Chad Fernandez #2.

Extinction Level Event.

Darkstar was initially a wheel company launched by Chet Thomas when he was riding for the A-Team. The rollers were distributed by World Industries. Once the A-Team called it a day, Chet turned Darkstar into a board line. They went with a vaguely sinister and serious medieval theme of knights and castles. There's a quasi Powell Peralta influence on the graphics. I think if Darkstar had existed back when I was a freshman in high school, I probably would've been into what they were doing. Visuals aside, the team was stacked with a lot of heavy hitters of the era.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Chad was winning all the jousts with handrails. He had ridden for Creature, switched to Planet Earth, and then found a spot on World. Osiris was crafting the armor for his feet. Dude was putting a hurting on all the popular big rails and gaps of the day. Check out his part from The Storm for confirmation. It basically holds up for today with a solid mix of handrails and ledge tech.

Did anybody guess that it would be Darkstar for Halloween week? I put two tiny clues in previous posts as a hint. I was trying to think of something I hadn't used already when the idea of using the shadowy knights occurred to me.

Chris Ortiz took the action photo. The portraits are by Dave Malenfant.

Transworld - June 1999 Volume 17 Number 6