crack at his own skateboard company with One More. Ken did have the insight to sponsor Jason Carney and Brian Tucci for the brief shelf life of the brand. It looks like he is working for a digital media company called Oktane these days. Ken was a vert shredder known for his invert variations and big airs. He usually skated with Chris Miller, Tony Hawk, Joe Johnson, Ray Underhill, and the rest of the San Diego/Fallbrook vert crew.

Transworld - April 1989 Volume 7 Number 2

Ron Allen #4.

Get in the groove.

It's a week of Gullwing since I forgot about their trucks last December.

My first board had a pair of red Pro IIIs with metal baseplates. I'm fairly certain I got that setup before they started making them with the plastic baseplates. It was a fortunate bit of timing to be ahead of the marketing curve. A friend started skateboarding soon after I did and he wound up with the plastic ones. Those were not very good trucks at all.

I really don't give much of a crap if people borrow, share, copy, or whatever with anything I scan in for this site. I figure the stuff is more or less public domain and should be spread around to help with the history of skateboarding. That being said, if you're a skateboard journalism site (ahem, Jenkem) and you happen to use one of my scans, please give a credit. It doesn't need to be a link, just a simple "courtesy of" will do. I've seen my scans pop up in few places over the years where they should be citing their sources in the interest of good journalism and it is mildly annoying when they don't.

Transworld - February 1989 Volume 7 Number 1