Zach is the nicest guy ever but we give each other a hard time. From your Instagram it looks like you spend a lot of time at the beach — do you surf as well or just like the beach a lot? I love it, and water is softer than concrete. Chris Miller Knows. Where are you from and what got you into skating? How long have you been riding Thunder Trucks? Long time… not even sure, but Thunders are the best. Where is your favorite place to skate? The upturned nose actually helped my skating significantly.
Was that first Schmitt Stix Wolf intended to be a statement piece? What was the overall market reaction to your kicknose… which seems pretty tame now but was a huge deal at the time. Couple things. The shape and that nose, Paul Schmitt definitely talked me into trying that mold. So Paul and I did work together on the original mold, but when I got that first one from him, I thought it was super weird looking. But then I skated it and, all of sudden, my skating progressed so much.
I just had to get used to it. That thing is weird! But I remember a lot of street skaters really liking it at the time…. Super innovative. That was an idea based on another drawing I had done, I just evolved it a little for the board. As I was drawing it, I just happened to notice that shape on the nose looking somewhat like a Christmas tree. So I went with it, just to be funny. Might as well put ornaments and a star on it.
Nothing deeper than that. But yeah, that board turned out really well. Easily the best-selling board I ever had. A nit-picky one, what was that Japanese sticker on your helmet at this time?
Oh, Murasaki Sports! I think that was a distributer and a chain of shops in Japan. Was there ever any talk of riding for Powell over the years? Yeah, I was good friends with pretty much the whole team. Like, Neil and I both got to skate the Animal Chin ramp, which was amazing. I loved the team and everything seemed to be working well. It was up to Vision and ultimately, Brad Dorfman.
So this weird thing happened where Vision refused to renew my Schmitt Stix contract. Not Schmitt Stix. Now, why would I start my own brand with somebody who is fucking over one of their other brands in these very negotiations!?! I see how you treat your partners! You just tried to snake me from Paul to put me on Vision! It was super frustrating. All I wanted was to renew my Schmitt Stix contract, but I never got an offer to do so. So I ended up leaving. I had some creative ideas of my own, which is where Planet Earth came from.
And ultimately, this whole scenario also caused Schmitt to also leave Vision and start New Deal. All good. But going back to your question, my manager and I talked to a few companies about possibly riding for them before Planet Earth really started going… Santa Cruz, H-Street and Powell-Peralta.
Literally, they were maxed out. It was just never really a possibility. Did this manager get you the Police Academy 4 gig? No, that was all Stacy Peralta. By then, he was doing a lot of consulting on film shoots. Basically, anything involving skateboarding. The whole reason I got brought on is because Tony was stunt-doubling for David Spade, even though he looks nothing like him. But I actually went up there separate from the rest of the guys. It was just Lance and I there this time, which was all close-ups and inserts.
We shot some stuff in the mall and us launching over the cop car. That was all me. Like the parking garage stuff? But the rest of it is me… which is pretty funny. I entered a few of the original street contests… but those were really just launch ramp and quarterpipe contests. I always street skated, but to me, it was more about going to a ditch or a bank.
Maybe find a double-sided curb or something, but that was about it. I skated street with Neil a lot, who was such an early pioneer of street skating. But he was always better at it than I was. I had fun but if those skinny halfpipes were too confining, these tight little tranny spots felt even more so. Street was still mimicking vert at that point anyway… which I always enjoyed but never had the same feeling for me.
Mike Ternasky would always try to push me into street skating during the Planet Earth days. I had all this Planet Earth stuff to do. I mean, my pro skateboarding career was over by the early 90s. I needed to become more of a businessperson and provide for my family.
Not only that, street skating took such a turn at that point, too. Was there ever any footage of your street stuff? Probably not. It was all photos. Well, I was living in Encinitas at the time. H-Street was mostly San Diego guys. And that company was just booming at the time. And H-Street felt like the best fit for me. Planet Earth was this creative genesis. I wanted to do a more art-based company that was a little different than what everybody else was doing.
Any other candidates? We live in such a bizarre place. A crazy world. Doing all this weird shit. Mistreating each other and polluting where we live. That was the inspiration. A lot of people thought that it was meant to be an environmentalist brand. There was some of that, but not nearly as much as some people thought.
I know H-Street was just distribution but how would you describe your relationship there with Ternasky? Well, he basically did the Now N Later video for us. And he helped put a lot of people on the team. Jovontae Turner riding for us was entirely due to Mike Ternasky. Brian Lotti, too. Trent Gaines. What were you aiming for with that original team? Well, Mike was pretty visionary in seeing what street skating could become. And he just knew all of these skaters! The H-Street roster was just so deep.
All of these obscure kids who turned out to have amazing careers. Something deeper represented by a diverse group of people, so that it could be more of a collaboration. And I thought it all turned out really cool. But in hindsight, a lot of those guys turned out to be incredible. Like who? I have Mike Ternasky to thank for that. When I first met him, he was kinda shy but clearly had his own artistic ideas. He ended up being such an awesome collaborator to work with.
Well, it was always my favorite book as a kid. My Mom read it to me early on and Maurice Sendak became very influential to me. And again, the anthropomorphic concept coming through with Max being a monster That was a fun one to draw and design. How was filming your first modern part for Now N Later? I imagine a big Ternasky influence there, right? Yeah, Ternasky was heavily involved. We had multiple filmers going. Ternasky himself actually filmed a bunch of stuff, too. Videos are just such a different style of skating, especially compared to the contest circuit.
I know he did eventually make some of them, because they were in the videos later. But I remember skating with him at least 15 times and not seeing him really make anything beyond those initial warm-up tricks. Going out to skate and not making anything for five days? Personally, I like to ride my board and avoid falling as much as possible. When it came to my filming a video… yeah, there were a few things I worked to get.
But for the most part, I thought of filming the same way of how I worked with Grant. Finding artistic ways of shooting tricks that look beautiful. Everything was fisheye, pretty low-budget and not that creative. I do like my part, but more for other reasons. Some cool angles, like shooting a Mctwist from above on a ladder.
I never had creative input into a video before and I learned a lot from Mike, but it was definitely more of his project. Stuff like the voiceovers and movie clips, that stuff largely came from him working with the riders. By the time Now N Later came out, videos had evolved to that H-Street style, which was essentially a catalog of tricks. Yeah, there were some iconic parts with artistic editing and great songs.
But so many of them were void of any personality, just trick-trick-trick. They were innovative for the time but ultimately quite one-dimensional. They just never caught my imagination. I feel like once he was gone, nobody wanted to say anything controversial about him. Because he was a really bright guy, but he was also very pushy.
There was an aggressiveness to him that was pretty intense. I had a great relationship with Mike but I could also see him as being pretty manipulative towards people. From a business point-of-view, I had a few challenges with him… But then he left entirely to do Plan B, taking half of the H-Street team from Tony Magnusson. Which sucks, because Mike was a big reason why I decided to do Planet Earth with those guys. But once I got in there, I found out that there were all these problems.
Next thing I know, almost overnight, Mike steals all these guys and leaves to start a new brand… which he was clearly working on in the background for a while. The thing nobody talks about is that most of those guys had contracts. So H-Street basically let those guys go, which, in turn, gutted the company. And because of that, H-Street then defaulted on my Planet Earth deal. H-Street stopped paying me or having anything do with the company… leaving me in the same position that Tony Mag was in.
I could now take H-Street to court due to breach of contract, because they did owe me a bunch of money. That or just come to some type of agreement and part ways, which is what we ended up doing.
And all of this was within the first year or so of operation. I just took inventory and got a couple loans from my father-in-law at the time. My Dad gave me a little bit of money, too. I got some boards made and was able to sell them to Eastern to stay afloat… That was one silver lining, the new circumstances allowed me to switch over to Schmitt Stix wood, getting me back together with Paul.
But it also forced me to concentrate more on the business instead of skating, strictly as a matter of survival. What happened there? I feel like his leaving largely stemmed from starting to go up to LA a lot and skating with Rudy and Guy. I remember him really liking their boards. He thought the wood was good and loved their flatter concave. The more he went up there, the more their influence probably grew.
I do think it was hard for him. Brian and I had a pretty tight relationship and he always seemed to appreciate everything we did for him with Planet Earth. It was definitely a big loss, not only for the company but for me, personally. But Blind and World Industries were so huge at that time. Awesome skater from Texas who lived in California for a while. What happened to him and a lot of vert guys in his generation, they ultimately came during a shift in the industry.
Buster kinda fell into that trap as well. We did as much as we could for him but he eventually moved on and started doing other things. Why all the Star Wars songs in Animal Farm?
Who knows? Just funny, random stuff. In the aftermath of the Plan B drama, Business Chris had to hang up his pro board. I just never wanted to milk it. And again, I now had a business to run. The industry was so small back then anyway. And clearly not a good time for vert. I got hurt around this time as well… And I thought I was getting old, even though I was only 24 at the time. But that actually was old by industry standards back then.
I was done. But were you still skating? Oh yeah. I was still skating and learning tricks the entire time. And I never thought that it would become a big deal either, but Tony and a few others were able to get a second wind on their careers through that… And then I ended up announcing for them. I just never saw it as something I should participate in as a skater. How close did you operate with your brands like PE, Rhythm and Adio over the years?
Not to diminish it, but Planet Earth was basically my education. I honestly think of Adio as my first real business.
Rhythm was just something fun we wanted to do. But the other side is that Schmitt did do it first. I loved that board, and we're only talking four or five inches of nose. If you look at it now, it's a tiny little nose, but then it was crazy-looking. Schmitt has been involved with many different brands throughout the skate world including Schmitt Stix, the New Deal and Element. His CreateASkate. Schmitt, a skater himself works with skaters and industry leaders to constantly transform the sport and is one of the most respected innovators in the skate industry.
Nominate this object for photography. I worked on the screenprint films for this skateboard and others for Chris Miller while working at Vision Sports, Inc. Chris drew the original graphics on large sheets of paper, which I shot on a process camera in our darkroom to make a film negative. This negative was then used to make a film positive, which would be used to make the board graphics, to avoid any damage to the original drawing Chris had made.
Some refining of the line quality and edges was then made to the film positive, using drafting technical pens and India ink, resulting in sharper images for printing purposes. After making a master negative from this manipulated film positive, I separated the colors by cutting stencils and using a contact frame to make film positives, which registered for printing.
One film positive was created for each screen used to print the board. Most of the film work was done in-house but I remember doing some stencil cutting at my rental cabin in Silverado Canyon, where I had a homemade light table and took work home on weekends to help meet deadlines.
After the deck graphics were approved, I reduced the separations to make films for tees and decals which were also screen printed. The graphics were also often reduced to make finger board keychains. Mark Dulek Mon,
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