Dan Drehobl #32.

Red, I'm seeing red.

Spiderman Dan sticks to the wall for a backside tail stall at one of the many skateparks that were starting to pop up at the end of the 1990s.

Vert Is Dead will be back on Monday, May 6th.

There are over 3,800 posts on this thing so browse the archives if you need a content fix. Also feel free to leave some suggestions for easy posts. I've been stuck in a late 1990s zone for way too long. Thanks for the support.

Thrasher - May 1999 Volume 19 Number 5

Diego Bucchieri #7.

Chopping block.

Jake Phelps gave Diego the nickname of The Butcher because his last name is difficult to pronounce. I dig how straight forward Think was a lot of times with their graphic design. No frills, just make the best of whatever photos they had and put the logo in there somewhere.

Thrasher - June 1999 Volume 19 Number 6

Pat Duffy #5.

Sailing the seas of cheese.

The Duffman recently turned 50. It's been 31 years since Plan B's Questionable was released. It somehow doesn't seem that long. Duffy had probably the most iconic of all debut parts since nobody had really heard of him and his skateboarding was miles above what most folks were doing. The only other skater I can think of who had such a similair mindblowing debut is PJ Ladd. Also it seems like everybody is turning 50, with Peter Hewitt also clocking in at the half century mark.

Did anybody ever try the nine ply boards? Does it even work? I maybe had a Real with nine plies around this time, but I think something was wrong with it so I didn't ride it for long. The deck simply might have been too small. I don't remember.

My mom is doing well. She had to have a fairly serious operation to fix some standing health issues.

In regards to this site, I'm not sure what the schedule will be going forward. The plan is to finish out the Think scans for the week and see how everything is going. There very well could be a week or three off before I get back to regular posts.

Thrasher - September 1999 Volume 19 Number 9

Brett Margaritis.

Bump to bar blaster.

Brett is from Perth, Australia. He rode for Think. I like how directly in your face this photo is. Brett runs Modus Bearings & Hardware, a company he started in 2003.

Vert Is Dead will be back on Wednesday, April 17th.

My mom is having some health problems that need to be addressed so I'm taking a break from this thing.

Thrasher - October 1999 Volume 19 Number 10

Jesse Paez #6.

Pure Skateboarding.

Jesse blasts a kickflip to fakie over the hip at some skatepark somewhere.

Think came up on Skate Twitter recently. The idea was that the GX1000 team is kind of the modern day version of Think in the 1990s, particularly the second half of the decade when they had Wade Speyer, Dan Drehobl, Phil Shao, and company. Both Think and GX represent raw, powerful, no frills skateboarding.

Nile Gibbs wearing what I assume is a leftover Think hat reinforces that idea.

Thrasher - January 1999 Volume 19 Number 1

Chris Senn #14.

Flat Bottom.

Chris is riding a board with a graphic by the late Margaret Kilgallen. She did a series for Toy Machine in 1998 that was reissued in the fall of 2021 for the current team. CJ Collins was paired with the graphic on Senn's board on the second go-round.

He's skating the rebuilt Combi Pool from the Pipeline Skatepark in Upland. Vans recreated the spot in a mall in the late 1990s. It's probably so much for the best that malls have fallen out of favor with the youth. I could't deal with being heckled by bored teenagers when I'm at the Food Court Skatepark in the McKinley Mall.

I appreciate the subtle little labels that are in this run of Emerica ads.

Transworld - July 1999 Volume 17 Number 7

Dan Drehobl #31.

Stairway.

Dan first popped off the top step into a frontside 50-50 on the rail for a Freedumb Clothing ad in 1996. This was one of those tricks he started messing around with for fun and then figured out what all he could do with it.

Transworld - June 1999 Volume 17 Number 6

Andrew Reynolds #18.

The Boss kickflips into a frontside lipslide. I like how plain his ride is with just the Emerica and Indy stickers on a gloss black deck. I was surprised the trick wasn't in The End, the Birdhouse video from 1998. I think Emerica made a poster of this ad. I didn't really care for the layout at the time, but now I kind of dig the unusual cropping.

Transworld - May 1999 Volume 17 Number 5

Arto Saari #6.

Arto is from Seinäjoki, Finland. He caught the eye of the skateboard world as a young am at the 1998 Munster world championships. This would lead to him riding for the short lived Platinum before making the appropriate switch over to Flip. Arto also switched from Emerica over to éS. There are a whole bunch of Platinum stickers on that rail.

RIP James Hardy.

Transworld - April 1999 Volume 17 Number 4

Donny Barley #10.

Spring into Emerica.

Mr. Barley floats one over the masses at a demo. Emerica was getting arty with their ad layouts in the later half of the 1990s. I think Yogi Proctor was the creative mind behind the graphic design for the company. I like how they look. It feels weird to mention it, but I wonder what sort of career Donny would have had if he stuck with Emerica and Element?

Transworld - March 1999 Volume 17 Number 3