Zak Grove.

Ending the year with Blockhead.

Dave Bergthold's company has become one of my favorite things in skateboarding. I always dug them back then and I appreciate what they did even more nowadays. The team ripped. The graphics were well done and stood out from what everybody else was doing, too. I also like how they are making reissues of their boards, shirts, and stickers. In fact, I usually put a Blockhead sticker on my board.

Vert Is Dead will be back on Monday, January 20th, 2020. It's winter break time.

I'm doing a haphazard look back on 2019 so feel free to leave suggestions in the comments on what you were excited about in skateboarding from the last 12 months. I'll see what I can come up with. All the year end lists coupled with the best of the decade lists have exhausted my normal fascination with lists to the point where I don't care about making one or reading any.

Have a safe and happy new year! Thanks for all the support.

Transworld - September 1990 Volume 8 Number 9

Nicky Guerrero #4.

It's a slightly different angle of a Smith grind by Nicky. I picked up a Powell Peralta reissue of his pro model a couple of years ago. I was always a fan and had the t-shirt back in the day so it's nice to have this board hanging on the wall. It looks great.

The photo is by Sin Egelja.

Thrasher - December 1989 Volume 9 Number 12

Hugh "Bod" Boyle #6.

Merry Christmas!

Hugh hangs onto to the edge. This is a sick angle of a layback grind.

Thrasher - October 1989 Volume 9 Number 10

Jake Phelps #5.

The Cardinal Movements

When you know they won't show up
When you think it might rain
When you get it in your mind to live again

Got no tolerance for nonsense
You just get tired of pain
When you get it in your mind to live again

Those dreams are never ending
I know it's always hard to hear
Sometimes they're good
Sometimes they're bad
We always want some better way to say it
Sometimes it's best just to lay it bare

Our book has been written
You find yourself at the end
Turn it over and it disintegrates in you hands
What your touch can turn to dust
It doesn't matter very much
Because there's more time to take more past
And make more time to pay

Those dreams are never ending
I know they're always hard to hear
Sometimes they're good
Sometimes they're bad
We always want a more elegant way to say it
Sometimes it's best just to lay it bare

- The Bottomless Pit

Always remember those who have left us too soon.

Thrasher - November 1989 Volume 9 Number 11

Eric Nash #3.

The Crusher frontside grinds a pool.

I finally set up some new Ventures this year. The old ones broke after a decade of steady use, which is maybe a little too long to ride the same set of trucks. I actually put together the new set from two different pairs. My pet peeve is trucks with graphics printed on the hangers so I grabbed a pair of all silver Ventures last year. I then randomly discovered an all orange pair with no graphics at CCS of all places. After riding silver hangers with orange baseplates for so long, anything else just looked wrong to me for trucks, hence all the extra work. I'm happy with the results of my effort. I might get a little crazy and go with the reverse of these the next time I need trucks since I've got the parts. Who knows?

Thrasher - October 1989 Volume 9 Number 10

Tom Knox #6.

Are you still doing the eight-hour skate day?

Yeah, I usually wake up around eight-thirty or nine. I hate waking up past nine. I'll eat, take a shower, and then everything I do all day has something to with skateboarding. I don't drive anywhere, I just skate around everywhere. Skating all day.

Tom used to put in a full day of work for skateboarding. I think everybody does when they get hooked on it and are younger. Nowadays, I max out at the three hour mark. I still have the energy, but my ollies are not getting off the ground by the end. I usually skate about two hours a day during the nice to not awful weather. Sometimes a little more or less depending on grown up life and how much I skated the previous day.

I'm usually moving the entire time, no stopping. I know there are those all important sessions where you end up chilling and talking to everybody, but I'm going skateboarding to skateboard. This is my exercise, dang it. It's funny because I went to a park with my friend a couple years ago and he's skating, but he's also chatting it up with everybody while I'm focused on figuring my three tricks out and avoiding the BMXers. It's an interesting contrast because I'm not remotely thinking about being social.

I am slightly curious to see if I could pull off a teenage skate rat day, but it would take some planning and a couple different spots to hit up. I sort of make a parallel to a basketball game for skateboarding: you're on the court for two hours and then it's time to hit the shower before doing something else. And let's face it, when you are old, you've got a slate of household chores to get done each day, too.

*

This is a little on the late side, but congrats to Milton Martinez on winning Skater of the Year. My sleeper picks for SOTY were either Ronnie Sandoval or Collin Provost. I was hoping Alexis Sablone at least made the nominees list, but that didn't happen. She gets the Vert Is Dead Skateboarder of 2019 Award for being awesome.

For the quote: Transworld - May 1991 Volume 9 Number 5

Thrasher - December 1989 Volume 9 Number 12

Mike Conroy #4.

Never Follow.

Mike is from Virginia Beach, Virginia. He was pro for Santa Monica Airlines. His other sponsors were Gullwing and Airwalk. He had a strong bag of vert tricks that included big airs, fastplants, and seriously contorted inverts.

Here's a sticker of one of Mike's graphics from 1990. This wasn't his debut pro graphic, but probably his second or third model. I got it in 1999 at Uprise Skateshop in Chicago. They had a bunch of vintage stickers for some reason.

Transworld - August 1990 Volume 8 Number 8