Gershon Mosley #7.

The Scorpion.

Gershon was riding for Human with Andy MacDonald prior to the A-Team. He would move over to Blind at the end of things. This sequence looks a tad odd. The caption reads crooked grind and the third frame agrees with that, but the rest of photos are saying backside nosegrind. I wonder if they had to piece photos together for the ad? It's probably safe to say GMOS landed both a crooked grind and a backside nosegrind at the spot since he was wrecking shop on everything back in the 1990s.

There was a strange bit of symmetry for the A-Team. Based on ads, the company was started in October of 1997 and it ended in October of 2000. The last advert was Rodney Mullen doing some type of impossible off a bench. In November 2000, Darkstar was announced as a board brand and the first enjoi ad that simply read Marc Johnson is a free agent with the a painted out ran.

They only had five pro riders total without any ams. Dave Mayhew was added to the team in November of 1998. I assume Rodney was probably hooking a couple people up with boards.

Of note was a contest where each pro did a trick and you could win cash if you submitted a video duplicating the trick. I believe this is how Chris Cole initially got noticed, if not for doing a trick in an ad, but by sending his footage to Rodney.

There was an A-Team section in each of the Rodney vs. Daewon videos. They featured a lot of hardflips and technical street skating. The part in Round Two had a mild paranoid conspiracy theme to it.

I'm going to do another week or so of A-Team in the near future. I wasn't feeling the company when it came out, but now I'm intrigued by the brand. I'll probably end up piecing together the trick contest and winner ads so all that stuff is lumped together in one place.

RIP Zion Williams.

The sequence is again by Chris Ortiz.

Transworld - March 1998 Volume 16 Number 3

Marc Johnson #16.

The Panther.

The trick aesthetic for the three year run of the A-Team was basically hardflips and frontside crooked grinds.

The graphics occupied a strange, high tech, sci-fi space with some military imagery. There's always been sci-fi art, but the improvements in computers in the 1990s made it easier to create this stuff. The A-Team also dabbled with pictograms, although without the visual success of an Alien Workshop for example.

Props to Vitória Mendonça on turning pro.

The photographic sequence is by Chris Ortiz.

Transworld - February 1998 Volume 16 Number 2

Rodney Mullen #9.

The Rabbit.

In a strange way it felt like Rodney started to come into his own in the mid 1990s. He had invented nearly all the tricks that were fundamental to street skateboarding and won nearly all the freestyle contests, but something seemed different about how he was skating in the late 90s. He wasn't the anomaly of the token freestyler and he had moved beyond the complex task of adapting freestyle moves to ledges as was seen in the Plan B videos. He started to push his skating to new levels and pick up sponsors outside of in-house board brand companies. That skateboarding was starting to grow in the public eye again made him the ideal type of skater for some of the projects that were popping up. He was even doing real street tricks, like front crooks on picnic tables, too.

The photos are by Chris Ortiz.

Transworld - December 1997 Volume 15 Number 12

Chet Thomas #7.

The Eagle.

Chet was previously on Platinum before joining the A-Team. He had ridden for Channel One for most of the early 1990s. This was the heaviest trick of the bunch from the initial ads for the A-Team. Chet's switch frontside flip down ten stairs holds up well even by today's standards. He started Darkstar Wheels at World Industries/Dwindle, which turned into a board line in November 2000.

The sequence is by Atiba Jefferson.

Transworld - November 1997 Volume 15 Number 11

The A-Team.

The A-Team was Rodney Mullen's project after parting ways with Plan B in 1997. As was reported in the October 1997 issue of Transworld, Plan B split from World Industries to partner with XYZ under the Armageddon Distribution title. In addition to being a shop with a clothing line, XYZ was doing Platinum Skateboards. As one of the owners at World Industries, Rodney is obviously not going leave the company and hence the new venture. The idea was to create a super team in the style of Plan B, I suppose. The team was built with guys who had been riding for other companies and would have been a step up in terms of a paycheck. And let's face it, if Rodney Mullen calls you up to ask you to be a part of something, you're going to entertain the offer.

Notes: These were the oddest color of green so that's why the scans look a little different. I'm also surprised that Marc is 5' 11". I didn't ever picture him as being that tall. In a similar massive print launch, Expedition One rolled out a six page debut ad in December of 1997.

The photos are by KCR. I'm not sure who that is. Could it be Rick Kosick?

Transworld - October 1997 Volume 15 Number 10

Matt Reason #8.

Here's some vintage Matt with the often imitated and occasionally controversial ride-on grind. This was the first trick in his part in the Physics Wheels video, Dream Reality. A quick review of his video parts showed that Matt also ollied into handrails for a whole bunch of tricks.

The photos are by Ryan Gee.

Transworld - July 1997 Volume 16 Number 7

Matt Mumford #6.

Caveman.

Skateboarding is often a reaction to what is going on at a given time. Skull graphics were basically abandoned once Neil Blender said they weren't cool in 1990. It took until the middle of the 1990s when Creature and Zero started using them again for art because both figured there might be an audience for such things. Riding with the status quo is also a plenty acceptable option, but if ledge tech isn't cutting it for you, why not see what you can do on handrails or big gaps. An occasional back to basics headcleaning reboot every now and again is a worthy undertaking, too. If none of these approaches are working, you can always make fun of things, which is why enjoi registered so well in an era of Osiris and Zero. The key is coming up with good ideas and using them in moderation, which are both practices skateboarding has a hard time doing.

The photograph sequence is by Dave Swift.

Transworld - September 1997 Volume 15 Number 9

Jesse Paez #5.

50-50 Night.

Jesse turned his sponsorship on Ezekiel into a spot on their Kastel footwear line when that was launched in the late 1990s. He rode for Consolidated and then switched to Think for the bulk of his pro career. Jesse had the knack for blasting ollies down the biggest stairs and gaps when he was younger, including the first frontside 180 at Wallenberg.

The photographs are by Nick Freitas.

Transworld - March 1997 Volume 15 Number 3

Justin Strubing #6.

Nothing to say.

The Captain flies from a frontside 50-50 to a tailslide. He was probably going really fast, too. I know Justin has a couple of brothers who skate and the family runs the Skate Works shop, but he's one of those pros who has put together a long and successful career without an interview. Or at least none that I could find or recall.

It looks like Spitfire is again making Classics in the full range of sizes in the regular 99 urethane. I'm glad the 55s are back because I was thinking 54s were a tad too small, even if they look cool with the silver and black graphics.

Brian Howard did in fact noseslide the curb by the stairs at the Brooklyn Banks. It was the second trick in his Cat's Cradle part.

Atiba Jefferson snapped the photo sequence.

Transworld - November 1997 Volume 15 Number 11

Kevin Taylor #5.

Kevin is from Pittsburgh and has been pro for Capital, Aesthetics, and Zoo York over the years. He's hooked up with Steel City locals Scumco. & Sons presently.

Ezekiel is a long running clothing company that was started in the early 1990s. They are still around today, although I'm not sure if they have a pro team. A whole slew of skaters have been sponsored by them over the last three decades. They dabbled in the footwear market with Kastel in the later half of the 1990s.

The backside lipslide sequence is by Atiba Jefferson and the portrait is by Salas. I'm not sure on a full name for Salas.

Transworld - January 1998 Volume 16 Number 1

Brian Anderson #13.

A double dose of Brian washing.

You don't think of BA doing hardflips, but he had a couple of them in Jump Off A Building. The backside noseblunt was also in the video, along with a bunch of other tricks on the same barrier. It was neat to see him wearing Axions, too.

The backside noseblunt sequence is by Gabe Morford and the hardflip photo is by world famous Brad Staba.

Noseblunt: Transworld - April 1998 Volume 16 Number 4

Hardflip: Transworld - August 1998 Volume 16 Number 8

Kerry Getz #7.

Kemuri.

These photos are from 1998, but footage of Kerry doing the trick didn't pop up until 2003 in Habitat's Mosaic video. It looks like the photos and the video are different based on his hair. Given how consistently good he was, I'd assume Kerry landed the frontside boardslide and the video wound up not being used for whatever reason the first time around.

It's cool that Nocturnal, his skateshop in Philadelphia, is still going strong.

The photos are by Ryan Gee.

Transworld - June 1998 Volume 16 Number 6

Ed Templeton #34.

A loser's winner.

Ed thinks the first pro contest he entered was Thrasher's Boreal Mountain event in 1990. That was the snowy one up in the mountains with a car as an obstacle. He wound up winning, which isn't a bad way to start the old professional career.

Check out Jenkem for a new interview with Patrick O'Dell. Thanks for the link.

Transworld - March 1998 Volume 16 Number 3

Chris Senn #11.

Venomous viper.

Chris came up in the early 1990s as the contest dominator on Powell before switching to Channel One and then starting Adrenalin with the late Jaya Bonderov. He would ride for Toy Machine for a couple years before the business side of things led to an unfortunate falling out with Ed Templeton. They were both on Emerica for years so that must've been awkward at times. He fired up Adrenalin again in the early 2000s and later settled in at Element for a spell. He's always been into art and currently works as a tattoo artist.

You have to laugh at how the middle finger from the BMX child warranted a black box of censorship.

The bowl transfer photo is by Mike O'Meally and the dad camera shot is by Ed Templeton.

Bowl: Transworld - February 1998 Volume 16 Number 2

Pull The Trigger: Transworld - November 1998 Volume 16 Number 11

Satva Leung #6.

Ride-on 5-0?

This trick probably would have been in Jump Off A Building. However, Satva left Toy Machine for an opportunity to turn pro for Maple before the video was done. I think it's neat how he was working behind the scenes editing videos for Thrasher and doing some photography in addition to being a sponsored skateboarder.

I actually skated really well for me on Saturday. My board is getting worn out and my shoes are starting to wear down so that's been a factor, but everything was clicking that day. The ollies were popping and I was moving faster. To balance it out, Sunday was a total dud and I had nothing. I'm glad I skipped going to an out of town park to skate because it would have been dreadful.

Dan Russin's new video, Great Northern, is out and worth viewing. I've only watched it once so far and it is pretty good.

The Satva photo is by Adam Wallacavage. I'd imagine Ed Templeton took the surfer picture.

Transworld - November 1997 Volume 15 Number 11

Eric Pupecki #2.

2 Morro Morro Land.

Only in skateboarding does a guy from Rhode Island wind up on the same team with three guys from Los Angeles and it seems perfectly normal. We're good like that sometimes.

Transworld - February 1996 Volume 14 Number 2

Menace Team 1995.

I think one of the things that made Menace appealing was that the company presented itself as a small group of friends who skated together. It's basically the recipe for success in skateboarding. The fresh hip hop style certainly aided the cause, but it doesn't fully work unless there is that authentic friendship to back it up. It's an element that is kind of gone from a lot of teams in present day skateboarding. On the one hand, it's a positive that things have grown to be able to support more skaters, but at the same time, something feels missing.

I believe that is Joey Suriel and Billy Valdes in the photos.

Transworld - November 1995 Volume 13 Number 11

Lee Smith.

International man of mystery.

Lee is from Oakland, lived in Detroit, and then moved back to San Francisco. He went to school with Karl Watson and they started going to EMB to skateboard during the heyday of the plaza. Mark Gonzales liked the way Lee skated and added him to the ATM Click team. He would go on to ride for Menace and the future versions of the company. After City Stars ended, Lee spent some time living in Barcelona, Spain. He's ridden for Santa Cruz and Lakai along with working at Girl and HUF. I don't really know too much about Lee and there's not exactly a ton of info on him out there.

Transworld - October 1995 Volume 13 Number 10

Billy Valdes.

Pretzel flip.

Billy was born in Chicago and grew up in Los Angeles. He was on Powell and Real before joining Menace. Billy had kind of a Quim Cardona kung fu spiderman style that looks really cool. I like how he's wearing some Simples in the photo. His unique trick was a kickflip on flat where he landed with his legs crossed, aka the pretzel flip. He works as a freelance graphic designer these days.

Transworld - August 1995 Volume 13 Number 8

Fabian Alomar #2.

Release Yo' Self.

Fabian is from Los Angeles. He was riding for Z until he met Jim Thiebaud and Tommy Guerrero. They hooked him up with some boards from Real, trucks from Thunder, and Spitfire wheels. He would later ride for ATM Click before Kareem Campbell asked him to ride for Menace in 1994. Fabian's skate crew back in the day consisted of Joey Suriel, Gabriel Rodriguez, Paulo Diaz, Rudy Johnson, and Billy Valdes.

I'm going to post some stuff from 1997-98 for the next little bit. I've meandered around the 00s enough lately and 25 years ago looks good to me now.

The family photo is by Jody Morris.

Transworld - June 1995 Volume 13 Number 6

Aaron Herrington #5.

Down on the corner redux.

It always surprises me a little that Aaron rode for Blood Wizard way back in 2010. His recent video part with Lurker Lou on Village Psychic where they drove around looking for spots was cool.

The photos are by Mike Heikkila.

Thrasher - October 2020 Volume 41 Number 10

Dane Brady #5.

Dane Time.

Dane is another Polar rider who dabbles with unique setups. Much like the Gilbert Crockett picture from last week, this is great photo that probably got lost in the deep sea of content. I dig how they went with a slightly rougher photocopier reduction style bit of artwork, even if it was probably done on a computer.

Thrasher - July 2020 Volume 41 Number 7