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