disposable: random essays on skateboard art

trip out: the many spirals of gator, part 2

Call me a creative stick in the mud, but I've always been a big fan of graphic continuity. Not only does it make for a nice wall display many years later (okay, that's in extreme hindsight), but it primarily gives the pro rider a sense of place in skateboarding's geo-graphical landscape. For example, would Steve Caballero be what he is today without his staunch dragon lineage of the '80s? Or how about Tony Hawk without his forever screaming chicken skulls over two decades later? What if Jim Phillips had opted to render a pastoral Midwestern barnyard scene for Rob Roskopp's second pro model on Santa Cruz instead of further deconstructing the original bull's eye? And can you even begin to imagine a Dogtown without the iconic Cross emblem as its premier representative of hardcore family values?

I mean all you really have to do is witness what transpired in the '90s, as skateboard graphics went into maximum overdrive with imagery that became increasingly diverse and scattered as companies frantically chased sales instead of steadfastly tending to their visual mythology*. Almost everyone lost their identity on the racks amid a deluge of identically shaped popsicle products that either screamed in dissonance or fell into step-and-repeat patterns of hit-or-miss graphic series, and that's why boards from the '80s will always command much more sentimental respect than those of the latter day '90s ... all of which leads me to this second increasingly random retrospective look at the first few Vision board graphics of Mark "Gator" Rogowski.

For the moment, allow me to adopt the role of Uatu the Watcher (for those of you that may have spent a lot more time outside the house than I did as a kid, Uatu would be the big-headed, bald, extra-terrestrial dude in a toga created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the hey-day of Marvel Comics history) and play the What If...? game. So, on that foreboding note, what if Brad Dorfman, Greg Evans, and the entire Vision art department had simply chucked the swirl from Gator's first model to run with an altogether different graphic theme, maybe something even so base as a literal translation of his famous nickname? Would his board sales ultimately have suffered? Would Vision Street Wear not have become the insatiable monster that would eventually eat itself in a fit of overexposed, overblown, over everything rage? Would it have altered the very course of Gator's tragic history as we now know it? The world may never know—well, I mean, it won't, obviously, unless you want to get all Stephen Hawking about it—but it would make for a damn good episode of The Twilight Zone (for those of you that may have spent a lot more time in the mall than I have as an adult, The Twilight Zone is not to be confused with Hot Topic).

trip out: the many spirals of gator, part 1

Okay, as promised, here is the first installment of three to feature the amazing, somewhat Hitchcockian, and oddly prophetic "swirl" on Mark "Gator" Rogowski's first few Vision pro models. Prior to joining the Vision team he had two models on G&S—the first of which is largely unknown and much more rare than the original Jeff Phillips model on G&S—but for all visual intents and purposes the '80s didn't begin in skateboarding until this particular graphic started optically popping up on the walls of skate shops in 1984. This is, of course, subject to personal interpretations, but to each his own in their graphic memories!

According to its graphic designer, Greg Evans, the "swirl" originated from placing a board template over a trippy image in a design book—the very humble origins of what would become the synonymous face of Vision (and its soon to be bastard offspring Vision Street Wear). Incidentally, and way off topic, Marc McKee and I jokingly created a very similar "tool" at World Industries in 1992—possibly after seeing the H-Street Colby Carter Cool World rip-off graphic—that we dubbed the "Magic Graphic Finder." It was basically a piece of paper with a more or less popsicle-shaped cut-out in the middle that could be lain atop any image—photo, painting, illustration, whatever—and voila! Instant board graphic! Unfortunately some took this "tool" much more seriously than we'd intended. So it goes with art department wit.

Anyway, the first advertisement for the Gator model appeared in a May 1984 issue of Thrasher. So, for what it is trivially worth, this graphic does indeed predate a strikingly similar design used on the cover of Debbie Harry's "Feel The Spin" maxi-single released in 1985. Apparently, some other art director had the same optical art book on his reference shelf ... or just happened to have a new wave eye on artistic developments going on in the underground skate world. Okay, perhaps it was just another plate of shrimp ordered up in the great cosmic unconsciousness of the world, but I'm inclined to believe otherwise given the proclivity of artists to take inspiration when and wherever it may strike, even if it does mean standing upon the shoulders of others who came and created before them.

Although I never had any personal connection to Vision* or its inner production workings back then, it's not too hard to play amateur archaeologist when it comes to "dating" the various versions of Gator's first model. In 1984, Vision had some very large wheel wells going on in the wake of Sims that soon became much more shallow. You can see how the graphic first fit snugly to these wells [red "team" model shown at right**] and how subsequent runs have more space between the graphic [the eight production models shown below]. Judging from comments made by both Greg Evans and the late Bernie Tostenson, Vision had yet to perfect its manufacturing and screening processes then, so they were only running one full-length color from nose to tail—hence the predominance of white-dipped decks at first with simple two-color prints. Later runs on black would require a white pass beneath the colors to keep them bright and poppy, e.g. the fluorescent greens and pinks, adding a second full-length pass into the production mix. The last significant developments with the first Gator graphic would be the stained-ply boards, a manufacturing advancement that didn't come about until later in 1985, according to John Lucero.

To the credit of the Vision screening department (or perhaps the various chemicals they were working with and inhaling on a daily basis), these guys were always switching up the colorways on the decks. The Gator graphic definitely opened up the door to seemingly infinite possibilities, which certainly kept the model looking "fresh" for the several years it spanned on the skate shop display racks. There are far, far more colorways than those shown below; these are just some of the schemes I encountered while shooting and collecting photos for both Disposable books (unfortunately I was never able to snap a quality photo of the NOS red and black Gator suspended above the entrance hallway to the Skatelab, not to mention many other impossible to get to decks caked with years and years of skate park dust).

 

collector flashback: the gator collection

Want to stick your fist into a beehive? It's easy. Just head on over to any Interweb-based skate forum and bring up Mark "Gator" Rogowski's name. No surprise, really, what with Gator's story being one of the most sensational, disturbing, shocking, and sad in the history of skateboarding, after he plead guilty to the murder of Jessica Bergsten in 1991 and became a fixture within the U.S. penitentiary system (all the lurid details of which can be found in the documentary Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator). Prior to this tragic incident, however, Gator had been one of the most high-profile skateboarders in the '80s with his Vision models selling untold thousands during the peak of the industry boom. I'd even go so far as to say his first pro model on Vision is one of the top ten defining graphics of that decade, making his subsequent downfall all the more awkward for collectors. You know, it's not like John Wayne Gacy was a top-rated clown working in the Ringling Brothers circus circuit before his conviction and incarceration—this being one of the main differences between the morbid fascination exhibited by collectors of Gacy's paintings versus the nostalgia for some over a former Gator pro model.

Nonetheless, for some there is no separation between the model and the man's later transgressions, so when a person showed up on the Interweb around 2002–03 offering a large selection of boards from the personal collection of Gator (each sold with its own signed letter of authenticity from the man himself) it sparked numerous heated debates indeed. All of these eventual sales took place privately, but a few of the boards shown above did later surface in the hands of several prominent collectors, while others I have no idea where they wound up (if in fact they were all sold).

roots: the demon and jeff grosso

I know, lately it would appear I've been more focused on the present than the past, but as any therapist will tell you that's exactly what you're supposed to be doing in life. And, frankly, I just haven't had a lot of spare time to fart around and wax on and off about the nostalgic. But in the interest of celebrating diversity in time and getting back to the roots of this site, here's a look back at one of those graphics that caught my eye in the skate shop while I was desperately selling off my old comic collection and recycling aluminum cans to afford my first "real" skateboard: the first Jeff Grosso pro model on Santa Cruz, released somewhere on the cusp of 1987 (I opted for a Powell-Peralta Mike McGill instead, but the Grosso was definitely a contender).

Similar to the origins of the panther used on Natas Kaupas' first several Santa Monica Airlines models, the bare bones of the Jeff Grosso Demon also came from the science fiction/fantasy world of art—in this case the illustrative works of Virgil Finlay, an acclaimed pulp artist of the mid-twentieth century.

According to Jim Phillips, or as he'd mentioned in his interview for Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art, Grosso had selected this specific image out of a Finlay book that was laying about in the Phillips Studios reference library. The boobs and demon spawn-bearing hips were dropped, an angel was added to the top, the tattered remnants of Grosso's Schmitt Stix rag doll to the bottom, and the end result was a very well-balanced graphic with a strong central image ... although if you look closely at the original prototype version [used natural wood board shown at top left below], you'll see a few distinct differences where Phillips went back and reworked the art for the final production model, e.g. the formerly off-kilter wings, a bigger and more spatially correct banner, and a better and bolder type treatment, among other simplified, less stippled strokes. (Oddly, the latter graphic also went back in time from 1987 to 1986, according to the Roman numeral copyright dates on the two versions.) At Grosso's behest, Santa Cruz later released the original prototype Demon design for the reissue board in 2005 [purple board shown at very bottom right].

skate rock: mcrad live record release party

Yeah, yeah, I've become a real Mr. Current Events guy lately. I swear I'll get back to the past soon, but for now, if you're in the vicinity of Los Angeles and have fond recollections of sound snippets from the Powell-Peralta Public Domain, Ban This and Propaganda videos, then perhaps you'd be interested in checking out a night with the man behind that music: Chuck Treece, aka McRad. He'll be performing live at Space 15 Twenty in Hollywood on Thursday, June 10th, at 7:00pm.

art show: neil blender, grant brittain and dave swift

Art appreciation is certainly in the Southern California air this summer, as the works of Neil Blender, Grant Brittain and Dave Swift are being hung and slung on this coming Saturday night, June 5th, from 6:00pm–12:00am at Hensley's Flying Elephant Pub. To forgo any further redundancies similar to those I made with the earlier post for Ron Cameron's upcoming exhibition Dismantled Hope on June 11, please take a gander at the Press Release flier above for further details on what will surely be an event studded with skate luminaries from throughout the ages.