Recipe For Disaster.

"We're at the Luxor."

Real released a tour video on VHS in early 2002 that featured their amateur team. At the time the ams were JT Aultz, Damian Bravo, Dennis Busenitz, Peter Ramondetta, Darrell Stanton, and Chris Trembley. Team manager Jasin Phares organized the trip and spent too much money at a fancy hotel while Dan Vellucci filmed it and Gabe Morford took the photographs. The crew traveled to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Austin, and Houston. They wrecked all the spots along the way. The pro team had a few clips and there was a subtle plug for Krooked, which Deluxe was getting ready to launch. The video also had a section on a Real trip to Japan that features some great Nate Jones and Keith Hufnagel clips. The Recipe For Disaster soundtrack was mostly punk with some vintage AC/DC and Judas Priest. This is a fun video to watch from an era that now seems like an eternity ago.

At the end, Real teases another tour video called Red Asphalt to be released in July of 2002. I don't think that happened. Or did it?

I finally got Chris Trembley on here. That guy was good, but I believe injuries ended his chances at turning pro. I might be wrong about that.

The photos are by Gabe Morford.

Thrasher - May 2002 Volume 22 Number 5

Ryan Wilburn #4.

This is a unique angle for a wallride transfer.

The photo sequence is by Andrew Hutchison.

Thrasher - June 2002 Volume 22 Number 6

Steve Bailey #3.

Steve floats a nice frontside ollie. I watched a couple of his video parts today and I never realized he was a classical vert skater. I thought he was more of a park, pool, and odd transition guy, which he is, but he'll also pad up to hit the big wooden half pipes. Steve is so smooth and effortless on his skateboard.

Thrasher - May 2002 Volume 22 Number 5

Keith Hufnagel #13.

All's in the family.

I was saddened to learn of Keith's passing from brain cancer this last week. He was one of the best because of his approach to skateboarding. He took the classic and fundamental tricks to new heights with a style and grace that few could match. I watched some of his video parts on Friday before work and each holds up to this day. There was never a bad photo of the guy either. I've been a fan for a long time and skated in a bunch of his namesake shoes. Rest in peace.

Ollie: Thrasher - August 2002 Volume 22 Number 8

Darrell Stanton and Keith: Thrasher - February 2005 Volume 25 Number 2

Diego Bucchieri #6.

Double the beef.

Argentina's finest had been riding for Think up until 2002 when he switched to Toy Machine. He stayed until 2013. In the years since, Diego has been running his own company called Cleaver. He's into art and graphic design. Together with Roberto Alemañ, he released an epic video part at the end of 2019.

Remember what I said earlier in the week about Ed not running the same ads in Thrasher and Transworld? Generally it was the case, but Butcher's switch 180 was repeated.

RIP HUF.
The switch 180 sequence was by Michael Burnett.

For Keith's ad: Thrasher - February 1994 Volume 14 Number 2

Backside kickflip: Thrasher - September 2002 Volume 22 Number 9

Switch 180: Thrasher - April 2002 Volume 22 Number 4

Billy Marks #5.

Five facts about Billy from 2003:

1. His parents ran a bowling alley. Billy has rolled a couple of perfect games.

2. He started skateboarding at age 13 and Plan B's Second Hand Smoke was the first video he saw.

3. It took him forever to learn kickflips, but Billy reached a point where he could kickflip boardslide a handrail more easily than doing a regular boardslide on it.

4. He used to ride for the Firm.

5. His favorite pros are Geoff Rowley, Arto Saari, and Jason Lee.

The photos are by Jordan Davis.

For the facts: Thrasher - January 2003 Volume 23 Number 1

Thrasher - November 2002 Volume 22 Number 11

Nate Broussard #2.

A distorted reality.

The photos are by Travis Howell.

Thrasher - August 2002 Volume 22 Number 8

Caswell Berry #8.

"Three hundred sixty four days out of the year I'm traveling, and then on that other day, I'm in space."

Caswell was on Toy Machine for about six months before he turned pro. He headed home to ride for enjoi in 2004. His reason for leaving was that he wasn't around many of the guys on the team due to geographic differences.

A fun fact about Toy Machine is that they were running completely different two page ads in Transworld at the same time. Ed didn't recycle the same content for the two magazines.

For the quote: Transworld - March 2004 Volume 22 Number 3

Thrasher - July 2002 Volume 22 Number 7

Ed Templeton #32.

"Can you focus this close? I must be disgusting."

So begins Ed's part in Emerica's This Is Skateboarding video from 2003. Set to the noise rock sounds of Butter 08, the Tempster delivers a section full of his classic tricks. There are noseblunt slides, lipslides, Smith grinds, feebles, a couple impossibles, boardslides, and 180 nosegrinds. Ed even hucks a frontside flip down some stairs. The above frontside bluntslide is in there, too. The ender is a huge lipslide down a handrail that ends with Ed breaking the tail on his board after rolling away successfully.

Note: Butter 08 was a brief project of Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori from Cibo Matto, Russell Simins of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Rick Lee of Skeleton Key, and artist Mike Mills.

The frontside bluntslide picture is by Dave Swift.

Front feeble: Thrasher - May 2002 Volume 22 Number 5

Front blunt: Thrasher - June 2002 Volume 22 Number 6

Toy Machine Team 2002.

Ed pieced together a new Monster Squad to start 2002 and had a full crew by the fall. Most of these guys stuck around for a long time. In fact, Billy Marks and Josh Harmony are still on the team to this day. Diego came over from Think as an established veteran pro so that helped get the rebuilding process off to a good start.

I dig how Ed included the first logo ever in the new ad.

On a non-Toy Machine note, I purchased a pair of the Lakai Mike Carroll OG reissues and have been skating in them. The soles are on the thicker side, but I am OK with that. It means they will last longer. The upper is fairly faithful to the original. Or it is close enough to what I recall a shoe from twenty years ago looking like. I'm glad Lakai made this shoe happen again (and did a good job at it) because the first Carrolls were one of my favorite models.

Rebuild The Broken: Thrasher - March 2002 Volume 22 Number 3

New Millennium: Thrasher - October 2002 Volume 22 Number 10

Caswell Berry #7.

The San Jose Shark.

Caswell had been on Powell up until the end of 2001 when he decided to test the free agency market. He soon found a spot at Toy Machine and was turned pro by the summer of 2002. His time on Toy lasted until 2004 when he left for enjoi. Although Caswell is known as more of a rail and gap skater, he's an all terrain talent who can skate everything.

Check out the Chomp On This t-shirt that Lance's son doodled.

The backside kickflip photo is by Pete Thompson. Ed Templeton took the picture of the feeble grind and Lance Mountain, Jr. drew all over the ad.

Backside kickflip: Thrasher - January 2002 Volume 22 Number 1

Feeble: Thrasher - February 2002 Volume 22 Number 2

The Collapse.

Things were going along smoothly for Toy Machine until the end of 2001 when everybody quit. Brian Anderson departed for Girl, Brad Staba went to enjoi, and Elissa Steamer split for Bootleg. This left Ed Templeton as the only pro with Austin Stephens as the lone am.

The photo is by Geoff Rowley.

Thrasher - December 2001 Volume 21 Number 12

Ed Templeton #31.

In 2001, Ed celebrated ten years of being pro. Thrasher did a big feature interview on his history in the July issue. His other sponsors at the time were Emerica, Rusty Clothing, Thunder, Ricta Wheels, G-Shock Watches, and CCS. Some of his favorite tricks that year were frontside feebles, Smith grinds, nosegrinds, noseblunt slides, frontside bluntslides, impossibles, 180 nosegrinds, and lipslides. He was skating with the Toy Machine team, plus Mike Vallely, Vinnie Vegas, Mark Appleyard, Brian Sumner, Arto Saari, and Geoff Rowley. Ed would probably have been starting to film for Emerica's This Is Skateboarding video at this point, too.

The photo is by Michael Burnett.

For the info: Thrasher - July 2001 Volume 21 Number 7

Thrasher - November 2001 Volume 21 Number 11

Brad Staba #3.

Sweatpants.

I'm going to spend the next two weeks looking at Toy Machine from fall 2001 through to the end of 2002. This was the period where everybody quit and Ed Templeton had to rebuild the team. I went a tad overboard on the feature, but it all looked good spread out on the basement floor. I didn't know what to omit so I put everything in. If you're a big fan of Caswell Berry, this is going to be your moment. Surprisingly I hadn't posted any of these before and had forgotten what many of the ads looked like so this feels fresh.

Brad is from the Cleveland, Ohio area. He moved out to California and eventually settled in Walnut Creek. He has ridden for Foundation and enjoi in addition to Toy Machine. Brad expanded his Skate Mental company to include skateboards around about 2007. As of 1999, some of the bands he likes are Bjork, The Breeders, De La Soul, and The Swirlies. Brad is into photography and might play the drums.

The photo is by Jon Humphries. I believe the illustration is by Andrew Pommier.

For the info: Transworld - October 1999 Volume 17 Number 10

Thrasher - October 2001 Volume 21 Number 10

Chris Miller #14.

"Jason Celaya’s vision of the reinterpreting my old boards in a new way, it’s been incredible. I love it. It’s been a great collaborative partnership the whole way through and I’m stoked on everything we’ve done so far."

I like how Welcome is doing the Planet Earth style modern versions of boards for Chris and Brian Lotti. I swear I will take a break from Welcome posts now. I've been feeling kind of unenthusiastic about skateboarding in general lately and they are one of the few things that was inspiring to me so I stuck with 'em.

Random Odds & Ends

Shout out to Mostly Skateboarding for a link. Also props to them for keeping a Blogspot going.

Niels Bennett and Griffin Gass have been welcomed to the pro ranks over at Girl.

Austyn Gillette is back on Habitat after formerly wandering around the wilderness without a deck sponsor for a couple years. I guess the Cheap Perfume video was good. The skateboarding itself was great. It could have benefited from editing out the dumb crap and an improved music selection. Austyn still makes difficult tricks look graceful.

On a slightly related topic, Platinum Seagulls updated their site with an essay on how everybody is good and what all that means.

I've been sticking with the solo driveway skateboarding sessions during the week and trips to the park early on weekend mornings. I built a new ledge back in July. It's six feet long and a foot high. I scored a six foot piece of angle iron at the big name hardware store so that made it easy. I think I finally got the hang of the thing. The toughest part has been figuring out the proper spot to put it in the driveway. The issues have been getting the speed right and avoiding the seams in the concrete. I haven't taken any pictures of the ledge, but I probably will sooner or later. I'd like to build more portable obstacles in the future. I might have to scour the old videos for ideas. I am not a carpenter by any stretch and not overly fond of working with wood, yet I enjoyed making the ledge once it started to come together.

Sound Zone: I have not bought much new music since the last time I did one of these. I've got a bunch of stuff on pre-order so the mail should be coming in hot over the next month. I'm looking forward to the upcoming album from Mi'ens on Kill Rock Stars and the latest set of releases on Not Not Fun. Collected Methods by Nail Club is a fine batch of synth driven low tech noise pop. Noveler is back with a new album of ethereal guitar soundscapes. I'm happy that psychedelic noise duo Yellow Swans - pictured - are making their sprawling catalog available on Bandcamp as well as doing selected physical reissues.

Vert Is Dead will be back on Monday, September 14th.

It will be a look at Toy Machine from late 2001 and most of 2002. Have a safe and happy weekend.

The quote is from the recent interview with Chris at the Chrome Ball Incident.

The photo is by Grant Brittain.

Thrasher - August 2015 Volume 36 Number 8

Darren Navarrette #14.

Back in November of 2010, Darren, Al Partanen, and photographer Ed Dominick took a trip to Minneapolis with the intent to skate an outdoor vert ramp. It was cold and snowed, but they lucked out by getting to ride a bunch of private indoor ramps and bowls.

For the tale: The Skateboard Mag - April 2011 Issue 85

Thrasher - October 2015 Volume 36 Number 10

Ryan Spencer.

Lost in my infinite memory.

Ryan is from Maui, Hawaii. He has ridden for Foundation since 2011 and turned pro in 2014. Supposedly he doesn't like handrails, but he skates a bunch of them in Foundation's WTF video from 2011. For his part in Dekline's True Blue from 2014, Ryan mixes it up with unique ledges and ditches to go along with the banisters. 2017's Oddity featured a more well rounded section with a continued exploration of ditches and unique ledges. There are street lines plus wallrides and no complies. I think he also dabbles with pool skating, too. Ryan has studied photography and works as a photographer in addition to skateboarding.

Transworld - November 2015 Volume 33 Number 11

Tyler Bledsoe #5.

"Yeah, I'd rather just chill on the beach. Of all the times I've been to California, I've never been in the ocean."

Vert Is Dead fully endorses not going swimming.

Skateboard clothing companies are always a questionable venture to me. As in if you start one, no matter how good your initial idea might be, it's going to go out of business in a couple of years. I suppose it has to do with the fickle nature of how quickly fashion changes and what was once hot suddenly becomes uncool. All those obstacles considered, Fourstar had a great run and stayed flexible enough to fit with the times. I have to give credit to Volcom and RVCA for keeping it going as long as they have.

This is what happens when you randomly pick out a few things to fill a week without doing much research on what you are going to post. I'm basically counting down the days to the holiday weekend, along with a planned week off from doing this thing.

For the quote: The Skateboard Mag - March 2010 Issue 72

Thrasher - February 2016 Volume 37 Number 2