Mike Carroll #13.

Mike sheds a little insight on the motivation to start Girl.

The interview and photo are by Tobin Yelland.

Transworld - June 1994 Volume 12 Number 6

The Girl Team.

This was the second Girl ad. It ran in Transworld. The original team was Mike Carroll, Jovantae Turner, Rick Howard, Rudy Johnson, Tim Gavin, Guy Mariano, Sean Sheffey, Eric Koston, Tony Ferguson, and Jeron Wilson. Of those ten, five still are pro for Girl today. Most of the others have retired from being professional and moved behind the scenes in the industry.

If I remember it correctly, Wallride was one of the names that they were floating around for Girl in the planning stages. It makes sense to have the first ad photos at a spot like this if that's what the company might be called. I'm wondering if it might have been kind of a jab at the idea of progression that was being pushed at Plan B and what caused Mike and Rick to want to make a change. Rather than have the latest tricks, take it back a step with some more basic tricks that people weren't doing as much at the time. They use Wallride as the name of their catalog these days.

Transworld - January 1994 Volume 12 Number 1

Kareem Campbell #3.

Steve Rocco is the type of guy who isn't going to let a number of team riders and a few employees leave his companies without saying anything about it in an advertisement. This was his response to the start of Girl.

Thrasher - December 1993 Volume 13 Number 12

Rick Howard & Guy Mariano.

This was the first Girl ad.

This was the description in Thrasher's On Board gossip column of what went down:

In our favorite daytime drama, team Blind has defected to Plan B. Megan Baltimore and Rick Howard plan to wed. Megan left World Industries to work at a swimming pool company, but first will help Rick and Mike Carroll start Girl which features Sean Sheffey, Eric Koston, Jovontae Turner, Guy Mariano, Tim Gavin, Jeron Wilson, and Rudy Johnson. Other peg Spike Jonze, Tony Fergusson and Lumpy in on it as well.

Thrasher - December 1993 Volume 13 Number 12

Mike Carroll & Rick Howard.

The next two weeks are going to be a look back at the early days of Girl. There will be a little taste of Chocolate, too.

Rick and Mike were riding for Plan B until the fall of 1993. During their tenure with the company, they developed some ideas for what they wanted skateboarding to be that were different from how things were at the B. The two figured that they could do their own company and partnered with Spike Jonze and Megan Baltimore to launch Girl. This was their last ad for Plan B.

Has there ever been an article on the history of Girl? I figured that there would have been a 15 Things page in Skateboarder, but there wasn't one that I could find. I think I can get this mostly from memory, but I wouldn't mind having something in print to look at. I'm also a little curious about some of the people who worked at Girl over the years, particularly in who was a real person and who was an alias used by Spike or Rick. It's hard to tell sometimes when they are joking around and when they are being serious. That's part of the appeal of Girl, but at the same time it leaves you wondering.

The photos are by Carl Hyndman. Carl did a lot of the artwork for Plan B.

Thrasher - November 1993 Volume 13 Number 11

Danny Way.

"I had ridden for H-Street for a long time, and I wasn't happy with a lot of the stuff going on. It got to a point where they were just putting random people on the team. I remember looking at the team list at one point and just being like, 'Who are all these dudes?' It just got blown out of proportion. It was definitely rolling the dice on our part. Mike Ternasky and I had to take the first step. Plan B was basically an idea we had settled on. We had to get it to a point where other people would be motivated to take the step with us. I really didn't know how the other riders would react. Once we started looking at the Questionable footage, I mean just seeing Pat Duffy's shit, we knew that we had the heaviest, progressive, modern skateboarding video that anyone had ever seen. It became pretty apparent early on."

Big Drill Car.

Danny closed out Questionable with a three song part of complete vert and street destruction. The guy does not mess around and continues to push the boundaries of what is possible on a skateboard to this day.

That wraps up a two week look back at Questionable and the early days of Plan B. I finally watched the video again the last couple of nights and I'm surprised that I got nearly all the parts in order from memory. My switch of Pat Duffy and Matt Hensley was an editor's choice. The only place where things went out of order was Mike Carroll's part came before Rick Howard's. I guess all those repeated viewings paid off.

Tune in next week for the beginnings of Girl.

For the quote: Skateboarder - November 2003 Volume 13 Number 3

Thrasher - May 1992 Volume 12 Number 5

Mike Carroll #12.

"I was sick of filming, being told that I had to step it up. There were all kinds of little things that I didn't want to deal with anymore. I felt like pretty soon I was going to get a retirement part. I would talk to Rick Howard about it. We came up with this idea that we could actually do something, which became Girl."

Even though things were going well for Plan B, a few of the riders weren't happy with how some things were being done. Mike and Rick started talking and coming up with ideas for Girl, which would start in late 1993.

This photo is from the 1992 Back To The City Contest in San Francisco. It was the fourth time the contest happened. Tommy Guerrero won and Mike was second.

Bryce Kanights was the photographer.

For the quote: Skateboarder - November 2003 Volume 13 Number 3

Thrasher - December 1992 Volume 12 Number 12