Chico Brenes #5.

The last OG.

Chico was the original Chocolate rider who stayed the longest. He was on the team from day one in 1994 until the fall of 2018. It looks like he is doing a small board brand called Chico Stix these days. I think he was one of the original riders for DVS when they started back in 1995, too.

Transworld - May 1999 Volume 17 Number 5

Keenan Milton #13.

The pinnacle of style.

I wish I had a pair of those shoes.

It has been unsettlingly warm for the last few days of February so I've gotten in some comfortable outdoor skateboarding. The snow comes back for a cold minute the next day or two before it warms up again.

Transworld - June 1999 Volume 17 Number 6

Sean Sheffey #9.

Blue wigs and switch stance skills.

Shout out to Scott Morton of Eat The Bologna 'zine fame for making the Skate Twitter video.

Transworld - July 1999 Volume 17 Number 7

James Craig #3.

The 4-22-19.

DVS was one of the relatively newer shoe companies that started to take off in the late 1990s. They expanded the team and added the Matix clothing line, not to mention becoming the first distributor for Lakai. James Craig was a fresh am on Blind and picked up DVS as a shoe sponsor. I don't think he rode for them for very long.

Transworld - September 1999 Volume 17 Number 9

Ronnie Bertino #5.

A constellation in the sky.

Orion was Tracker's cool truck brand in the 1990s. They had a team of heavy hitters and supposedly the trucks were popular amongst the pros. Now that I think about, I don't ever recall encountering a pair in the wild.

The weather has been mostly decent so I've gotten in a good amount of skateboarding after work for the week. The warmer temps and later sunsets are nice. I've also been catching up on a few videos. I watched Josh Stewart's Static 6 on Sunday, as in sat down on the couch and watched the DVD uninterrupted. It's another noble edition to the Static series. I liked Caswell Berry's new video part. The Primitive amateur flick was impressive. Kyonosuke Yamashita had my favorite section of the video. Blake Carpenter’s footage of tricks for Spitfire was great, too.

Ronnie: Transworld - September 1997 Volume 15 Number 9

No weight: Transworld - February 1998 Volume 16 Number 2

Product line: Transworld - July 1998 Volume 16 Number 7

Crail.

Caminhão de skate.

Crail is a Brazilian truck manufacturer that started in 1990 and are still trucking to this day. It's neat how they had a co-branding deal with Shorty's for the bushings in the mid 1990s. Shorty's had a similar cross promotion with Capital, too.

Sandro's photo is by Flávio Donadio. Luis Naka did the graphic design for his ad.

Cristiano Mateous: Thrasher - August 1997 Volume 17 Number 8

André Hiena: Thrasher - November 1997 Volume 17 Number 11

Sandro Sobral: Thrasher - December 1997 Volume 17 Number 12

Rellik.

Canadian Trucking Industry.

Rellik was a truck company based out of Montreal. I don't think they lasted very long, although they might have switched over to making long boards later on. They also made bearings, hardware, and wheels.

Jon's photo is by Kevin Kelly and Matt's photo is by Mike McCourt.

Jon Campbell: Big Brother - June 2001 Number 73

Matt Pirog: Big Brother - August 2001 Number 75

Dan Pageau: Big Brother - October 2001 Number 77

Unit.

The spirit of Gullwing's Street Shadow.

Unit was started in the late 1990s by Syndrome Distribution, the umbrella name for Zorlac, Status, DNA, and a few other companies. They launched a new truck design called the Phantom in 2000. It very much kept with the marketing idea at the time that trucks should be scary, as was the case for Monster and Kre-Per.

Matt Mecaro took the photo of Aaron.

Mike Rosa: Transworld - February 2000 Volume 18 Number 2

Jeremy Deglopper: Transworld - September 2000 Volume 18 Number 9

Aaron Yeager: Big Brother - July 2001 Number 74

Navigator Trucks.

Concave'd.

Navigators had a different style of hanger that featured a concave shape. It's almost like a reverse of the extra grind pad that Rannalli Trucks had. It is also kind of similar to being an extended Gullwing groove. I have no idea if this would work or not.

It's another haphazardly pieced together week of unique, obscure or popular trucks.

Thrasher - July 2001 Volume 21 Number 7

Erik Ellington #7.

South of Heaven.

Erik doesn't stick to handrails and big gaps for his section in Misled Youth, but he also strings together some street tech lines. I dig how he is repping Axion footwear the whole time. The bigspin frontside boardslide is the last trick in his part. 2024 marks 25 years of Erik being pro. He's running Deathwish and still getting tricks, as was shown in the latest Baker video.

Atiba Jefferson snapped the photographs.

Biggie front board: Transworld - December 1998 Volume 16 Number 12

Front nose: Transworld - September 1999 Volume 17 Number 9

Matt Mumford #7.

Matt had a quick, but full part for Misled Youth. He skates a bunch of handrails and throws in a 5-0 to fakie across a channel on vert. There are a couple of switch flips and nollies onto rails, too. You sort of don't see many switch or nollie tricks from Matt. Both of the stunts in the ads are in the video.

The photos are by Atiba Jefferson.

Backside disaster: Transworld - November 1998 Volume 16 Number 11

Nollie lipslide: Transworld - May 1999 Volume 17 Number 5

Adrian Lopez & Jamie Thomas.

25 years of misleading the youth.

Zero's second video was released in the spring of 1999. I bought their Anthology 1996-2006 DVD box set in December since it was really cheap and had all the early vids. I'm so bad at watching videos these days that I'm not sure why I bothered to grab it, but I'm glad I did. I've never been a big Zero fan, but their first two videos brought something different to skateboarding at the time and I like that.

Jaime started Zero when he was still riding for Toy Machine in 1996 as a t-shirt line out of Tum Yeto. Zero quickly became Jaime's project and naturally evolved into a board company. I think Adrian was the very first team rider, dating back to the clothing only days. He did some backside tailslides that look effortless for his part in Misled Youth. This boardslide is in his part, too.

I threw in the team ad since I didn't know where it fit in exactly. I didn't want to leave it out, especially since it had the sequence of Jud Ferguson.

The photos are by Atiba Jefferson and someone named Davidson. His full name might be Keith Eric Davidson.

Back tail: Transworld - September 1998 Volume 16 Number 9

Front blunt: Transworld - October 1998 Volume 16 Number 10

Both: Transworld - March 1999 Volume 17 Number 3

Team: Transworld - January 1999 Volume 17 Number 1

Jim Greco #5.

Fix me.

Greco spins one of his famous backside 360 ollies at Bricktown. This spot got a ton of heavy usage in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Jim was riding for Birdhouse prior to Zero.

The sequence is by Chris Ortiz.

Transworld - April 1999 Volume 17 Number 4

Jud Ferguson.

Arkansas Razorback.

Jud is from Little Rock, Arkansas. He lived in Fayetteville for a little bit when I was in grad school at the University of Arkansas. I got to skate with him a couple times and he was ridiculously good. Jud definitely helped move some Zero product in the Natural State. It was also cool to hear some skateboard gossip, such as talking about Matt Mumford's shoe sponsor moves.

The photo is by Atiba Jefferson.

Transworld - February 1999 Volume 17 Number 2

Leo Romero #14.

Silver Shoes.

Leo's Skater part from Emerica was probably my favorite video of 2023. There's so much skateboarding to take in that it is better to not try to keep up with all of it. As for full length videos, I really liked Dan Rusin's Great Northern and Magnetic Tape & Soul by Threads Collective. Threads is probably doing some of the best work by referencing obscure older skaters and tricks in approximately the same way I'm picking out stuff for this website, at least back when I started it. I think that wraps up my haphazard review of the last twelve months.

Baker went big with a three pager to announce Leo was added to the team. He had previously been on Foundation and would leave for Toy Machine after a couple of years. Here's the teaser:

Vert Is Dead will be back on Monday, February 12th.

I'm actually getting out of town for a couple days and I've gotten a little behind at things so a break is a good idea right now.

Thrasher - February 2006 Volume 26 Number 2

Nora Vasconcellos #7.

Nicole Hause tattoo.

Nora had a heavily promoted pro shoe from Adidas and her photo on the cover of the October 2023 Thrasher to go with a full length interview. It's great to see how much of an influential figure she has become in skateboarding.

I have gotten in some skateboarding after work this week. I was sick last week and didn't realize it so I was little off for Monday and Tuesday. I had a nice bounce back day yesterday. It's good that our sunsets are getting later again.

The photo is by Zander Taketomo.

Thrasher - March 2023 Volume 44 Number 3