Gershon Mosley #7.

The Scorpion.

Gershon was riding for Human with Andy MacDonald prior to the A-Team. He would move over to Blind at the end of things. This sequence looks a tad odd. The caption reads crooked grind and the third frame agrees with that, but the rest of photos are saying backside nosegrind. I wonder if they had to piece photos together for the ad? It's probably safe to say GMOS landed both a crooked grind and a backside nosegrind at the spot since he was wrecking shop on everything back in the 1990s.

There was a strange bit of symmetry for the A-Team. Based on ads, the company was started in October of 1997 and it ended in October of 2000. The last advert was Rodney Mullen doing some type of impossible off a bench. In November 2000, Darkstar was announced as a board brand and the first enjoi ad that simply read Marc Johnson is a free agent with the a painted out ran.

They only had five pro riders total without any ams. Dave Mayhew was added to the team in November of 1998. I assume Rodney was probably hooking a couple people up with boards.

Of note was a contest where each pro did a trick and you could win cash if you submitted a video duplicating the trick. I believe this is how Chris Cole initially got noticed, if not for doing a trick in an ad, but by sending his footage to Rodney.

There was an A-Team section in each of the Rodney vs. Daewon videos. They featured a lot of hardflips and technical street skating. The part in Round Two had a mild paranoid conspiracy theme to it.

I'm going to do another week or so of A-Team in the near future. I wasn't feeling the company when it came out, but now I'm intrigued by the brand. I'll probably end up piecing together the trick contest and winner ads so all that stuff is lumped together in one place.

RIP Zion Williams.

The sequence is again by Chris Ortiz.

Transworld - March 1998 Volume 16 Number 3

Marc Johnson #16.

The Panther.

The trick aesthetic for the three year run of the A-Team was basically hardflips and frontside crooked grinds.

The graphics occupied a strange, high tech, sci-fi space with some military imagery. There's always been sci-fi art, but the improvements in computers in the 1990s made it easier to create this stuff. The A-Team also dabbled with pictograms, although without the visual success of an Alien Workshop for example.

Props to Vitória Mendonça on turning pro.

The photographic sequence is by Chris Ortiz.

Transworld - February 1998 Volume 16 Number 2

Rodney Mullen #9.

The Rabbit.

In a strange way it felt like Rodney started to come into his own in the mid 1990s. He had invented nearly all the tricks that were fundamental to street skateboarding and won nearly all the freestyle contests, but something seemed different about how he was skating in the late 90s. He wasn't the anomaly of the token freestyler and he had moved beyond the complex task of adapting freestyle moves to ledges as was seen in the Plan B videos. He started to push his skating to new levels and pick up sponsors outside of in-house board brand companies. That skateboarding was starting to grow in the public eye again made him the ideal type of skater for some of the projects that were popping up. He was even doing real street tricks, like front crooks on picnic tables, too.

The photos are by Chris Ortiz.

Transworld - December 1997 Volume 15 Number 12

Chet Thomas #7.

The Eagle.

Chet was previously on Platinum before joining the A-Team. He had ridden for Channel One for most of the early 1990s. This was the heaviest trick of the bunch from the initial ads for the A-Team. Chet's switch frontside flip down ten stairs holds up well even by today's standards. He started Darkstar Wheels at World Industries/Dwindle, which turned into a board line in November 2000.

The sequence is by Atiba Jefferson.

Transworld - November 1997 Volume 15 Number 11

The A-Team.

The A-Team was Rodney Mullen's project after parting ways with Plan B in 1997. As was reported in the October 1997 issue of Transworld, Plan B split from World Industries to partner with XYZ under the Armageddon Distribution title. In addition to being a shop with a clothing line, XYZ was doing Platinum Skateboards. As one of the owners at World Industries, Rodney is obviously not going leave the company and hence the new venture. The idea was to create a super team in the style of Plan B, I suppose. The team was built with guys who had been riding for other companies and would have been a step up in terms of a paycheck. And let's face it, if Rodney Mullen calls you up to ask you to be a part of something, you're going to entertain the offer.

Notes: These were the oddest color of green so that's why the scans look a little different. I'm also surprised that Marc is 5' 11". I didn't ever picture him as being that tall. In a similar massive print launch, Expedition One rolled out a six page debut ad in December of 1997.

The photos are by KCR. I'm not sure who that is. Could it be Rick Kosick?

Transworld - October 1997 Volume 15 Number 10

Matt Reason #8.

Here's some vintage Matt with the often imitated and occasionally controversial ride-on grind. This was the first trick in his part in the Physics Wheels video, Dream Reality. A quick review of his video parts showed that Matt also ollied into handrails for a whole bunch of tricks.

The photos are by Ryan Gee.

Transworld - July 1997 Volume 16 Number 7

Matt Mumford #6.

Caveman.

Skateboarding is often a reaction to what is going on at a given time. Skull graphics were basically abandoned once Neil Blender said they weren't cool in 1990. It took until the middle of the 1990s when Creature and Zero started using them again for art because both figured there might be an audience for such things. Riding with the status quo is also a plenty acceptable option, but if ledge tech isn't cutting it for you, why not see what you can do on handrails or big gaps. An occasional back to basics headcleaning reboot every now and again is a worthy undertaking, too. If none of these approaches are working, you can always make fun of things, which is why enjoi registered so well in an era of Osiris and Zero. The key is coming up with good ideas and using them in moderation, which are both practices skateboarding has a hard time doing.

The photograph sequence is by Dave Swift.

Transworld - September 1997 Volume 15 Number 9