The Rise and Fall of Plan B (version 1.0) plus Bonus Text

Original Article from Skateboarder Magazine, November 2003.
Obvious but important note: Plan B was not in business when this article was compiled. The company was reborn in 2006.

The Rise and Fall of Plan B
Compiled by Mackenzie Eisenhour
Dedicated to Michael Ternasky 1966-1994

In the summer of ‘91, Mike Ternasky left H-Street skateboards to start a new company known as Plan B. What emerged, in the following months, was possibly the most star-studded skateboarding team of all time. By ‘92, surrounded by near impossible hype, Plan B’s first video, Questionable, essentially flattened skateboarding and laid the groundwork for progressive videos for years to come. Followed up by Virtual Reality, in ’93, the Plan B dynasty seemed poised for a decade long reign. However, only months after the release of the company’s second video, half the team quit to start Girl Skateboards. As Plan B rebuilt, and began mounting a third offensive, disaster struck in ’94 when Mike Ternasky, the backbone of the company, died in a car accident. One month later, with the company struggling both financially and structurally, Danny Way, the heart and soul of the team, sustained a severe spinal chord injury, sidelining him for the next two years. While Plan B would go on to release two more videos, Second Hand Smoke in late ’94, and The Revolution in ’97, the downward spiral set into motion by the loss of Mike Ternasky would never be overcome. The following, as told by those involved, is the story of the Rise and Fall of Plan B.

Spread 1, Click for XLDanny 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.”

Matt Hensley: “Just comparing our H-Street boards to the World Industries boards—they were all thinner and looked better. I think everybody on the team at the time was like, ‘Why can’t our boards look like that, I want my stuff to look like J.Lee’s stuff.’ Mike (Ternasky) just called me up one day and was like, ‘we’re breaking off. We’re starting our own team under Rocco.’”

Danny Way: “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.”

Sean Sheffey: “It sounded pretty promising. I was stoked. I left Life. I knew Matt (Hensley) and Danny (Way). I had met most of the dudes like Mikey (Carroll), Rick (Howard), and Rodney (Mullen).”

Sal Barbier: “Sometimes you start a team and its just like real close. Plan B was like that. We were all street skaters. We all wore the same clothes. We all liked the same music. We made fun of the same people. Nobody rode for some crazy clothing line. Nobody rode for some wacky ass trucks. We were all on the same page.”

Jacob Rosenberg (Filmer): “Literally my reaction was, ‘That’s f---ing awesome!’ Mike (Ternasky) wanted a tight group that ‘Had the juice.’ as he would say. But these guys, these guys were the juice. It was a super team. No team was ever created in that way.”

Pat Duffy: “I started looking at all the names that were involved and was just like, ‘Holy shit’. I figured I just got lucky.”

Colin McKay: “The first ad, which said like “Five of these ten riders are quitting their current sponsors to ride for a new company…” That was just genius. That thing made waves.”

Danny Way: “Koston got left behind [on H-Street]. We had a vote. I voted for him. Ternasky wanted him. Believe it or not, Mike (Carroll), Rick (Howard), and Sean (Sheffey) voted him off. Putting Rodney (Mullen) on was kind of thrown around as a joke at first. Everybody kind of looked around and we were like, “Seriously, what if we try to get Rodney on Plan B.” Everybody was like, “F--k yeah, let’s do it.”

Colin McKay: “He was still trying to do freestyle. No joke. Ternasky nurtured Rodney to skate street. He wanted him to jump down gaps and ride a bigger board and all that.”

Rick Howard: “He would take you under his wing. He would look out for everyone.”

Carl Hyndman (Art Director): “Ternasky knew right off the bat how important a video would be. Filming for Questionable started almost before the team was finalized.

The infamous first ad anouncing the new company. 1991. Note the Sheffey spelling.Pat Duffy: “He was like a little kid when it came to footage. He loved it. He loved filming. He‘d have his studio at the house and any time we were over there he was always showing us footage of everyone on the team. He’d be showing it in slow-mo, like ‘Check this out’. I think, really, that got everyone really hyped. I think we fed off each other.”

Mike Carroll: “Sometimes you need someone to give you the confidence that you don’t think is there. Ternasky could bring that out.”

Colin McKay: “I witnessed some of Duffy’s stuff first hand. He was still sort of in a trial period. At E.M.B. and some of the rails. He just threw down so hard it was obvious that he was on.”

Ryan Fabre: “He grinded the flat rail at the San Pasqual School—then went out and 50/50d the steep rail out front. He grinded it once, then Hensley rolled up and he hadn’t seen it. Everyone was telling him like, ‘Man, he just grinded that rail.’ Hensley was like, ‘No way, can you do it again?’ Pat was like, ‘Yeah sure, I’ll do it again,’ and he just grinded it again.’

Jacob Rosenberg (Filmer): “Duffy’s part was pretty much done 6 months before the video came out. So Pat kind of set the tone for what everyone else had to live up to. They knew they had to bring it.”

Rick Howard: “It was filming all day and all night. That’s all we did, skate and think about the video. You’d really take any tricks you had and bring it to the furthest extent you could take it. Ternasky would bring it to the table, but you would put the pressure on yourself.”

Matt Hensley: “I remember doing a backside noseblunt on a miniramp and he was like, ‘You’ve got to slide it. You’ve got to do a noseblunt slide’. At that session, I just sort of lost it. I talked to him for a long time and eventually he was just kind of like, ‘Well, maybe you should bail out for a little while.’ I went home that day and decided, ‘I’m moving. I’m moving to Chicago and am going to try to be a paramedic.’ That’s exactly what happened.

Sal Barbier: “I had like two and a half to three weeks to film for that f--king thing (Questionable). All of a sudden all the pressure flips and all that shit had come in. I never really wanted to skate like that. It got to a point were there was like two and a half weeks left and I was just like, “all right, just tell me what you want me to do, bring me there, and I’ll do it.”

Sean Sheffey: “Filming with Ternasky was pretty serious. It was really demanding as far as getting you discipline down and stuff. But it helped. He would suggest certain stuff we should do or tricks to try down certain spots. Mostly he knew what was possible.”

Danny Way: “He’d seriously tell you how to put your feet and shit. He knew all the tricks.”

Colin McKay: “I remember going on tour with Ternasky and Rocco and you seriously wouldn’t kickflip the pyramid at the demo without getting $100 off of one of those dudes for it. We pretty much milked it for all it was worth. But they knew what they were doing. And, yeah, when your 16 years old, 100 bucks to make a trick doesn’t hurt.”

Danny Way: “Once we started looking at the Questionable footage, I mean just seeing 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.”

Carl Hyndman: “It was insane at the premiere, seriously insane. People were blown away.”

Colin McKay: “Every couple seconds the audience would just explode. They would roar. Everything in the video was just so groundbreaking.”

Pat Duffy: “It freaked me out. It was totally weird. It was just like a whole new thing for me. I didn’t know how to deal with it. People are coming up to you and everything.”

Colin McKay: “From Questionable we just went straight into filming for Virtual Reality. There was no break.”

Rick Howard: “There was like no options but to outdo yourself for the next video. For someone like Duffy, who went apeshit in his first part, it must have been hard for him to keep up for his second part.”

Spread 2. Click for XL.Carl Hyndman: “Ryan (Fabre) and Sean (Sheffey) had the whole issue with Sean’s wife. It was pretty gnarly. I think Ternasky kind of sat down with him (Ryan Fabre) at one point and let him know he had to leave.”

Ryan Fabre: “I wish that circumstances could have been different. I mean for at least a year or two after that it did a lot of damage to me. We’re cool now. But, I’d rather not say anything about it that Sean wouldn’t want said. It’s still usually the first subject with anyone I meet.”

Sean Sheffey: “Don’t f--k with another man’s property. That’s all I got to say about that.”

Tony Ferguson: “I was friends with Rick. Guy Mariano and Tim Gavin where trying to get me on Blind. I was talking to Rick (Howard) about it and he was like, ‘Just chill. Just chill. Don’t’ do it’ Later, he called me up and was like, ‘Ride for Plan B.’”

Colin McKay: “I was probably skating more street then vert at that point. It was the same thing with Danny (Way). There were seriously no ramps in San Diego at that point. Danny would fly up to Vancouver like 3 or 4 times a year just to skate vert.”

Danny Way: “All the vert in Questionable and Virtual Reality was probably filmed in a matter of ten sessions. Colin and I more or less looked at what we were learning on street and tried to apply that to vert. A lot of people sort of piece together existing tricks. Our frame of mind was to create original tricks. A lot of that really came from street skating.”

Carl Hyndman: “Sal (Barbier) had a little bit of a harder time getting footage together. Ternasky would sort of be like, “What are you going to do. If you’re not going to get footage you have to make a decision.” I think Sal kind of got talked into doing his retirement part in Virtual Reality. I think he might have regretted that later.”

Danny Way: “After Virtual Reality came out, I think people just expected us to have every video be better then the last. It became kind of a battle. I think we ultimately put ourselves in a position where if the new video coming out wasn’t above and beyond the last video we had it would almost be detrimental to the company.”

Mike Carroll: “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 about it. We came up with this idea that we could actually do something. Which became Girl.”

Pat Duffy: “I heard they (Mike Carroll, Rick Howard, Sean Sheffey, and Tony Fergusson) quit from Rick (Howard). He called me up to give me a heads up. Rick (Howard) had been around Rocco and the whole business side for a while. He had a different perspective then I did. But, I would have stuck with Mike (Ternasky) regardless.”

Sean Sheffey: “It felt lame leaving him. It was trippy. But I was going to go with the guys that were looking out for my best interests like Mike (Carroll) and Rick (Howard). We were around each other more then we were with the boss.”

Matt Hensley: “I was kind of pissed at first. All I heard was that some of them had taken the team van, ripped all the interior, keyed it, and spray-painted it. It kind of bummed me out.”

Danny Way: “I can pretty much assure you that each and every one of those guys today would agree with me—they should have approached it in a different way. They were young and that just wasn’t the way to do it.”

Colin McKay: “Mike was devastated. We were all in a hotel room and I remember him saying, “We can end this right now if you guys want.” He didn’t even know where we stood. We were like, “Fuck this, we’re doing it.” We got Jeremy Wray and (Ronnie) Bertino and it was like, “Boom”. We started right into the third video.”

Spread 3. Click for... Ronnie Bertino: “Ternasky was involved with everything. I honestly have to say, through all the years, he’s one of the only guys that could push you to better your skating and even better yourself. I respect him for that. That part (Second Hand Smoke) was the best I ever had. I mean, he’d go to the spot with you, he’d bring you water—he knew what you were going through.

Danny Way: “In May ’94, we went to the first Slam contest in Vancouver. Mike’s goal was to sit down up there with Rick (Howard) and Mike (Carroll) and all those guys and basically make peace. He wanted to go up there and figure out what happened to just get closure to the whole thing.”

Mike Carroll: “We talked a little bit in Vancouver. He was trying to make peace and be cool about it. I wasn’t totally into it, but I wasn’t disrespectful towards him. Obviously I wish it was a little bit different because two days later is when he…all that happened.”

Danny Way: “He was the kind of guy that didn’t want to have grudges with anyone. I remember being on the plane back from Vancouver with him and he was telling me how happy he was that he had no enemies in his life and everything was going so good. The next morning, he got blind sided and killed in his car.”

Colin McKay: “He was just making a left out of his apartment complex onto Paloway Road. Some old lady ran the red light in a minivan and hit him from the side.”

Jeremy Wray: “It was just surreal. It didn’t sink in for days after that. I was sleeping at his house. The other times I had stayed over there, if I was up when he left, I would usually go with him. I could have been in that car.”

Sean Sheffey: “The funeral was within a couple of days. I was living with Mikey (Carroll) at the time. Someone called up there and told him. There was the wake and the funeral. Everyone was in a whole world of shock—emotional breakdowns and stuff like that. Nobody brought our problems to that.”

Mike Carroll: “It sucks that it takes something like that to make you realize that a lot of that stuff between us was petty. I thought of all the stuff he did for me, not as skater, but as a friend. He did way more than any team manager needed to.”

Carl Hyndman: “At the company, everybody was just looking around trying to figure out what to do. We all kind of winged it for a while but it got real messy. The government came in and basically seized his estate and everything he owned. So we had a limited amount of money to work with.”

Matt Hensley: “At that point Danny just asked me to be around to try and help. I quit school in Chicago, packed up my pool table, and moved back to California, to work for Plan B. Eventually they put my board back out.”

1994 Plan B team ad from February '94 issue of TWS. One of Ternasky's last photos with the team.Danny Way: “Mike’s wife, Mary (Ternasky) tried to step in and help out. She was pregnant and her husband had just died. She was paying for all the advertising, royalties, and salaries and everything with the checks she got from World every month weren’t covering the overhead. She was basically loosing money every month it existed.”

Colin McKay: “ Danny getting hurt was another huge blow. I don’t know if people realized at the time how big a deal it actually was. He cracked vertebrae in his neck. He couldn’t get out of the bathtub. He couldn’t do anything for himself. It was so f—ked. Danny was the cornerstone of Plan B.”

Danny Way: “I sustained a severe neck injury surfing with serious nerve damage and spinal chord swelling which put me out for almost two years. Going from Mike’s death to having that happen was such a hard chain of events.”

Jeremy Wray: “Every one was glad that the video (Second Hand Smoke) still came out. It was definitely a tribute to Mike (Ternasky). Jake (Rosenberg) did all of the editing down at Mike’s house. We just sort of hammered it out. It brought in some extra money, but there was just nobody watching over the whole production run of all the various products.”

Colin McKay: “Mary (Ternasky) was trying her best. I’ve got to hand it to her. But eventually, she was just overwhelmed. She was personally guaranteeing some of the loans. The damage was pretty bad. Finally out of frustration she was just like, “You guys have to take this off of my hands.” I was 20 and Danny was 22 and we started running the company.”

Carl Hyndman: “Danny and Colin ended up buying it from her and taking it completely away from World (Industries) to do Platinum, XYZ, and Plan B.”

Rick McCrank: “It was pretty crazy. I got on and made friends with everyone pretty quick. But you’re just like thinking to yourself, like Danny Way, these guys are legends. You’re kind of in awe. I skated with (Pat) Duffy too, and I was a huge Duffy fan. At the same time, I kind of knew it wasn’t doing so good.”

Colin McKay: “The videos were still going off though. Even in the fourth video (The Revolution). The videos and the team were amazing but the boards wouldn’t sell.”

Danny Way: “It was pretty much a nightmare. Now, the financial burden was on Colin and me. Our board sales weren’t meeting the payroll overhead. We started paying people out of our own pockets. We weren’t getting paid for our board sponsor, we’re paying other people’s salaries, and then working 9 to 5 for almost two years straight on top of that. We didn’t even have time to skate.”

Colin McKay: “The truth is we wanted to keep this dream alive no matter what. Out of respect for Mike (Ternasky) and in memory of Mike. It was such an emotional thing.”

Danny Way: “There was just one month where the dept was astronomical. Colin and I were looking at each other like, ‘What the f--k are we going to do?’ We were probably each loosing about $20,000 to $25,000 a month. It just got to a point where we were like, ‘Let’s get paid and let’s skate again.’”

Colin McKay: “This light just went on, like, ‘Why are we dumping all this money into a company and killing ourselves to run it. Why not just keep the nice memories and move on.’ It was just beating a dead horse. That’s when it happened. We put it to rest.”

Jeremy Wray: ““It was one of those things. Danny (Way) got on Alien Workshop. Colin (McKay) was going to ride for Girl. It was time to go look for new sponsors.”

Matt Hensley: “It was the end of a reign. I was saddened. I mean for me, it was a big part of my life. It was part of my allegiance to Mike (Ternasky).

Colin McKay: “It was unfortunate, but the world keeps on turning.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Ternasky’s legacy lives pretty clearly in Danny (Way) and to a certain extent in Rodney (Mullen).”

Danny Way: “Anyone that dealt ever dealt with Mike (Ternasky) would tell you, there was something that would rub off. It wasn’t about skateboarding. It wasn’t about making money. It was about becoming the best person you could be—going above and beyond what anybody thought you could do.”

Sal Barbier: “Every video you look at today uses Ternasky’s format. There’s the montage first, you introduce the one new dude, get the slam section, the friends’ section, then close out with the main dude—he invented that shit. He made the format.”

Danny Way: “My DC part, that’s a tribute to Mike T. right there. The high air stuff—He always talked about doing it, now it’s a reality. He would be freaking right now. He would love it.”

Rick Howard: “To this day, I’m proud to have been a part of a team that put out such influential videos.”

Danny Way: The timing isn’t right yet, but if there’s ever an opportunity to bring Plan B back and do it right, we’ll do it. You’d have to run the same ad…’Five of these guys are leaving their current sponsors…’ Go get the biggest names out there again, but I guess these days, you’d have to be offering up some serious money.”

Plan B's 411 Industry ('98) montage announcing the end of the company (Version 1.0).

BONUS RAW TEXT:
For the original article, all of these interviews were broken down into quotes from each person. They were then mixed somewhat chronologically to tell the story. To get an idea of how much text goes into these types of articles, and for the any bonified skate nerds out there courageous enough to read all of this—here is the mother lode of raw text from before editing.

Carl Hyndman, Plan B Art Director:

Carl Hyndman: “I think I was pretty much the first rider on H-Street. I had known Mike Ternasky and Tony Magnusson for a number of years through that. I helped out with some of the artwork for H-Street while I was going to college up in San Jose. Right when I was graduating Mike was in the process of starting Plan B. I moved back down to Southern California and Mike asked me to be the Art Director.”

Carl Hyndman: “The way Mike set up Plan B, it was pretty much up to him to design everything and oversee the team and then let Rocco handle all the manufacturing and distribution. He had been kicking ideas around with Rocco for a while. Once Mike kind of made his mind up to leave H-Street it made perfect sense to go with Rocco.”

Carl Hyndman: “Yeah, I came up with the “B” logo—the dick and balls. I had actually come up with about 8 other designs. I had one that looked like an eye chart and some other concepts. The “B” wasn’t my top pick at all. But we put them all in front of the team and they chose that one. It eventually grew on me.”

Carl Hyndman: “Mike had a vision for how he could use Rodney as a pro skater. Rodney didn’t really have a place anywhere on World so it was like a perfect fit with the guys we already had. I think Rodney really appreciated the ideas that Mike had for him.”

Carl Hyndman: “The first couple ads were completely budget. We had like this tiny office in Poway with a small warehouse space in back. At first it was just Mike and I and we would sort of kick around ideas. I think one of the reasons we went with the list of possible names in the first ad was because we actually hadn’t finalized who was on at that point.”

Carl Hyndman: “Ternasky knew right off the bat how important a video would be. The videos at H-Street had been so influential to the overall company that he knew you couldn’t get something like Plan B going without a video. Filming started almost before the team was finalized. Some of the footage in Questionable was even left over from H-Street.”

Carl Hyndman: “Most of the guys knew even from the H-Street videos that there was this extremely high standard for the level of skating. Then when it got narrowed down to just a few guys on Plan B, the pressure got heavier because each part became so important. Instead of your part being like 1 of 50 parts, you now had your part being 1 of 9.”

Carl Hyndman: “I think they had a sense of pride in starting something new and being a part of it. Ultimately, they pushed themselves harder as well as Mike pushing them.”

Carl Hyndman: “Mike’s filming incentives started out as more of a joke actually. I think other people at the time kind of took it weird but it was really just kind of for fun. Like, “Oh, I’ll give you 100 bucks if you pull that.”  It wasn’t really that serious like, “Dude, you either slam or make it now.” It wasn’t like Mike had some price list for tricks.”

Carl Hyndman: “Matt (Hensley) was making some changes in his life around that time. He just had a lot of different interests in life. He was never really the kind of person that was comfortable in front of a camera or being in the spotlight. He moved to Chicago and was studying to be an E.M.T. (Emergency Medical Technician), he got into playing pool, started playing music.”

Carl Hyndman: “It was kind of a mutual decision between Hensley and Ternasky. He wasn’t getting that much footage and I think he started to feel the pressure. He just didn’t have the drive or ambition at that point to sort of take it to the next level. Ternasky was basically like, “Look, instead of half-assing it, you should go out on a high note.” I think after he left he eventually was able to realize that he wanted to skate after all. I think Sal went through that to an extent too.”

Carl Hyndman: “He (Sal) had a little bit of a harder time getting footage together, He dealt with a couple of injuries, but Ternasky had a pretty persuasive personality where he would sort of be like, “What are you going to do. If you’re not going to get footage you have to make a decision.” I think Sal kind of got talked into doing his retirement part in Virtual Reality. I think he might have regretted that later.”

Carl Hyndman: “It was pretty much insane at the Questionable premiere. It was insane. People were blown away. The heavy hitters on the team got a lot of hype.”

Carl Hyndman: “Right around that time the Blind video had come out. That kind of complemented Plan B because we were all Rocco affiliated.”

Carl Hyndman: “There was a huge change in the industry around that time. Rocco started putting new boards out almost every other month for the riders. There was a whole new life cycle for boards at that point. We were cranking out graphics like crazy. The older companies would still keep boards out for like a year.”

Carl Hyndman: “At the time we didn’t use computers so everything was hand done. All the color separation had to done by hand. The early ads were done on paste up boards with exacto knives, tissue paper overlay and press type. I would spend a lot of my time at Kinko’s. It wasn’t exactly a smooth process.”

Carl Hyndman: “Back then people didn’t really keep their footage a secret like they do now.”

Carl Hyndman: “Danny and Colin would kind of go through phases between vert and street. At the time there were seriously no ramps in Southern California. Street skating had become the dominant trend partly through lack of ramps and partly through lack of interest in vert. It was like this dying corner of skateboarding. I think Danny and Colin were just like, “Well we can do the tricks on either vert or street.” They felt like street skating wasn’t as hard as vert. So they just learned the street tricks, filmed street parts, and then took those same tricks up to vert.”

Carl Hyndman: “I think Ternasky kind of sat down with him (Ryan Fabre) at one point and talked it out. I mean he was only an am at the time and having such a serious conflict with one of the big pros on the team was pretty much a lose-lose situation. I think it would have been hard for anyone to go anywhere from there.”

Carl Hyndman: “It was pretty bad for a while. He took it personally and so did some of the other riders. Because the whole team didn’t go it left like this weird tension between people. Eventually Ternasky confronted them and I think they sort of made amends.”

Carl Hyndman: “I think Rocco kind of became the excuse for them (Rick, Mike, etc…) to leave and do their own thing. After Ternasky talked to them I think it all just focused on Rocco and World. I mean they came out with Bitch Skateboards and all of that. It got pretty ugly. But as far as Ternasky was concerned, eventually he just wanted to move on. They made their peace. Mike actually gave some of those guys their footage after they left.”

Carl Hyndman: “Jeremy Wray was blowing up at the time. So was (Ronnie) Bertino.”
   
Carl Hyndman: “It happened right after Vancouver. We had been working all weekend so that Monday I had taken the day off. I got home and heard about it. At first I didn’t believe it. Then things got shook up.”

Carl Hyndman: “It was such a mess. World was doing what they were doing, and we were doing what we were doing, but at that point we had Type A, which was the snowboard division of Plan B, I had a little clothing company called Edward Sebastian going through there. When Mike (Ternasky) died everybody was just looking around trying to figure out what to do. I just stepped forward and was like, “Look, I’ll help out any way I can.” But I was already trying to be the Art Director, the Accountant, the Production Manager and all this stuff with little to no experience. We all kind of winged it for a while but it got real messy. The government came in and basically seized his estate and everything he owned. So we had a limited amount of money to work with.”

Carl Hyndman: “Mary was pretty shaken up. I mean she was pregnant at the time, her husband had just died, and now she had to deal with all these business and financial issues which she had never had any prior experience dealing with. She was like an at-home mom who had relied on Mike to support her. We all tried to help her out and stepped in where we could. But it was like trying to learn accounting and deal with World while doing graphics.”

Carl Hyndman: “Mary tried to do what she could. She sort of started pushing a lot of it into the riders hands, which was probably her only option. Eventually, it became the riders company. Danny and Colin ended up buying it from her and taking it completely away from World to do Platinum, XYZ, and Plan B.”

Carl Hyndman: “She lost a lot of money. She had inherited a small amount from Mike’s Life Insurance, but she had to put that right back into Plan B. At that point none of the companies were really making any money. It got to a point where I was putting things on my credit card that I never got reimbursed for, Mary was personally guaranteeing some of the loans. The damage was pretty bad. Ultimately Mary just had some outside guy come in and fire sale the whole thing. I think when it ended she was more relieved then anything else. It was a tough stretch.”

Carl Hyndman: “Danny (Way) set up a foundation for Mike and Mary’s daughter, McKala. Some the videos are still on sale and some of that money goes back to the Ternasky family. She has re-married since and has like four kids. I think that whole thing just left her with a bad taste in her mouth. She was like, “I just need to separate myself from this whole scene.” She had lost a lot at that point, including her husband.”

Sal Barbier:

Sal Barbier: “H Street was a little over populated at that point, and honestly a select few of us didn’t like half the people on the team in the first place. Plan B had been vaguely talked about with a lot of us even before it started, but I really didn’t know if Mike (Ternasky) was going to do it or not. I was one of the last guys on Plan B because at the time I was talking to Rocco to get on one of his other companies (World Industries, 101, Blind). At one point I remember Ternasky went on a trip. Right before he left some of the H-Street riders who didn’t even have boards had been talking shit on H-Street. I was like, ‘I’m not gonna be on a team where I’m one of the dudes and have some dudes that ain’t some of the dudes say some shit about me. I don’t like half of those motherfuckers anyways so I’m gonna bounce.’ But Ternasky was like, ‘Just hold tight because I’m going to do something when I get back.”

Sal Barbier: “Ternasky was the dude that got me started. I lived at his house for a while when I first came out. He got me my first board and everything. I was already pretty close to that dude.”

Sal Barbier: “Plan B was really just like the trimming down of H-Street. The way I look at it, the original cast was basically the way we wanted it—Mike (Carroll), Rick (Howard), (Sean) Sheffey, and Danny Way. Sometimes you start a team and its just like real close. Everybody liked each other.. We all got along because we were basically the same types of people. We were all street skaters. We all wore the same clothes. We all liked the same music. We made fun of the same people. We all had our own personalities, but we saw eye to eye on shit. Noboby was weird. Nobody rode for some crazy clothing line or some wacky ass trucks. We were all on the same page. As time goes on, though it moves away from that. Most companies go through the same sort of process. As you get older, you still care, but you’re not as protective about things. If somebody else comes along with their own ideas you just kind of begin to accept them.”

Sal Barbier: “I probably had like two and a half to three weeks to film for that fucking thing (Questionable). I think some of the best footage I had was the stuff I had filmed in between H-Street and Plan B. It just looked like the most polished I’d ever been. I had the best outfits on. It was probably the most consistent I had been. But then I never got to use it because it fell in between. I went ahead to film for the Plan B video and then all of a sudden all the pressure flips and all that shit had come in. I never really wanted to skate like that. I wanted to go down big rails and jump down big shit but the filmers weren’t behind that at all. It was really one of the last videos I did because it got so frustrating. It got to a point were there was like two and a half weeks left and I was just like, “all right, just tell me what you want me to do, bring me there, and I’ll do it.” That’s basically how that whole part worked. People told me what to do, I went there, learned the trick, and filmed it.”

Sal Barbier: “The car was just parked there. I never swerved into it. But look at that thing. I had rims before the rappers. Skaters had everything first.”

Sal Barbier: “ Ternasky invented the way videos are made. Any video you look at today uses his format. There’s the montage first, you introduce the one new dude, get the slam section, the friends section, then close out with the main dude—he invented that shit. Think about videos before Ternasky. He made that format. Every video today follows it. If People want to use their dramatic fucking Western music, fine, but all that shit his him. All that shit is Ternasky.”

Sal Barbier: “Videos done before that always had like some corny skits in them or something. No disrespect to the skaters or anything but the way they were filmed was pretty fucking soft. It was more about nice lighting and angles then the actual skating. But with Ternasky, he wasn’t really concerned with that shit. You could be wearing some size 28 Sunbridges and be out of focus but if you did something that would make people rewind it, Ternasky would put it in.”

Sal Barbier: “In the beginning it was all about team meetings. We even had like a mandatory Christmas party were you had to buy everyone else presents and shit. Rodney was cheap, so he never bought shit. But some of the other dudes got kind of ridiculous. It was like too much. Like I had this VW bug at one point and somebody bought me all this car stereo equipment. So then you would have to go out and buy them something in return. Then someone else gets you some more shit. It was like the true meaning of an L.A. Christmas.”

Sal Barbier: “I can count the amount of times a really watched those videos because I never really liked what I did in them.”

Sal Barbier: “I think eventually I was one of the more outside dudes out of the group. Like Mike (Carroll) and Rick (Howard) were really close, obviously Danny (Way) and Colin (McKay) were on their side. I hung out with (Sean) Sheffey. That’s just who I liked to skate with. That’s probably some of the funnest times I had in skating.”

Sal Barbier: “I had just gotten fed up with filming by that time. I started going out with the filmers again and it was just the same thing all over again. There would be certain things I would want to do but they were telling me it wasn’t that kind of video again. I didn’t really want to do tricks that were going to come in and out real fast. They were looking for all new shit all the time. I just wanted to concentrate on tricks that I liked doing.”

Sal Barbier: “It seemed like after those H-Street videos, and the first Plan B video, people had done pretty much every fucking thing you could do. Then it was like you almost had to just start making shit up, just so it would be new. It got kind of out of hand.”

Sal Barbier: “For the second video it became more of a production. Like, before that anything I filmed was just kind of my daily routine. I’d go skate with Sheffey and if there was a video camera around, it got filmed. With Plan B there was a lot of pressure that started coming with it, especially after the first video. You knew everybody was going to watch it. After Questionable you weren’t going out to film with Ternasky anymore either. They started to have us go out with all these other filmers. It just became like a chore. Like it or not, you’d have to wake up every day and go film.”

Sal Barbier: “He was just really a close friend who understood everything I had gone through. He was the first guy to pay me. He showed me how everything worked. He put me in videos. He sent me on tour.”

Sal Barbier: “Mary (Ternasky) had taken it over, and there were other people working there too. I felt I could have been a big help with the fashion end of things and even the overall graphic look. I didn’t see it lasting the way it was. It ended up being a really good brand, with strong riders, but at the same time the product wasn’t up to the level of where the riders were at. There just wasn’t any overall direction after a certain point.”

Sal Barbier: “I was on the team up until ’96 and ultimately I just had opportunities to start my own thing. I ended up doing 23 skateboards. It was a great time though. Especially early on. Overall, I’m glad I rode for Plan B and nothing else.”

Colin McKay:

Colin McKay: “I was good friends with Rick Howard at the time, we were both from Vancouver, the first I heard of Plan B was through Rick. I didn’t get on until after it had already started. It was definitely like the hottest new thing going on at the time. I was riding for Powell Peralta, which was kind of in a slump at that point but I don’t think I really ever thought the opportunity was there to ride Plan B. There was this contest in Vancouver and I they came up with like Plan B sweatshirts on and stuff. That was the first time the Plan B team really made an appearance. A few months after the company got established, they had settled on their pros and started to look for a couple ams. I was actually talking to Blind at the time, trying to get on that and Rick was just like, “Fuck it, ride for Plan B.” Danny was on the team so it was an easy choice to make. I think I was the last guy on of the original lineup.”

Colin McKay: “Right when I got on we had two maybe three months to film for Questionable. I witnessed some of Duffy’s stuff first hand. He was still sort of in a trial period. At E.M.B. and some of the rails. He just threw down so hard it was obvious that he was on. Duffy was a no brainer.”

Colin McKay: “Being with Danny (Way) on that team was seriously the best thing that could ever happen to me. Just having someone to skate with that saw I eye to eye with. Rick (Howard) and I went way back too. Everyone on the team got on so well.”

Colin McKay: “Ternasky was Plan B—100 percent. When all those dudes like Rick and Sheffey left, I still felt like it was Plan B. But when Ternasky passed away, that was when Plan B ended.”

Colin McKay: “From Questionable we just went straight into filming for Virtual Reality. There was no break.”

Colin McKay: “I was probably skating more street then vert at that point. That was the thing with Danny. There were seriously no ramps in San Diego at that point. Danny would fly up to Vancouver like 3 or 4 times a year just to skate vert. He’d come up, we’d film a little, and that was really it for the vert skating. I love to hit the vert. But when Danny wasn’t there it was just empty. There wasn’t even any one to skate it with. I’d skate downtown because that’s where all the skaters were.”

Colin McKay: “That was just for fun. I remember going on tour with Ternasky and Rocco and being with those dudes you seriously wouldn’t kickflip the pyramid at the demo without getting $100 off of one of those dudes for it. We pretty much milked it for all it was worth. But they knew what they were doing. And, Yeah, when your 16 years old, 100 bucks to make a trick doesn’t hurt. Shit, I wish I had that now.”

Colin McKay: “In hindsight, there really didn’t need to be problems. I think we were all just young.”

Colin McKay: “At the premiere, one thing I remember pretty clearly was that every couple seconds the audience would just be like “whoa”. They would just roar. Everything in the video was just so groundbreaking. I was at a video premiere the other day and people don’t really do that anymore. Now they just kind of clap after the part ends. At best you get a round of applause.”

Colin McKay: “It was absolutely marketed that way. The waves it caused in the industry came from that super star team concept. Like the first ad which said like “five of these ten riders are quitting their current sponsors to ride for a new company…” That was just genius. And it was funny, you could do that stuff back in the day. Nobody had contracts or anything. There weren’t any legal issues. If they were down, you could just go grab people. There’s no way you could pull something like that off today.”

Colin McKay: “Rodney fit in perfectly. He brought a whole separate aspect to Plan B. The team loved him. It was never really about everyone being the same skater. Ternasky wanted to bring together different elements of skateboarding.”

Colin McKay: “When Rodney got on he was seriously still trying to do freestyle. Ternasky nurtured Rodney to skate street. He wanted him to jump down gaps and ride a bigger board and all that.”

Colin McKay: “As far as company owners go, the difference between Ternasky and a company owner today was just how involved he was with every aspect of the company. The owner was in there doing the ads, the owner was the out filming the team—it was like 100% hands on. Its like people say, “When you want something done right you do it yourself.” That’s pretty much the way Ternasky looked at things.”

Colin McKay: “Skateboarding was slow at the time, it was a small market, but everything Plan B made in the beginning was selling. People were making good money for the time, like over $5000 a month.

Colin McKay: “There’s no question. Focus was lost on the brand. Even though the team was still amazing.”

Colin McKay: “Rick wanted to have his own thing. It was really never an issue with Ternasky. They wanted to have something down the road that would be their own thing. You can’t fault anyone for that. It was no different from what Rocco and Ternasky had done to start their companies.”

Colin McKay: “Sheffey and Fabre. That’s a whole other story. It didn’t have anything to do with skating.”

Colin McKay: “ The first summer, we went to Europe for a month and had like 28 demos in 30 days or something. It was like nothing to us. We were just amped.”

Colin McKay: “I was 16. I was just happy go lucky guy up in Vancouver. I think the first time I heard about them leaving was from some kid. Me and Duffy were in S.F. and some kid was just like, “Yeah, Plan B split up or something.” We were just like, “What?”

Colin McKay: “ I remember we finally had a team meeting. It was at some S.F. contest. Mike was so devastated. We were all in a hotel room and I remember him saying, “We can end this right now if you guys want. I could care less.” He didn’t even know where we stood. But at the time it wasn’t even a question for us. We were like, “Fuck this, we’re doing it.” We got Jeremy Wray and Bertino and it was like, “Boom”. Overnight, it was just up and running again. We started right into the third video.”

Colin McKay: “ Danny getting hurt like that another huge blow. That was after the other guys had left. I don’t know if people realized at the time how big a deal it actually was. But Danny just pulled right through it. It was ridiculous. He cracked a vertebrae in his neck. I came down to see him twice while he was going through that and it was so fucked. He couldn’t get out of the bathtub. He couldn’t do anything for himself. Danny was the cornerstone of Plan B.”

Colin McKay: “He got up to go to work on Monday morning, after a great weekend. Danny had flown back with him and he was telling Danny how happy he was with how everything was going with the company. He left to go to work in the morning, and was just making a left out of his apartment complex onto Paloway Road and some old lady ran the red light in a minivan and hit him from the side.”

Colin McKay: “Mike’s baby was two months from being born and his wife was taking over the company. It was just the wrong decision. But we were all so young. Nobody knew any better. I mean she had no experience. Like less then no experience in business, skating, or anything like that.”

Colin McKay: “You can imagine the disarray that this women was in. I mean she just lost her husband, she’s having a baby, and then she’s trying to run this skateboard company. It was like you had guys like Carl and other people in the company who were good at what they did but just got spread way too thin. Any company in that sort of situation is going to suffer. I mean their was no leadership. There was no direction. It needed someone at the helm. That was without question the beginning of the end for Plan B.”

Colin McKay: I think the company ran for like another year with Mary in charge. But it was just kind of a wounded animal. People that were really into the brand started kind of asking about the products. There was just no focus.”

Colin McKay: “The videos were still going off though. The third one (Second Hand Smoke) was amazing. Everybody would wait for them to come out. I mean the team still killed it. Even in the fourth video (The Revolution). The videos were amazing but the boards wouldn’t sell.

Colin McKay: “There was a contest up here, the first Slam City Jam. I got first place in the vert. Mike and all those guys were up here. They went back on Sunday and then it happened on that Monday. I just remember I was downtown skating the art gallery, like we did every day, and I looked up and my parents were standing across the street. I knew something was wrong right away. They came up and told me he had died.”

Colin McKay: “That was it. Ternasky passing away was the end of Plan B for me. He was the heart and soul of Plan B. Without him we were just sort of going through the motions.”

Colin McKay: “No one took the helm right of the bat, Rocco sort of attempted to but we all were weary of him for whatever reason. In hindsight I think we should of just let him run it. He would have done a great job.”

Colin McKay: “She was trying her best. I’ve got to hand it to her. But eventually, she was just overwhelmed. I think finally out of frustration she was just like, “You guys have to take this off of my hands.” I was like 20 and Danny was like 22 and we started running the company. We weren’t ready to become company owners. We just wanted to skate.”

Colin McKay: I knew it was sucking at the time. We all knew it was sucking at the time. The truth is we wanted to keep this dream alive no matter what. Out of respect for Mike and in memory of Mike. It was such an emotional thing. If we hadn’t been so emotional about I think we could have taken a good look at it and told ourselves like, “Plan B had a good run as a company. It made it’s mark on the history of skateboarding, but its time to shut this thing down and move on.”

Colin McKay: To be honest, in the very end of it all, after all the shit we had been through with Rocco and running it on our own, after all the drama, and all the hard work, it was Rocco who kind of made us see the light. We still respected him for his business decisions and everything he had done in skateboarding. I remember it was me, Danny, and Rocco sitting around talking and he was just like, “You know what, if Mike Ternasky were alive today, he would have buried Plan B so long ago. He’d have moved on to the hottest, freshest new thing already. That’s how Mike operated. That’s the reason he started Plan B from H-Street. He would have buried it and moved on.” Danny and I looked at each other and the light just went on, like, “Why are we dumping all this money into a company and killing ourselves to run it. Why not just keep the nice memories instead of carrying on with it.” It was just beating a dead horse. That’s when it happened. We put it to rest.

Colin McKay: We actually went out on a good note. We went out with that “Best of Plan B” section in 411. I mean we ended it as best as we could at that time. It was unfortunate, but the world keeps on turning.””

Danny Way:

Danny Way: “Plan B was an idea that Mike and I had come up with. I had ridden for H-Street for a long time and some of the internal differences motivated me to leave. 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 these dudes?” I’d show up places and dudes would be coming up to me claiming they were my teammates. It was like, “cool, okay.” The whole thing just got blown out of proportion.”

Danny Way: “When we started H-Street it wasn’t about that. The only reason I got on was because all of my friends were on.”

Danny Way: “It obviously wasn’t going to be a situation that could be worked out overnight so I ended up going to ride for Blind. Mike actually set that up for me. He talked to Rocco about it and got me on the team. I rode for Blind for about a year but I was bummed that I wasn’t working with Mike anymore. I owe so much of what I’ve become in skateboarding to Mike.”

Danny Way: “We talked for a while and figured that the only way to really fix all the problems with H-Street was to start a whole new project from scratch.”

Danny Way: “I quit Blind and had to get back on H-Street for a while so Mike would have the time to set up the whole operation. It was like a full strategy with Rocco involved. We all knew Plan B was going to happen. The whole idea was that I was going to quit Blind and go back to H-Street to work on the team guys. I just wanted to get everyone on the same page so that when the day came, everyone would be ready.”

Danny Way: “I went on a trip to Europe with (Tony) Mag. I got back and Mike had the new office set up. I basically got picked up from the airport, went to the Plan B offices, called up Mag. And was like, “It’s over. We’re out of here.”

Danny Way: “It evolved into the sort of superstar team. There wasn’t any kind of master plan or anything. We just wanted to redo H-Street the way we thought it should have been all along. It just so happened to be the most amazing team of all time.”

Danny Way: “It was definitely rolling the dice on our part. Mike and I had to take the first step. 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. Luckily for us, it all came together. Once we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel it became clear that we were involved with something that would have a huge impact.”

Danny Way: “Koston got left behind. He should have been on Plan B. We had a vote. I voted for him. Ternasky wanted him. Believe it or not, Mike (Carroll), Rick (Howard), and Sean (Sheffey) voted him off. They said he was too goofy. They called him “Kostomedian.” Even back then though, it was pretty obvious that he was gifted. Its ironic that they all ended up on Girl. Koston was one of the guys that Mike really wanted on the team.”

Danny Way: “Sal wasn’t on the first drop. But we gave Sal respect. Sal was Sal and he’d been a part of what we were doing for a long time. Mike didn’t want to leave him behind.”

Danny Way: “Putting Rodney (Mullen) on was kind of thrown around as a joke at first. Then we were all at a team meeting at one point and Rodney’s name came up and everybody kind of looked around and we were like, “Seriously, what if we try to get Rodney on Plan B.” Everybody was like, “Fuck yeah, let’s do it.” We called Rocco and of course he’s partners with Rodney so he’s like “That’s perfect, Rodney needs to be on a team like that.”

Danny Way: “It all just evolved into what it became. That was really the beauty of it. It kind of happened naturally. The impact that it ultimately had on skateboarding was never something we were really aware of while we were doing it. None of it was like part of some master plan. We never really put ourselves out there and tried to get just anyone we could get. We waited patiently to get the right guys.”

Danny Way: “There was nobody that we ever wanted on Plan B that we didn’t get. Even after Rick, Sheffey, and Mike left.”

Danny Way: “To be honest, the first team was legendary, but I’m not sure which team was better. Considering the blow that those guys (Mike, Rick, Sheffey) gave us, I think we responded pretty quickly and pretty well with the guys we grabbed. We did all that in a weekend. I mean, we lost Mike, Rick, Tony and Sheffey and had (Jeremy) Wray and (Ronnie) Bertino on within 24 hours.”

Danny Way: “Once we saw the footage, I mean just seeing Duffy’s shit, we knew that we had the heaviest, progressive, modern skateboarding that anyone had ever seen. It became pretty apparent when we edited it down and watched it back. I mean, there’s stuff in there that I look at today and I’m still blown away by. We were seriously humbled to be a part of it.”

Danny Way: “When Mike died, Plan B died. That’s just the bottom line. We held on to it for the fact that Mike wouldn’t have wanted it to die. But without the kingpin, it was over.”

Danny Way: “He’d tell you how to put your feet and shit. He knew all the tricks.”

Danny Way: “Contests weren’t that big of a deal at the time, and honestly they still aren’t. But we felt that the Plan B videos were doing skateboarding justice at the time. From the response that we got from Questionable, we knew that we needed to keep filming.”

Danny Way: “To be honest, I don’t think we even realized what Questionable was until tears later. We knew it was good, but I had no idea it would have the impact or the respect that it has to this day.

Danny Way: “After Virtual Reality I think people just expected us to have every video be better then the last. I think after a certain point the expectations were just so high. It became kind of a battle. I think we ultimately put ourselves in a position where if the new video coming out wasn’t above and beyond the last video we had it would almost be detrimental to the company.”

Danny Way: “Plan B really had no theme to the company other then being based on its riders. Ultimately the riders and the videos were everything. As far as board graphics, ads, and all that stuff they seemed more scattered. I didn’t really follow the numbers early on but I know that they were really good. After Questionable alone, Plan B moved a lot of boards. By the time I got into the actual numbers, they weren’t so good anymore.”

Danny Way: “There was really no vert around at that time. We really had to make due with what we had. The vert sections in Questionable and Virtual Reality were probably filmed in a matter of ten sessions. We didn’t have much time to work on it. I had to fly up to Canada and skate some shitty ramp in Kevin Harris’ skatepark just to get some vert in. That thing was a nightmare.”

Danny Way: “Colin and I more or less looked at what we were learning on street and tried to apply that to vert. Most of those tricks in those video parts were sort of thought up as we went. Some of those tricks still hold up, but to be honest, some of the grabbing stuff was more just trying to do flip tricks on vert by any means necessary. The idea was that eventually we could move on and do all that stuff without grabbing. I don’t think there are a lot of people that really approach it they way we do. A lot of people sort of piece together existing tricks. Our frame of mind was to create original tricks. A lot of that really came from street skating.”

Danny Way: “There had been some talks with Mike (Carroll) and Rick (Howard) and those guys. They had been telling me that they wanted some ownership in the company and stuff like that. That was really one of the long-term goals for Plan B. Mike (Ternasky) had bigger plans for it then just being a skateboard company. His whole goal was to get Plan B to a point where it was really valuable and then let us take it over and capitalize on it. Basically, those guys just got impatient. They didn’t really understand what Mike was trying to do. Their impatience led them to just go and do their own thing.”

Danny Way: “When they left it was kind of a letdown. Mike had bent over backwards for all of us. He treated us like his own kids. He had done so much, from helping people buy cars on his own credit, paying people’s bills, and going the extra mile. It so far above and beyond what any normal team manager or company owner needed to do. I couldn’t believe at the time that they could show so little respect for him. It was a shock but at the same time I was kind of relieved at that point. At least I knew were we stood with those guys. It was better, ultimately, for them to move on rather then to be a part of something that they didn’t want to be a part of.”

Danny Way: “I was depressed for a day, and then we just thought, ‘fuck it, let’s move on. Let’s make a Plan B for the new era.’ I think, at the time, the guys that we had brought to the team, Jeremy Wray and Ronnie Bertino, were the best we could have done.”

Danny Way: “Most of everything that they had learned, they learned from Mike (Ternasky). What he had embedded in them was essentially what brought them to want their own deal. I don’t discredit them for wanting to exceed on their own, but I had strong feelings about the way that they approached it. It was very disrespectful. Just knowing the type of guy that Mike (Ternasky) was, it tore him apart. It just broke his heart. It’s like your wife cheating on you or something.”

Danny Way: “The van and shit like that, it was just so unnecessary. There was no reason for those guys to approach it that way. The way I saw it, there were issues, and Mike (Ternasky) was the type of guy that would have sat down and worked through them. And if it didn’t work out he would have said, ‘Hey, if I can help you guys move on and do something else, I’ll be there. But to turn around and start destroying his property and make threatening phone calls to his house, that was pretty much uncalled for. To be honest, I think most of it was really directed towards Rocco. But since Mike (Ternasky) was working with Rocco on the Plan B project, he just got dragged into it.”

Danny Way: “I can pretty much assure you that each and every one of those guys today would agree with me—they should have approached it in a different way. They were young and that just wasn’t the way to do it. I think they even told that to Mike (Ternasky) before he died.”

Danny Way: “I’ve always been friends with those guys regardless of what happened. It wasn’t so much personal issues as just them going out and ruining something that we had worked so hard on. I mean, it was something that was paying our bills. And, the way that it affected Mike (Ternasky) was really what got me to take a stand against them.”

Danny Way: “Right before Mike died, in ’94, we went to the first Slam contest in Vancouver. Mike’s goal was to sit down up there with all those guys and basically make peace. He was the kind of guy that didn’t want to have grudges with anyone. If he had a grudge with somebody it just tore him up. He wanted to go up there and figure out what happened to just get closure on the whole thing. I think he pretty much accomplished that. Personally, I would have just written those guys off and moved on. But, Mike (Ternasky) was adamant about making peace with those guys and I suppose I admired him for that.”

Danny Way: “He made peace with those guys and when we flew home from Vancouver I remember being on the plane with him and him telling me how happy he was that he had no enemies in his life and everything was good. The next morning, he got blind sided and killed in his car. Jeremy Wray was staying at his house that morning and I remember calling over there because I was supposed to go check out some board graphics and Jeremy was like, ‘I’ve got some really bad news…”

Danny Way: “It was crazy. It was just a crazy situation. It was just a really hard time for everyone. For the next couple of years it was just really hard. Nobody really had the vision or the motivation that Mike had to just make it succeed. We all followed his drive. He fueled us all to be the best we could possibly be, so when we lost him we were just like, ‘Now What.’”

Danny Way: “We tried our hardest. Mike’s wife, Mary tried to step in and help out. But it was just a big mess. The way I saw, when Mike (Ternasky) died, Plan B died.”

Danny Way: “I got hurt right before Second Hand Smoke. It was about a year after Mike passed away. I sustained a severe neck injury surfing with serious nerve damage and spinal chord swelling which put me out for almost two years. I don’t know, going from Mike’s death to having that happen was such a hard chain of events.”

Danny Way: “The next video came out. It was powerful but the product wasn’t selling as good. Without Mike around we just didn’t have it together. There were a number of people trying to be in charge of things that we really weren’t capable of being in charge of.”

Danny Way: “We were working with Mary (Ternasky) and Rocco to try and pull the whole thing off. She was paying for all the advertising, royalties, and salaries and everything with the checks she got from World for the distribution every month and the checks weren’t covering the overhead. She was basically loosing money every month it existed. We felt at the time that we weren’t getting a fair deal on the product, as far as commissions and royalties. I’ve resolved most of it with people involved since then but at the time it was a problem.

Danny Way: “I think World could have done more for Plan B after Mike died. They eventually made an offer to take over Plan B. I mean, it was in a bad position at the time but to us, Plan B wasn’t set up to be owned by World Industries. It was set up to be owned by the team. We wanted to carry it out the way Mike (Ternasky) wanted it carried out.”

Danny Way: “Ultimately our decisions may have cost us the company. But we made our decisions based on what we had been taught. Everything that we did was based on what we thought Mike (Ternasky) would be happy with.”

Danny Way: “I called Hensley when Mike (Ternasky) died and was like, ‘Dude, you’ve got to come back. We’ve got a crazy situation to handle. He’d been in Chicago for a while and I think he was ready to come back. I’d grown up skating with Hensley so it was cool to have him back working on something that we all had started together. He brought a lot to the table. There’s something to be said for him dropping his life in Chicago to come home and carry the torch for Mike (Ternasky).”

Danny Way: “It was pretty much a nightmare. Now, the financial burden was on Colin and me. Our board sales weren’t meeting the payroll overhead. What could we do. We started paying people out of our own pockets. Not getting paid for your board sponsor, paying other people’s salaries, and then working 9 to 5 for almost two years straight on top of that—it just got to a point where we were like, ‘what are we doing here?’

Danny Way: “There was just one month where the dept was astronomical. Colin and I were looking at each other like, ‘What the fuck are we going to do?’ We were probably each loosing about $20,000 to $25,000 a month. We hadn’t even been able to focus on skateboarding for a while, we’re loosing money, and we’re not even getting to skate. We were like, “Let’s get paid and let’s skate again.”

Danny Way: “We made a harsh decision, but even looking back, it was really the best decision we could have made at the time.

Danny Way: “If there’s ever an opportunity to bring Plan B back and do it right, we’ll do it. The timing isn’t right yet, but if it happens, we’ll do it.

Danny Way: “The A-Team was supposed to be like this bash on Plan B. I think a lot of people would say that The A-Team was more of a bash on itself.”

Danny Way: “Colin went and rode for Girl which was crazy. To this day I think he would agree that it wasn’t really the right thing to do. But there really wasn’t too many other places that would have fit his style. I think it was probably good for him and his reputation, and I sort of agree with it to a degree. But, at the same time I sort of viewed it as fueling something that has basically been responsible for taking fuel away from us, or at least try to.”

Danny Way: “I think a lot of the stuff that goes into DC comes from the inspiration that Mike had taught us. Not just myself but my brother Damon (Way), who also looked up to Mike. It’s not just things like making a good product and making good videos. There are beliefs that he instilled in you—a sort of inspirational motivation to do positive things, that stays with you. He taught people the formula for achieving your goals.”

Danny Way: “Anyone that dealt ever dealt with Mike would tell you, there’s something that rubs off. Its not about skateboarding. It’s not about making money. It’s just about becoming the best you can be, at whatever you do. He could bring that out in people. Beyond what they thought they could do.”

Danny Way: “Its kind of a weird situation. Mary got remarried and has a bunch more kids. Since Plan B shut down I feel like she just wanted to start a new life. She had to get away from all the drama and turmoil. I respect that. We send each other Christmas cards but other then that we don’t really have contact. She has a ten year old daughter who is partly Mike’s kid. He died, before she was born. I haven’t seen her in a few years. I feel that out of respect for Mike I’d like to at least be there to answer some questions that she might have about her dad. She’s ten years old now and I just want to let her know, if there’s anything she ever wants to learn about her dad, I’ll be there to paint the picture for her. I hope I get the opportunity to do that.”

Danny Way: “My DC part, that’s a tribute to Mike T. right there. The high air stuff—before he died, it was back when Sergie (Ventura) was trying to do the high air, even when Tony (Magnusson) had the record, Mike always wanted me to go break the record for highest air. He always talked about doing it, even the big ramps and all that was stuff that he and I had talked about so long ago. Now it’s a reality. He would be freaking right now. He would love it.”

Danny Way: “There’s been enough time gone by now. I don’t know if it’s appropriate yet, but who knows. Plan B still carries so much for the history of skateboarding. I believe that if it was done correctly, there could be a new Plan B for the new era. There hasn’t been anything come out with that kind of impact for a long time. Maybe it’s time for somebody to come back and do it. You’d have to run the same ad…’Five of these guys are leaving their current sponsors…’ Get the biggest names right now. You’d have to have some money though. These days, you’d have to pay some serious money to get people to leave their sponsors. But, money talks. Money still talks.”  

Sean Sheffey:

Sean Sheffey: “Teranasky approached me. I was skating for Life at the time. It sounded pretty promising. I was stoked. I knew Matt (Hensley) and Danny (Way). I had met most of the dudes like Mikey (Carroll), Rick (Howard), and Rodney (Mullen).”

Sean Sheffey: “Filming with Ternasky was pretty good. It was really demanding as far as getting you disipline down and stuff. But it helped. Depending on if you got into the sessions. We had it based out of San Diego so most of the whole team was down there. He would suggest certain stuff we should do or tricks to try down certain spots. Mostly he knew what was possible.”

Sean Sheffey: “It was big turn out. It was really nice.” (Premiere)

Sean Sheffey: “It was pretty awesome, he would go off at some sessions we were at.”

Sean Sheffey: “The money was good. So it was pretty smart to hold up your shit. That was part of the deal.”

Sean Sheffey: “Don’t mess with another man’s property. That’s all I got to say about that (Asked about Ryan Fabre and his wife).”

Sean Sheffey: “I seen him (Ryan Fabre) in Vegas. That was later. It was all cool. We’re totally cool now.”

Sean Sheffey: “For the second one (Virtual Reality) we were more like up on there. We were more like the stars of the scene so it got a little more demanding. We were out partying, and raging with friends, getting girls, so like all of that definitely got in the way, you know. We were pretty stoked though. We wanted to uphold that little image we had. Like we were the team, man.”

Sean Sheffey: “It was all a secret (Girl). No one really knew about it except the guys that were in there. Then it went down. It was pretty trippy. All of us agreed so that’s what it was gonna go like.”

Sean Sheffey: “It felt trippy leaving him. At first it was lame. But I was going to go with the guys that were looking out for my best interests like Mike (Carroll) and Rick (Howard). We were around each other more then with the boss. I’d still talk to him on the phone. I saw him at a few contests before it happened. He was just tripped out it happened for the friendship. He understood that we wanted to something new and fresh. There was other stuff going on that shouldn’t have been happening.”

Sean Sheffey: “The funeral was within a couple of days (After Mike’s death). I was living with Mikey (Carroll) at the time. Someone called up there and told him. There was the wake and the funeral. Everyone was in a whole world of shock. Nobody could believe it. Everybody had their moments—emotional breakdowns and stuff like that. Nobody brought our problems to that.”

Sean Sheffey: “I never had a problem with Danny. I’ve hung out with him since in Europe and he invites us over to his place. That’s all good.” 

Jacob Rosenberg, Plan B Filmer:

Jacob Rosenberg: “Ternasky obviously had creative differences with Tony Magnusson. And he really had a vision for a super company. He knew the people who he could inspire and work best with. He wanted a tight group that as he would say, ‘Had the juice.’ All these guys were the juice. There was nobody on the team that wasn’t a great skater. He saw the opportunity to do something that hadn’t been done before…like a second Bones Brigade.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Ternasky aspired to make an impact on skateboarding. He realized that he had the opportunity to make the best company, at the time. And he did it!”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Literally my reaction was, ‘That’s f---ing awesome!’ It was a super team. No team was better. No team was ever created in that way. World and Rocco would buy a lot of riders, but he wasn’t as savvy with the riders as Ternasky was. Ternasky saw the personalities and had a really good vision.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “We were sent up to Canada with Danny to recruit Colin.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “I know some of the other H-Street guys were bummed that they weren’t included.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Hensley’s was already tapering off as a skater when Plan B started, but Ternasky wanted to include him on the team because he was a great skater. I think he wanted him to be involved. That was one of his boys. He knew that having Hensley would help build the name, too.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “The company started at the end of summer and by fall they started filming. Ternasky knew that they needed a video right away, and he also knew that everyone would be hungry.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Pat’s part was pretty much done six months before the video came out. So Pat kind of set the tone for what everyone else had to live up to. They knew they had to bring it.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “The first night of filming for me Danny Way did the cab to backside noseblunt to gazelle out on the miniramp. It was like, ‘Wow!’”

Jacob Rosenberg: “The Blind Video came out before the Plan B video, so everyone knew this had to be a great video. Some people felt pressure. Mike Carroll hated filming back then, especially for Virtual Reality. None of those guys liked to be under that pressure to deliver that part that was just going to be insane.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Everyone wanted Mike to heelflip the Gonz, and everyone knew he could, but he never did. Even Rick could have made the frontside shove-it. The problem with filming so much is that people are only going to try so hard.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “What Ternasky was such a genius with is that he could recognize people’s abilities. No one died while Ternasky was filming them. People got hurt. Like when Danny almost broke his femur on the handrail, that was Danny, that wasn’t Ternasky. Danny wanted to step up and try the lipslide on the double kink. But Ternasky knew who he could challenge and what they were capable of. Danny and Pat worked well with that, obviously. There were certain things where if someone would do a trick Ternasky would be like, ‘I’ll take care of your car payment this month.’ Tricks that Ternasky knew that would stand out, above and beyond a person’s part, he was willing to put something on the table as an incentive for them to do it. Cause he knew that if you did it that it would be great for you.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Ternasky was in his mid to 20s. Plan B was his kids. He grew up without a father. He was class president of his high school. So he always had those leadership qualities. He wanted to prove himself on a high level in a very unique industry.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Danny told me a story at Ternasky’s funereal. Now I don’t know if this is true or just one of those things where my memory is not right, but they were flying back from the Vancouver contest the day before he died. Ternasky said, ‘You know Danny if this plane went down, I have to say I’ve had a pretty great life. I’ve done a lot of the stuff I’ve always dreamed of.’ So I think he achieved a lot of his goals.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “After he died the company still had that mark of talent and then it just disintegrated.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “He was a kid who grew up without a father, who wanted to prove himself. And he found skateboarding and identified with the skaters. He became a father for these kids. He tried to inspire and help them achieve the kind of personal success that he did. But at the same time, so that were people are more critical of things.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Danny and Ternasky did not have many issue and the reason is that Danny was paid a lot. He was paid a lot because Danny brought it all the time. He tried harder than anyone else and he always gave completely of himself. So there was never a problem. Where other guys on the team may have been more moody or temperamental.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Everyone would do stuff and they wouldn’t want to tell Ternasky about it. I remember smoking dope and being embarrassed to tell him. He was father figure in that way, where you always wanted to show him the good side of things. But at a certain point people got tired of that as well.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “With Danny, Pat, and Mike, growing up with out fathers, Ternasky filled a void for them, whether they were conscious of it at the time. He would do things for them and be what a father should be for them. If you had bad stuff happen to you, he would help you with it. If you got the clap, he would tell you what to do. You didn’t want to tell him that you made a mistake, but you knew that he would help you if you did.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Everyone on the team was really proud of Questionable.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “After Questionable, everyone took the summer off. Nobody filmed. Then slowly in the fall, everyone started again.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “The comparisons to the Bones Brigade fit perfectly. Ternasky admired and talked about Stecyk a lot. It was like a Bones Brigade for a hardcore audience. At that time if you were a skater you were totally committed. It wasn’t as mainstream as it is today. Plan B was for the lovers of skating, where the Bones Brigade appealed to the masses.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “I don’t see any of it as being mentally abusive. You ride for a company, you have a reputation to live up to and Ternasky would remind you of that. And if you didn’t want to live up to it he wasn’t like whatever, but he also wasn’t going to kiss your ass. And the people who were delivering were getting better treatment from him.”
 
Jacob Rosenberg: “You can talk about Danny, Mike, and Duffy, but one of Ternasky’s greatest accomplishments was to inspire Rodney to come out of nowhere and break down the doors of skateboarding, a second time.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “There were internal cliques right away. Duffy was kind of an outsider. Sal was in San Diego. Mike, Rick, and Sheffey were as tight as can be. And when Colin was in town he stayed with Danny.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Mike threw my board in the ocean one night while we were filming. To a certain degree I should have lashed out then. But getting footage was everything, so I took it. I was like it’s more important to get the trick than to worry about my board.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “When those guys left it wasn’t that much of a surprise. We knew it was happening. Ternasky was kind of sad about the way it went down.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Ternasky had Jim Greco come out back then to get on the team, that’s how much of an eye for talent he had.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “What Ternasky liked about Jeremy was that he was a good kid, a nice kid. He knew he potential. Look at Jeremy’s part in Second Hand Smoke. That might not have been the same part if he was riding for a different company. And that’s the truth for a lot of those guys. I don’t know if they would have had the same part with the same tricks if they weren’t riding for Plan B.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “It was probably the one of the saddest moments of my life. Mike was absolutely my mentor. I always saw him as my teacher and when he died that was his way of teaching me about death.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Mary [Ternasky, Mike’s wife] tried to be as involved as possible. She wasn’t at all involved before. She started to help make decisions for the company. And Dave Andrecht, who was already working at Plan B, got more involved. Carl was still handling the designs. So, Mary was kind of playing the roll of Ternasky, which I admire that she threw herself into that, considering that she just had a child. I’m sure that wasn’t the right role for her. Then I’m not sure if it was Danny and Colin or just Danny who bought Mary out.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Ternasky was the ‘juice’ behind Plan B. You can’t have a super team without some organization. When he died that vision for the company was gone. It took an incredible amount of energy to uphold that vision. You’re also talking about a company that lost a handful of its best rider, but it hadn’t diminished completely.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Ternasky felt that the way it went down that it wasn’t honest. And they may have felt like he was dealing with them dishonestly. Ternasky never stopped you from questioning him. If you want to work something out with someone you go and talk to them. If you’re not interested in working it out you don’t talk to them. I think their actions spoke for themselves. They didn’t want to negotiate, they wanted to do their own thing. To lose those relationships was sad for him.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “Ternasky’s legacy lives pretty clearly in Danny and to a certain extent in Rodney.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “I wasn’t surprised when it went out of business. Any one who knew Ternasky or that company knew that if not in the right hands the company would flounder. To me, in a very poetic sense, the company kind of just blew away. It faded off into the distance.”

Jacob Rosenberg: “It was Plan C after Ternasky died, quite literally. It was like what do you do now.”

Mike Carroll:

Mike Carroll: “Danny Way and I were sitting with Ternasky at Woodward Skatecamp, and I mentioned something about quitting H-Street and possibly doing something with Steve Rocco. We thought it would be so much better graphic wise and board wise because they had such good graphics and boards. But, I’m sure Ternasky talked to Rocco before that and had something in the works. That was my first memory of anything like that. I never thought it would become a reality. We were going to ask Henry [Sanchez] to ride for it, but then he started riding for Blind.”

Mike Carroll: “I was psyched that I was going to be riding sick boards with good concave cause back then the World boards were really good.”

Mike Carroll: “While I was on H-Street, he called me up to go eat lunch when he was up in San Francisco. I kind of ran away from home. He told me I should come down to San Diego that summer and live there. That’s the first time I remember him treating me kind of like a little brother.”

Mike Carroll: “He always had big plans. And I think he just wanted to run his own business.”

Mike Carroll: “Eric [Koston] was close to getting on, but I didn’t really know him that well.”

Mike Carroll: “I didn’t think of it like a super team. I just thought it was a cool little company. Going from H-Street to Plan B, it just felt like a tight little team. Ternasky would be calling more, asking me about ideas, so I felt more involved.”

Mike Carroll: “One of the names we were thinking of was Next.”

Mike Carroll: “I thought it was weird that Hensley was retiring. Then Sal had the retirement part in the next video. So it was like who’s going to have one in the next video? It was like a given that someone was always going to be on the way out.”

Mike Carroll: “We were so critical about people, and we didn’t know Pat, at the time. To us it was just some random dude that we didn’t know just getting on the team. People used to say that we used try to get him kicked off, which was never the case. Once he was on it was sick. We were psyched. He’s a cool guy. But, before that it was like who is this guy? They were just showing us footage of him. We were just being protective.”

Mike Carroll: “That’s the way Ternasky worked was just film, film, film. I don’t know what it was that got him so psyched on filming.”

Mike Carroll: “Filming for Questionable was no big deal. It was just skating.”

Mike Carroll: “After Questionable people were trying to say we were like the new Bones Brigade and this and that. That started to get to my head.”

Mike Carroll: “For Virtual Reality, the idea of having to film all the time wasn’t new, it wasn’t fresh. All of the sudden you weren’t just skating anymore.”

Mike Carroll: “Ternasky would do little filming incentives here and there. He was going to double me and Rick’s checks if we did some tricks down the San Diego Sports Arena double set. He wanted me to do a 360 flip and Rick’s was supposed to do a frontside shove-it. I didn’t want to try it. I only want to do something when I want to. It didn’t really appeal to me. The fakie ollie down the Seven in Questionable, I was supposed to get 10 long sleeve Gap shirts if I did it first try. I made it but I never got my Gap shirts.”

Mike Carroll: “Before Plan B started he would help me with my homework and teach me some studying techniques. And he would talk to me about other problems. When you’re that young you don’t have that many problems or at least you don’t think there are. But he was trying to get us prepared for things later in life. Steer us away from certain things. We used to smoke weed and one time some of us were smoking weed at this house in Houston. Someone told us that Ternasky was coming so we hid in the bathroom and told everyone to say that we weren’t in there. We were worried that he would be pissed at us.”

Mike Carroll: “Him and Danny had a way closer relationship than anyone else on the team.”

Mike Carroll: “It was a respect thing. You felt like he was a parent. At first we liked that, but we didn’t welcome it as much as we got older. When you get a little older you think you’re not looking for that kind of a relationship anymore. You wanted to do what you wanted to do without having someone else tell you when to skate or whatever. At the time you don’t appreciate it, but later you see how you benefited from it. He meant well.”

Mike Carroll: “Sometimes you need someone to give you the confidence that you don’t think is there. Ternasky could bring that out. He would help us keep our heads where they should be at.”

Mike Carroll: “During Virtual Reality I was already sick of filming, being told so and so is doing this, and 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 didn’t even feel like being a pro skater anymore. I just wanted to skate. I would talk to Rick about it. We came up with this bright idea that we could actually do something.”

Mike Carroll: “Ternasky was trying to get us prepared for more business stuff because I don’t think he wanted to do it anymore. That’s why he had us in the editing room. He would talk about getting less involved in some of that stuff.”

Mike Carroll: “We tried to talk to Danny about it and he would seem into it while we were talking to him about it, but by the next day he would be over it.”

Mike Carroll: “We knew that we were going to start Girl even before Virtual Reality was done. We went on a tour and brought the people that we knew were going to ride for us and made Girl shirts and wore them on the tour. When we got back, it was the day before the S.F. contest, we called Ternasky to let him know. Rick called him to tell him, and then we met with him for breakfast to talk about it. At the time I didn’t really care about telling him, but now when I look back, it was kind of gnarly. He didn’t show that he was hurt by us leaving, but I’m sure that after all that he did for us he felt bad. I would have if I was him.”

Mike Carroll: “We knew that we were going to get shut down if we let anyone know that we were going to start Girl. So we had to be secretive. It’s what we had to do.”

Mike Carroll: “I didn’t really speak to him after that. Something got back to me about something he said about me and it kind of made be bitter towards him. It made me not want to talk to him at all. I don’t know if any of it was true.”

Mike Carroll: “We talked a little bit in Vancouver. I don’t really remember much because I still had a chip on my shoulder. He was trying to make peace and be cool about it. I wasn’t totally into it, but I wasn’t disrespectful towards him. Obviously I wish it was a little bit different because two days later is when he…all that happened.”

Mike Carroll: “It sucks that it takes something like that to make you realize that a lot of that stuff was petty. I thought of all the stuff he did for me, not as skater, but as a friend. He did way more than any team manager needed to.”

Mike Carroll: “They were good times, hard times, learning times and growing times. I was on Plan B from the age of 15 to 18. And those are the hardest years for any kind of parent.”

Jeremy Wray:

Jeremy Wray: “I had kind of heard of him (Mike Ternasky) through the H-Street videos and all that. But I had never really met him. My first impressions were just that he was a super down to earth guy. When I met him I really had no idea how much involvement he had actually had in all the teams he had worked with. Like, even all the stuff that I had liked about the H-Street videos. From the day that I met him to the last day he was around, we got along really good.”

Jeremy Wray: “When I got on, they sort of knew that they had to make another video but most of the people weren’t actually filming yet. I had been filming the whole time so I sort of got right into it.”

Jeremy Wray: “Back then it was just more fun. You sort of knew what you had to do but it was really just a matter of skating and filming.”

Jeremy Wray: “I had seen Danny (Way) and Colin (McKay) at contests and stuff. When I was riding for Color, we had done some demos together for all the European contests that year. I knew them a little so when I got on everything was cool.”

Jeremy Wray: “ I was staying at Mike’s house when it happened. We had just gotten back from the Slam City Jam contest in Vancouver. I was still sleeping and he left to go to work like any other day. He got hit at the intersection right down the street from his house. Eventually, Dave Andrecht came by the house looking for Mary. He had to break the news to her. Since I was there, he told me what happened. It was just surreal. It didn’t sink in for days after that. Dave left me at the house and was just like, “If Mary comes home you have to break the news to her.” I waited around for a couple of hours then drove home to my parents’ house. By the time I got home, my parents had already heard. They knew that I was staying down there and they were kind of tripping because they really didn’t know if I had been in the car with him. The other times I had stayed over there, if I was up when he was going to work, I would usually go with him. I could have been in there.”

Jeremy Wray: “The people that were working for Plan B were just trying to cover all the bases and everything. Nobody really knew all the stuff that Mike did. He was doing so much for one person to do. Everyone was pitching in but without that one person who knew everything that was going on, it was impossible. There were all these little pieces, and nobody knew how they were supposed to all fit together. It was tough.”

Jeremy Wray: “Mary tried to take charge but she really didn’t know enough about skateboarding to get it all done right. Dave Andrecht was trying to help out. Carl Hyndman was doing parts. Pretty soon after that though, Danny and Colin just bought the whole thing and tried to do it on their own.”

Jeremy Wray: “Every one was glad that the video still came out. It was kind of a tribute to Mike and everything. Jake Rosenberg did all of the editing down at Mike’s house. We just sort of hammered it out.”

Jeremy Wray: “The videos brought in a lot of extra money, so it was still doing allright. But there was just nobody watching over the whole production run of all the various products. I think the products ended up suffering the most. I mean we had about nine riders on the team but would only have like three boards out at a time. It seemed like it was almost in rotation. There was never a time when you could get anyone’s board you wanted. On top of all that, we were in line with all those other World companies too. Without Mike pushing our stuff through, our boards were sitting longer then a lot of the other ones. Nobody was cracking the whip anymore.”

Jeremy Wray: “It was really out of most of our hands. That made it even more frustrating in a sense. People tried but it just wouldn’t work. Danny had his neck injury around that time too and didn’t have a part in the video.”

Jeremy Wray: “We all stuck with it up until the very end. We got through one more video, The Revolution, and then eventually Danny and Colin just had to pull the plug. They had basically been fronting the money out of their own pockets to get everything made for a couple of years. They weren’t paying themselves royalties or anything. They were putting anything they had back into the company, trying to make it work. For the last couple months, they brought me and Pat Duffy in as owners too. We for fitted our monthly pay to try and help out. In the end, we just knew it couldn’t go on. Without backing, it wasn’t going to work.”

Jeremy Wray: “They started the A-team with the idea of it being the next Plan B. But when it actually came out it seemed pretty different. Something was missing.”

Jeremy Wray: “It was one of those things. The way I found out it was done was when Danny got on Alien Workshop. Colin was going to ride for Girl. At that point we all knew, it was time to go look for new sponsors.”

Jeremy Wray: “We were going to try and do a best of Plan B video. I honestly think it might happen one day, but back then we ended up doing the 411 industry part kind of as a goodbye part.”

Jeremy Wray: “I heard they beat up the team van pretty good when they left. They abandoned the Plan B van on the East coast. They had taken it on a trip and pretty much just trashed the inside, cut up the interior and tagged all over it. It was wrecked. They left it out there and just went home. Mike sent someone out there to get it. We still used that same van for the next three or four years after that. It still had all this stuff written all over the ceiling. I think Mike wanted to prove a point by keeping it.”

Pat Duffy:

Pat Duffy: “Mike Ternasky first approached me. I had gotten like two boxes or something from H-Street at that point. He said he was going to start something new with a couple of people from the H-Street teams. They didn’t have the name or anything yet. I didn’t know anyone else at the time and I had only dealt with Ternasky so I was like, ‘Whatever you’re doing, I’m doing.’”

Pat Duffy: “They already had my sponsor me tape and some of that footage ended up being used in Questionable.”

Pat Duffy: “A few months after that, Mike came up to San Francisco at the Embarcadero, we skated, and he was like, ‘Ok, I’m going to do this thing and I want you on.’ That September, in ’91, it was at the Disco in ‘Frisco contest in the fountains were we all came out and wore our Plan B shirts.”

Pat Duffy: “For me it was all kind of crazy. I started looking at all the names that were involved and was just like, ‘Holy shit’. I had no idea who was going to be involved. I just knew Mike wanted me to ride for his team. When the team came together, I freaked out. Everyone on the team was so amazing. I figured I just got lucky with it..”

Pat Duffy: “We pretty much went straight into the filming. Ternasky was like a little kid when it came to video footage. He loved it. He loved filming. He loved watching the footage. He ‘d have his studio at the house and any time we were over there he always showing us footage of everyone on the team. He’d be showing it in slow-mo, like ‘Check this out’. He loved that shit. He loved showing the team what everyone else was doing. I think, really, that got everyone really hyped. I think we fed off each other.”

Pat Duffy: “It was pretty crazy for me. One of my first trips to San Diego, Carl Hyndman picked me up and we went to meet Ternasky at one of those San Diego schools. Danny Way was there and the first thing Mike says is, “Yeah, you’re staying with Danny tonight.” I was 17 and was just like, “whoa, this is weird. I’m going to Danny Way’s house.’ I just got thrown into the mix.”

Pat Duffy: “Hensley too, he was like my idol at that point, like serious idol. I had like 12 Kingsize Hensley boards in a row. I mean, I went filming with him a couple of times and was just tripping out, like, ‘Oh shit, I’m skating with Matt Hensley.’”

Pat Duffy: “It freaked me out. It was totally weird. At the premiere, It was just like a whole new thing for me. I didn’t know how to deal with it. People are coming up to you and everything.”

Pat Duffy: “I didn’t really feel pressure at the time. Mike just had us filming and that was pretty much all you had to handle.”

Pat Duffy: “I got a snowboard for the 360 flip noseslide down the Balboa ledge. He’s like, ‘Go down to Pacific Drive and pick one out.’ It was awesome. I think the way he did it worked. Like it wasn’t like some Nazi filmer dude forcing you to do stuff. If you didn’t feel comfortable with something, he wouldn’t push you or anything. It was totally friendly.”

Pat Duffy: “I can’t remember really not filming back then. It wasn’t like we were pushed, like, “You guys are filming every day or you’re off the team.” I t was more just like all of us wanted to do it. That was what we did. We did a pretty heavy summer tour, and then it was straight back into filming for Virtual Reality.”

Pat Duffy: “For Questionable, I had tried to kickflip backside noseblunt slide the bench in Webb Park for a while but never actually rode away from it. That kind of bummed me out. I used to freak out back then too, throw my board and all that.”

Pat Duffy: “I didn’t really hang out with Rick and Mike every day. I lived in San Diego on the beach with my friends from Morrin. I kind of kept to myself. I hung out with Sal a lot. He’d skate, but a lot of the time he’d just be at Pacific Drive chilling. When we needed to film I would go do that. But other then that, I kind of stayed out of the business aspect.”

Pat Duffy: “There was always little things going down with Rocco. I just always remember Ternasky going like, ‘Fuck, these guys at World are doing this or that.’ I think he just worked through it.”

Pat Duffy: “That big kinked rail in Virtual Reality, that was Danny’s rail, he wanted to do it. He just wanted someone to skate it with. I was there that day so I skated it with him. We were both convinced we were going to do it. That was a fun day actually. That was great. Danny got a lot further then I did. We both slammed.”

Pat Duffy: “I actually heard it from Rick Howard. It was around September, at the Back to the City contest in ’93. He called me and told me that morning. I remember Rick saying he just wanted to give me a heads up. It freaked me out. I didn’t know what to do. But, you know, Ternasky was really the only guy I would…I hadn’t been around the business side like those guys had. Rick (Howard) was around the whole business side for a while. He was in L.A. dealing with the World (Industries) guys and all that. He had a whole different perspective on it. I just skated. I would have stuck with Mike (Ternasky) regardless.”

Pat Duffy: “It was different after they left. There was a different vibe for sure. But, we still stuck with it. It was different, but it was still awesome. It was still Plan B.”

Pat Duffy: “I heard about it a couple days later. I called to talk to him and they just broke the news to me like, ‘I can’t believe you havn’t heard yet.’ I kind of freaked. I actually didn’t say anything to my roommates or anyone. I just went about my day. That night, I got a bunch of beers and just tried to let it sink in.”

Pat Duffy: “We all knew we wanted to keep it going, but I don’t think anyone really knew how. We all felt that he would have wanted us to keep it going.”

Pat Duffy: “I was pretty removed from it all. I was living in Lake Tahoe, snowboarding. I rode for Type A. I would fly down to San Diego every now and then to film, but other then that I stayed away from it. It was Carl (Hyndman) and Mary Ternasky keeping it together. I never really wanted to be involved on the business side.”

Pat Duffy: “By ’96, Mary (Ternasky) was just over it. It was totally understandable. She had been trying to run this company without any experience. She just got thrown into it. Danny, Colin, Jeremy, and myself ultimately took over the ownership. But really it was Danny and Colin that tried their hardest. There was all these issues going on inside, with the whole XYZ/Platinum side of it. It’s a lot of work. I mean, I give them props for what they did. They did it for a while. But they’re skating and trying to live their skateboard careers and all that and then trying to run this company. It just got hard.”

Pat Duffy: “You could kind of see it coming. I mean, we stopped paying ourselves for the last couple of months. There was all kinds of problems with accounting and stuff like that. I didn’t keep up with it too much, but you could see it coming. One day, they just called up and were like, ‘We can’t do it anymore. We got fucked over from the inside. As of now, we just can’t do it.’ That was like ’97. Everyone wanted to keep it going, but there was just now way. It was wearing on Danny and Colin. They lived it, day in and day out. It just had to die.”

Rick McCrank:

Rick McCrank: “I was riding for a local Vancouver company when I met Colin. I was talking to him about getting on another board company and he was like, ‘Well, if it doesn’t pan out, come talk to me.’ I thought he meant he was going to help me get on some other company. I talked to him some more and he was like, ‘We’ll see about you getting on Plan B.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, really?’ I went down to San Diego and skated with Pat Chanitta and Jeremy Wray a little bit, met Mary (Ternasky) and the people there, then came home and got a call like, ‘Ok, you’re an am on Plan B’ I freaked out. I remember I was going to Costa Rica on vacation and, riding on a bus in the middle of Costa Rica I was tripping to myself like, ‘Oh shit, I better learn how to skate.’”

Rick McCrank: “Mary (Ternasky) was running everything.”

Rick McCrank: “It was pretty crazy. I made friends with everyone pretty quick. But you’re just like thinking to yourself, like Danny Way, these guys are legends. You’re kind of in awe. I skated with Duffy too, and I was a huge Duffy fan.”

“I was so stoked—going on tour with Hensley and stuff. It was amazing.”

Rick McCrank: “I rode for Plan B until it went out of business. I had a horrible part in the Revolution. It was like me and my friends with a video camera, skating around Vancouver. I had no idea how to film a video part.”

Rick McCrank: “I was am the whole time but was supposed to go pro right when it ended. I had a graphic drawn up and everything. I almost had a Plan B board. I still have the printout of the graphic with my name on it though. At least I got that.”

Rick McCrank: “I kind of knew it wasn’t doing so good. They had hired some people that weren’t doing their jobs and stuff like that. I think it was Colin that called me up and told me. He was just like, ‘We’re shutting it down.’ I was like ‘Whoa, ok.’ After that I just got it into my head that I wanted to get a sponsor that wasn’t going to go out of business. My daughter had just been born and I needed something stable.”

Rick McCrank: “I think Danny was talking to Tony at the time about him getting on Birdhouse. They were sort of entertaining the thought. I asked Danny like, “Well, can you see if I can get on?” He called me back a few minutes later and was like, ‘Yeah, they’re down.’”

Matt Hensley:

Matt Hensley: “The first I heard of it was through Mike Ternasky. I had kind of had a feeling that it was going to happen for a long time. We had talked about doing something beforehand. Just comparing our H-Street boards to the World Industries boards. They were all thinner and looked better. I think everybody on the team at the time was like, ‘Why can’t our boards look like that, why can’t our wheels be that small. I want my stuff to look like J.Lee’s stuff.’ Mike just called me up one day and was like, ‘we’re breaking off. We’re starting our own team.’ He had hooked it all up with Rocco and Mike was my man so I went along.

Matt Hensley: “Mike just wanted to have his best riders from H-Street. Obviously from a business standpoint, you want to start with the best team you can get. That’s what Mike did. Mike was very calculating.”

Matt Hensley: “I trusted Mike. He had treated me well through all those years. Him telling us that we we’re doing this new company and our boards were going to look the way we wanted was pretty much enough for everyone to smile and be like, ‘All right, lets get it on.’”

Matt Hensley: “If there was weirdness going on, I think it was strictly between Mike (Ternasky) and Tony (Magnusson). I don’t think it was so much with the riders. Obviously, there was a little bit of tension. But Mike was almost like one of us. He was filming with us every day and was always there. If there were any hard feelings, it was totally understandable.”

Matt Hensley: “We definitely wanted to have the video to establish Plan B. I mean H-Street was a big name back then. We needed to make some impact. Everybody had big plans for Plan B, so the video had to be as strong as possible.”

Matt Hensley: “My decision to leave became relatively simple. I was going through kind of a weird time in my life, that’s the best I can really summarize it. I was filming for the video and Mike (Ternasky) wanted me to do all these tricks that I wasn’t doing at the time. I remember doing a backside noseblunt on a miniramp and he was like, ‘You’ve got to slide it. You’ve got to do a noseblunt slide’ At that session, I just sort of lost it. I talked to him for a long time and eventually he was just kind of like, ‘Well, maybe you should bail out for a little while.’ As weird as it was, I just went home that day and decided, ‘I’m moving. I’m moving to Chicago and am going to try to be a paramedic.’ That’s exactly what happened.

Matt Hensley: “For me, he wasn’t just my team manager. He was somebody I looked up to and talked to about how my life was going. He was almost like a father figure to us. For me, having him think that my leaving was an ok thing to do really made it ok in my head. It just made it ok to get out of the limelight for a while and figure things out. For me, at the time, I’m sure I could have made a lot of other people a lot more money. But Mike didn’t think of it like that. He thought about what was best for me. Like when I moved to Chicago and got heavily into billiards, Mike bought me a billiards table to support me. He was a champion.”

Matt Hensley: “I worked at a skateboard shop in Chicago so everyday I was still in contact with skateboarding. Teams would come to town and a lot of them would just stay at my house. I still talked to Mike on the phone all the time. I talked to the boys when I could. It was probably weird for some of the kids coming into the shop. They would come in like, ‘I want a set of bearings and I want that deck’ and then it would hit them after a little bit like, “Aren’t you…” I was just like, ‘I am and do you want some griptape with that?’”

Matt Hensley: “I came back when Mike died. I got a call from Danny (Way) on the phone. He told me that Mike had died in a car accident. I flew out to the funeral and talked to some of the guys. At that point Danny just asked me to be around to try and help the company and help Mary (Ternasky). It didn’t take me very long to come to the conclusion that that’s what I needed to do. I was going to school at the art institute of Chicago. I quit school, packed up my pool table, and moved back to California, to work for Plan B. I would drive the tour van, and I knew most of the shop owners anyways from doing demos there myself back in the day. It felt really comfortable for me. I skated the demos and hung out, and I didn’t have all the same pressures that I had before. Eventually, after doing that for a while, I was skating all the time again so it just made sense to have a board out again.”

Matt Hensley: “I was kind of pissed at first. All I heard was that some of them had taken the team van, ripped all the interior and spray-painted it. It kind of bummed me out. I’ve seen all the guys since and I have no hard feelings towards anybody. It is what it was. I still love those guys.”

Matt Hensley: “We did keep that van. I drove that sucker before and after that incident. That thing still went to Arizona and Texas and all these places like five more times. I would have voted to get a new one but somebody wanted to stick with it so that’s what we did.”

Matt Hensley: “I had a board on Plan B until the day Danny (Way) called me up and told me it was done. I wasn’t really aware of the troubles they were having because I wasn’t a money member or owner or anything. It was still a pretty big operation in terms of money. I mean you had to have some serious dough if you wanted to part of the owners. I don’t rock that large anymore. I never really have.”

Matt Hensley: “I was saddened. It was the end of a reign. I mean for me, it was a big part of my life. It was part of my allegiance to Mike (Ternasky). One way or the other, I was down for the crime. It was that and when they quit making Gullwing Pro III’s. I haven’t gotten over it.”  

Ronnie Bertino:

Ronnie Bertino: “Danny had approached me. Mike had been quoted in Big Brother, years before, saying ‘Ronnie Bertino is one of the most underrated pro skaters.’ I think at the time, some of the original dudes on the team weren’t to into me.”

Ronnie Bertino: “I knew Mikey (Carroll) really well. I didn’t really know the reasoning for them leaving, but I tried to stay out of all that. They decided to do something new and that was cool. I had nothing against them.”

Ronnie Bertino: “Jeremy (Wray) and I had skated for the Hot Skates Shop team together when we were kids. We used to skate those Powell shop team contests. I got to know him a lot better when we got on Plan B together.”

Ronnie Bertino: “We had been skating a lot. I had been trying to accumulate footage and doing the whole Blind thing. For Plan B, at that point, since those guys had just left, it was kind of wanted and needed for us to put out a video and show that Plan B still had the rep that it had. But you still had Danny on the team. His rep will never go away. But as far as the street guys went, it was kind of more on us.”

Ronnie Bertino: “Ternasky was involved with everything. I honestly have to say, through all the years, he’s one of the only guys that could push you to better your skating and even better yourself in general. I respect him for that. I mean, that was the best part I ever had. I mean, he’d go to the spot with you, he’d bring you a water—he knew what you were going through, you know. He wasn’t the guy over your shoulder, like, ‘come on, make it, dick.’ He would be like, ‘This is such a sick trick, you’ve got to make it.’ He knew how to motivate people.”

Ronnie Bertino: “I remember at Christmas time, he’s have these Christmas parties. Everybody would go out, and buy someone else presents. It was like a little family deal. It was cool, hanging with Sal, the comedian, and Duffy. It was a good group.”

Ronnie Bertino: “He was one of the guys that brought some of the best skating out in me and I could never forget that. It was crazy, because right before that we were in Canada and we had all these talks about what the team was going to do and he had all these plans for the company and everything and then we get home and the next day we hear that he died. For me Plan B was dead right then. It was Ternasky’s deal. He was a hands on guy. He handled the business side and he’d be out there filming. Without Ternasky, there is no Plan B.”

Ronnie Bertino: “Eventually, they wanted to cut my checks a little bit. It was mostly me just being a stupid kid and being like ‘Fuck it, I’m out of here.’ I left Plan B and then realized I really had nowhere to go. But I think Mike passing away just changed everyone. It was such a tight nit deal and all of a sudden it all changed. It made me look at life differently.  

Tony Fergusson:

Tony Ferguson: “It was the best skaters all together. Elite team.”

Tony Ferguson: “I was friends with Rick. Guy Mariano and Tim Gavin where trying to get me on Blind. I was talking to Rick about it and he was like, ‘Just chill. Just chill. Don’t’ do it’ Then later Rick called me and was like ride for us. So he told me to call Ternasky. I was really stoked ’cause I already knew Rick, Colin, and Danny Way.”

Tony Ferguson: “I didn’t know Ternasky at all, but he was super nice, really into it and aggressive. He’d push everyone but in a good way. He knew all your tricks and what you were capable of. He wanted me to heelflip noseslide this low hubba in San Diego. I was over it and he was like, ‘I’ll double your check! Buy you a snowboard!’ I was just trying it, getting worked. I heard there was crazy ones like that.”

Tony Ferguson: “I was with Mike and Rick and they were talking about it [Girl] way before. We went on this road trip and you can tell it was definitely going down. I was stoked to be involved in what they were about to do. I felt more of an allegiance to Rick than Plan B because he got me on and he looked out for me. So I didn’t feel bad about leaving at all because I was never down there with all the guys that much.”

Ryan Fabre:

Ryan Fabre: “I was on the team for about a year and a half. Danny Way and Matt Hensley were pretty much the only two dudes I dealt with back then. I was back and forth between San Diego and Las Vegas at the time. I was riding for H-Street. For a few months it was all secretive and stuff. Everybody knew something was coming. Eventually it just appeared over night.”

Ryan Fabre: “They knew it was going to be explosive.”

Ryan Fabre: “It started off and the camera was always there. But being on the best team and all of that it was all worth it. There was the occasional pay raise for coming through. If you were progressing Mike (Ternasky) would reward that.”

Ryan Fabre: “Pat just came out of nowhere, like somewhere out in Morin County or somewhere, and started doing shit that nobody even thought could be possible. He grinded the flat rail at the San Pasquel school—then went out front and 50/50d the steep rail out front. He grinded it once then Hensley rolled up and he hadn’t seen it. Everyone was telling him like, ‘Man, he just grinded that rail.’ Hensley was like, ‘No way, can you do it again?’ Pat was like, ‘Yeah sure, I’ll do it again,’ and he just grinded it again.’

Ryan Fabre: “The energy at the premiere was crazy. The whole theater was just anticipating it. The place was packed. It was great man.’

Ryan Fabre: “I had been living with Sean Sheffey when that happened. I wish that circumstances could have been different. I mean for at least a year or two after that it did a lot of damage to me. It scared the hell out of any companies around that I might have been involved with. Everything between me and Sean has been straight for a couple of years now. I’ve hung out with him since. I’d rather not say anything about it that he wouldn’t want said.”

Ryan Fabre: “I didn’t really have a choice after the incident but to leave. I mean at the time Sean (Sheffey) was making the company thousands of dollars. With the turmoil between us and the way things were, one of us had to obviously do something. It had to be me, so I left Plan B. It took a long time for that to sort of stop following me. It’s still usually the first subject with anyone I meet.”

Ryan Fabre: “I think once you go from Plan B to some more secondary companies, it just feels like you’ve gone over the top of the mountain and everything else is just a step down. You go from the best spot to some lower status. I mean, I would have preferred it to be another way but that’s what happened.”

Ryan Fabre: “Looking back, they were some of the greatest times of my life. I went from watching Hokus Pokus and looking up to Matt Hensley and Danny Way to all of a sudden hanging out with those guys and skating with them. It was great. I went from being fan to friend.”

Rick Howard:

Rick Howard: “I was in Europe for the contest talking to Danny and it was all coming together, he was like, ‘When we get back it’s a done deal and you gotta let us know if you want to ride for it.’”

Rick Howard: “Just knowing what Ternasky did with H-Street and his videos, knowing that he was going to bring that aspect to it was motivating me to do it. It seemed like it would be more of a challenge.”

Rick Howard: “I wasn’t really thinking in terms of ‘super team’ I was just psyched to be involved with those people, Danny, Sean, Sal, Hensley, all those guys.”

Rick Howard: “In the video all the energy was based on what tricks you can pull. I was new to it. Most everyone else had already worked with Ternasky.”

Rick Howard: “We would have team meetings and get everyone’s input on the team. Like I knew Colin wasn’t too psyched on his situation at the time. We would bring up people’s names and vote on it. When we left the room everyone knew we were going to put on this guy or that guy.”

Rick Howard: “Koston’s name was always thrown around. Maybe Ronnie Bertino for second. Koston was the main one.”

Rick Howard: “It was filming all day and all night. That’s all we did, skate and think about the video. You’d really take any tricks you had and bring it to the furthest extent you could take it.”

Rick Howard: “Ternasky would bring it to the table, but you would put the pressure on yourself. It was good. It challenged everybody. That’s why those videos stand the test of time. There still watchable today”

Rick Howard: “I think I made a few hundred bucks on a miniramp move. Danny probably had a separate exclusive program that we didn’t know about.”

Rick Howard: “The response to Duffy’s part was insane.”

Rick Howard: “There was like no options but to outdo yourself for the next video. For someone like Duffy, who went apeshit in his first part, it must have been hard for him to keep up for his second part.”

Rick Howard: “He was like that with everybody, even with Rodney. He would take you under his wing. He would look out for everyone.”

Rick Howard: “He was bummed but he understood. He had wanted to leave too. I could tell he was unhappy and other people were unhappy. An opportunity presented itself, so we just dove into it.”

Rick Howard: “When we left he wasn’t psyched, but he was a good business man, so he knew how to handle it and deal with it. But leaving Ternasky was the hardest part to deal with. Just because of his friendship and what he had done. There was too many people not psyched so it wasn’t worth it to stay.”

Rick Howard: “It all happened so quick with us leaving and him passing away. We never go the chance to say it was nothing personal. It sucked! I couldn’t believe it when I heard it. But I know deep down he understood.”

Rick Howard: “Ternasky was really good at pushing people and calling people out. I’m way too easy going with our skaters at Girl. I need to step into that role more.”

Rick Howard: “I’m proud to be a part of a team that made such influential videos.”

Bastien Salabanzi Interview: The Lost Part

Bastien's portrait from his Skateboarder Interview back in 2004, at the height of filming a part that would disappear for a decade.

All Photos: Oliver Barton | Words: Mackenzie Eisenhour

Lost footage has always been somewhat of a skate nerd wet dream. The prospect of something so incredible—so Eifel Tower monumental, had it appeared when first filmed—just sitting on a shelf for years almost makes the footage increase in enigmatic value. So much so that finally watching it feels like crawling into a pixel generated time machine; beamed off to an alternate universe of what might have been.

Has a part this good ever been held for this long? I can’t think of any off hand. There was the notorious Muska part from Welcome to Hell, but that part more or less surfaced only a short while later in Fulfill The Dream. There were recent rumors of a full Jovantae Turner part from Video Days, but that may be more wishful thinking than any type of actual completed part sitting in Spike’s analog tape vault. There was also longstanding gossip of full parts from the non Tim and Henry names of the ’92 Blind team (Guy, Rudy, and Lotti), but again, those may be more urban myth than reality. Last year’s talk of a Ty Evans blocked Marc Johnson part for Tiltmode also comes to mind, but that part was supposedly more on the “throwaway,” fun/dorking around side than a straight up game-changing NBD fest (That one from Marc was in Pretty Sweet.)

Bastien’s “Lost” Flip part seems truly unprecedented in terms of the impact the footage probably would have had at the time. Especially given that Bastien essentially went underground both sponsor-wise and geographically (returning to Europe) directly following it. These would have been serious groundbreaking (and possibly life/career arc changing for Bastien) NBD hammers back then—coupled with just how long it has summarily been mothballed (A decade!), and just how good it still looks today. Meanwhile, the entire Flip, Sorry saga is steeped in so much drama of it’s own that any footage from that era carries added weight regardless.

The Sacto triple set fakie flip was most definitely NBD back in '04.

With all that said, I really wanted to get Bastien’s take on how he felt to finally see it come out. I can only imagine how heavy the emotional ties to the footage are given everything that happened in his life since. I pictured the final release of this part as the symbolic cathartic resolution to that entire chapter of his life. And while I at first felt a slight hint of anger that the part hadn’t come out sooner, I think a big tip of the hat should go to Ewan Bowman and everyone at Flip for making the effort to finally put it out. In some ways, at this point, it might just have been easier to let sleeping dogs lie and let it die on the vine.

You’ll always hear people saying how good Bastien was in those early years, but you’ll really never grasp exactly how insane it was to watch him skate firsthand. He just did not miss a trick. It looked like he could learn anything within something like three tries. And he would be talking to you as he did it. I know everyone says this or that person was “the best.” But when people say it about Bastien—there’s almost a different type of intonation—they really mean what they're saying.

Here, along with Oliver Barton’s photos from Bastien’s ’04 Skateboarder Magazine interview (shot during the filming of the “Lost Part”) is his take on most of the things mentioned above. Now get this man a board sponsor.

This could be my favorite switch varial heel ever, barring any rendition by Keenan Milton obviously. Downtown LA.

How did it feel to see the “Lost Part” footage finally come out? I can only imagine it felt amazing.
Yeah for sure it was nice to see it come out, even ten years later. I never thought it would been seen so I’m stoked it's finally out there.

When did you hear about it? Did Ewan (Bowman) contact you before it went up?
Yes, he did. He sent me an email and told me he was working on the edit and wanted to put it out soon after the new year.

Who did you watch it with the first time? Was it like getting into a time machine?
I was home by myself the first time i watched it. Yes, it was like a good flash back moment. It did bring back a lot of cool memories. Definitely.

Could you remember specifically all the tricks in there? Was there anything you forgot about?
Oh no! Dude, I think I probably forgot half of the tricks in this part. I mean it was ten years ago you know.

Can you run down the day (who was there, how it went down) that you got the cab flip front board in Melbourne?
Well it was really late—maybe one in the morning when I skated it. I know that Ewan, Andrew Mapstone and a few local friends were there too. I didn't try it on any other rails because i thought that one would be perfect to try it on. I didn't do it right away. It probably took me thirty tries maybe more.

The backside nollie and Cab flip stair line.

Run down the session where you got the fakie flip at the Sacramento triple set.
It was during a night session during a skate trip in Sacramento with the Flip team. I was shooting with Oliver Barton at that time for the Skateboarder interview. I remember that a few tries before I made it my board fell right on the edge of the tail. I had to pull off a big piece of it off. I was pretty bummed about it. The run up to the set is slightly down hill. That really helps a lot.

What trick in the part brought back the best memory?
I don't have one in particular. But definitely all the tricks in Australia bring me awesome memories. It's one of my favorite trips I've ever been a part of. It was so much fun.

Had you tried to retrieve it over the years? Even just the cab-flip front board? Who was blocking it?
I thought about it. But to me it was Flip's footage and I didn't try to get it back. I don't think anyone was really blocking it, it just turned out that way.

Do you think your life would be on a different path if this part had come out almost 10 years ago? I don't think so but we'll never know.

How come you don’t do more backside 360 flips? The one in that OZ line was rad!
Thanks mate! I don’t know, I still do some here and there. Maybe I should do it more often. Haha!

Switch ollie blaster at the Sepulveda gap in West LA.

I noticed at the end of the part they had a clip of you sitting at Uni high. To me it was kind of a nod to Nyjah since his cab-flip front board there (on the Uni rail) was the second to last trick in his Fade to Black part. The same trick you did on the Melbourne Gold rail, 10 years later. Was it weird to see Nyjah do that trick?
No it wasn't. I saw him during Street League throwing some of those moves down so I knew he could do that trick. I was really blown away by the backside 360-kickflip lipslide. That's a very hard trick.

Nyjah kind of called you out in that Free Lunch thing saying you had told him you were going to beat him at Street League. What did you think when you saw that?
Not much really. He just misunderstood what I told him. I didn't mean it like that at all. He didn't see that I was joking. I would never say something like that seriously. But i guess he thought I was. No big deal.

When were your kids born in this whole series of events?
My first son was born in May 2008 and my second one in May 2010. It's the best thing that ever happened in my life. I love to talk with them and see my sons evolving, learning, playing, or laughing. Only parents can know how infinite is the love for our kids. They're my most precious things in this world. Lao will turn 6 this year and Jazz is going to be 4 years old.

With this footage out have you been able to finally make peace with everyone there (at Flip)?
The relation between Flip and I has always been peaceful. They will always be my first family when I first came to the states. Geoff (Rowley) welcomed me in his house like a brother. I have learned so much with all those guys. I have so many awesome memories traveling the world with everybody.

Nollie heel front boards back in '04 where no joke. Can't think of one before this one, nor have there been many since.

After Jart, have you been looking for a new board sponsor?
No I haven't. Thanks to Bud skateshop. They hook me up with their boards and they’re super good. I'll see what happens. No rush.

Would you go back to Flip if they asked you?
Never say never.

Are you still skating Street League this year?
Yes for sure. I'll be there and looking forward to it.

Who impresses you most in person at Street League?
Probably Shane O’Neill. Just because I had never seen him skate in person before and I was truly amazed by how much board control he has.

Who do you miss seeing everyday most from the Sorry days?
I was good friends with everyone from the team so it's tough to answer. I always had the best times whenever Ali was around though. It was non-stop jokes, laughing or playing guitar together. I love Ali.

The voodoo child staple: backside flip with classic Bastien form.

When was the last time you ran into Tom (Penny)?
I saw him last year in Munich during Street League and he stops by Bordeaux from time to time as well.

Whatever the circumstances, it must feel good to have that footage finally out. Are you moving forward with a positive outlook from this?
Well yes, it feels like a closed chapter sort of with this footage finally out. I'm happy Ewan put it out there.

Can you top that part?
No, I can't.

The Lost Part, 10 Years later.

Skaters and Drugs Outtakes: Steve Berra

Still a number of people to come from this with raw text. Here's everything Steve Berra had to say about it back in '03. Like Dyrdek, Steve has always had strong opinions (to say the least) and has never been afraid to voice them. I remember him being particularly passionate about this topic. Photo from The End. —ME

STEVE BERRA:

“Drugs are such a dissociation from what really is going on. It’s a disconnect with the real world. There’s such a social veneer on the planet right now anyways, that it doesn’t need to get any worse. Its like, ‘Hey, everything’s great,’ Meanwhile, we have a president that wants to go to war with Iraq and ignore the rest of the world. There are just so many things that are fundamentally wrong going on right now. I mean it’s already bad enough, we just don’t need something to dissociate us even further.”

“They come up with any other reason they can to smoke weed. You know, it’s part of one of the most insidious declines of our civilization. All these people are like, ‘Oh, it’s got nothing to do with me man, I just buy a little bit of weed.’ Well that weed comes from somewhere. People lie for drugs. People kill for drugs. Drugs are a huge, huge business, and they are built on the further degradation of people. Drugs aren’t designed to give someone a mellow high. Drug dealers are the lowest people on the planet. They enable someone else’s downward spiral. Everybody’s complaining about how the planet needs to change, but these guys want sit back and smoke a joint. I just have a little higher aspirations then that.”

“I looked up to this popular skater back in St. Louis when I was growing up, Warren Stevens. He was like a couple years older then me. I remember, it was right at the time when my other friends were starting to drink. One day I just asked him like, ‘Hey, you don’t drink?’ And he said, ‘No, I skateboard.’”

“I don’t agree with anybody doing drugs at all. Even drinking excessively to me is just wrong. I mean what is the one contributing factor to every skateboard premiere that ever got fucked up, closed down, or turned into a fight. The main contributing factor is alcohol. Take away the alcohol and those guys aren’t going to act that way.”

“We don’t need to further promote the dumbing down of our youth. Look, kids have a hard enough time dealing with the pressures of drugs and the angst of youth as it is. All that stuff is already out there. Its not like they’re going to discover it in a skateboard magazine, but we don’t need to contribute to it as pro skaters.”

“People can argue whoever the best skateboarder in the world is, but there is no doubt in my mind that Eric Koston is and always will be the best skateboarder that has ever lived. Everything he’s ever done, he’s done completely sober. There are specific other guys that I know that go out and do coke, smoke weed, or whatever—anything to disassociate themselves from the consequences, and then its easy for them to do what they’re doing, because they're totally out of their minds. Eric has to sit and see both sides of the spectrum because he’s dead sober. He has to overcome the knowledge that he could break his face. The same can be said about Jamie Thomas. They’re not some morons doing coke before they skate.”

“If I did drink, which I don’t, I would never show me drinking anywhere in a magazine or in a video. And I certainly wouldn’t talk about it. I mean everybody’s got a rough story, especially guys who skate, but I just don’t agree with promoting the further degradation of our society. I keep thinking everybody’s going to grow out of it. But then I go on some business trip to Italy or somewhere, and I see these 30-40 year old guys doing what I thought only teenagers did.”

“The reason why we have this image is because that image is promoted. Drug use exists in every other facet. I mean I stayed at Yale for four months. There were students at Yale smoking crack every night. I mean being truthful about it is one thing, but glorifying it is another. When you’ve got ‘Legalize Skateboarding’ made out into a pot leaf, you’re not really talking about skateboarding. Companies like Shorty’s, Hollywood, or Baker, I don’t respect those companies as much as I respect somebody like Jamie Thomas. I don’t think anything good comes from the things they promote. Even Birdhouse, look at what they’ve done since the departure of me and Heath. I mean talk about embarrassing—Tony Hawk, the all American boy is at the forefront of promoting 15-year-old kids drinking beers with their face at the crotch of a stripper. That’s terrible. I’m not saying that those kids aren’t going to drink. But, it’s a terrible ploy to try and sell boards. It's like you have two choices. You can either not take a stance like, ‘Well, it’s got nothing to do with me’, or you can take a stand against this. I mean have you ever seen a drug addict. It’s disgusting—somebody shitting on themselves from withdrawal. That’s not skateboarding.”

Berra's part from Birdhouse, The End ('98). Possibly also a commentary on drug use.

Skaters and Drugs Outtakes: Rob Dyrdek

Another collection of B-Side quotes from this. In fairness, I should mention that Rob took issue with some of this text when it went to print in '03. Also, keep in mind that many of his views may have changed further in the eleven years of "moguling" since. Regardless, Rob always voices strong opinions and I've always admired him for that. Photo: O'Meally —ME

ROB DYRDEK:

“The fact of the matter is that all pro skateboarders are somewhat psycho. Very rarely do you find a skateboarder that comes from some solid foundation. You go against everything to be a skateboarder. When you choose to commit your life to it, you’re pretty fucked to begin with. It’s the ideal types that tend to be drawn to drugs, people with destructive personalities."

“You have this ‘I don’t give a fuck’ mentality. You get a little older, and usually you’ll ease out of it. But If you can’t ease out of it, it takes you down. I can count so many of the skaters I’ve seen fall. I’ve seen weed sink skate careers. I’ve seen liquor destroy skate careers. I saw the toll it took on my skate career. It’s the innate destructive impulse that is embedded in anyone that chooses to dedicate their lives to skateboarding.”

"There’s way more normal kids in there today then there was when all of us guys came up. When I fuckin’ turned pro it was for nothing. I wasn’t turning pro with some big check in the mail. I was giving up everything. I was like, ‘Fuck it. This is what I’m doing. But I’m not getting enough money to live.’”

“The Piss Drunks brought this chaos and partying to the kids. I mean, they’re not the only dudes in skateboarding that ever partied. But it was the first time in a while that anybody went that heavily with it.”

“This is the 100% dead truth—I am a natural born partier. But I go on vicious sober streaks. In my older years, I’m not really into drugs. It’s too destructive. But I went through that period to rid my body of it. I would party every single night if I could. It’s just embedded in me. The party demon is always just beneath the surface. Every now and then rears its ugly head and is just buggin’. Sometimes it’s a wonderful experience. Sometimes it’s embarrassing.”

“Sure, someone like Andrew Reynolds is pretty fucking influential. But at the same time, look at the amateur kids they brought up. Those kids didn’t grow up wasted. No one influenced me to party. I just found it. Kids are gonna do what they’re gonna do. It’s just a matter of personal circumstances how deep you go with it. Some people take it to another level.”

“It’s a part of skateboarding as far as I’m concerned. It’s another thing that makes skateboarding better than everything else. We don’t have no fucking drug testing policies. There’s no one that's going to fine us or suspend us from riding our skateboards for doing whatever we choose to do. You don’t have to get up everyday and do something. It’s on you. If you want to go on a cocaine bender for two months, fine. Then you go on a sober streak for two months and kill it. The only thing that matters is that you hold it down on your skateboard to the best that you can.”

“It’s just a part of skateboarding and always will be. Just like when Jay Adams was around. It’s no different. There’s always going to be your straightedge dudes that hate it. There’s going to be your middle ground guys that dabble and stay in control. Then there’s going to be your full fucking psychos.”

The DC Video part from that same year with the skit that started it all.

Jake Johnson: The Cinematographer Intv. B-Sides

I'd been meaning to post this Jake & Gilbert article from TWS's May 2012 issue for a while. I was talking to Adrian Adrid at Stoner the other day and while we were both fanning out on Jake Johnson (I also fan out on Adrian's frontside ollie in the link above), he mentioned Jake's interview from this so I figured I would post the scans of the mag version along with his full uncut text (Jake's got cut down about 600 words for the final print version. Gilbert's ran uncut.) With everything that the Workshop has been through since this came out I figured both these guys had only grown more relevant. Photos: O'Meally, Chami, Allan. —ME

Original Intro:

Sharing the second half of the last part of The Cinematographer Project—Alien Workshop’s heavy hitting duo—Jake Johnson and Gilbert Crocket both earned their professional stripes this past February the second their footage hit the screen at the 14th Annual TWS Awards in Hollywood. In addition to sharing “Going Pro” parts in Cinematographer redux, both rookies also originated and more or less reside and handle their business on the East Coast. Based in Pittsburg and Richmond respectively—both also seem content to operate outside the confines of the pastime’s standard designated urban playing fields—be they in California or even NY and Philly. Given Alien Workshop’s history of placing itself both geographically (Ohio) and conceptually (See any AWS video) outside the beaten path of the skateboard industry, we thought it would be appropriate to get both their takes on what it means to have your name on a skateboard in this last year of our Mayan lord, 2012. Is moving west still the time-tested prerequisite it once was? Or has the onslaught of Internet interconnectivity finally leveled the entire playing field? Is real street skating on the verge of a massive comeback, or are we unwittingly witnessing its death knell. Peppered with a host of tangent musings—from skydiving to OCD infused alcoholism—the following 10 questions each sought to answer these existential queries along with anything else that popped up along the way.

JAKE JOHNSON:

What happened with this skydiving situation? Was that your first time jumping out of a plane?

Yeah. It was. Crazy. I had been thinking about it for a long time and our first destination was Vegas. We met the dude that trained Bob Burnquist back in 2003. I figured if it worked for Bob. It was unbelievable though. Not only while we did it, but the whole rest of the day while we were skating we were just super confidant and not worried about anything (Laughs).

Are you still living in Pittsburg?

I’m still technically living there. But I’ve been away for like a month and a half.

What is the Map Masquerade tour?

Basically I bought a van that we’re taking on this tour across the country. You can follow us @MapMasquerade or go to asenseofdirection.org. It’s like a mini Workshop van and we have a bunch of friends along. We’re hiding all types of product along the way so you can follow the clues and find the treasure. It’s a conversion van too so I’m planning on living in this thing when I get out to San Francisco. It’s got a nice little bed in there and I have homies along the way to get showers and Internet and all that.

I was reading something about you saying the message of skateboarding was kind of stronger in the small town scenes and videos now? Is that something you seek out? Is that what this tour is about?

Yeah. Definitely. It’s something that I’m building my beliefs around. I want to do what I can to basically support them. I’m learning as I go in the industry that it’s a very fragile thing. I got dropped from Quicksilver last year after putting in all types of time and effort into trying to help legitimize the company. I’m realizing that I got to benefit from the money and support of those companies but in the end, my career is probably gonna last through the support from the core shops and the people who put their life and entire body, energy, and mind into skateboarding. Longevity’s not going to come from some board of trustees. For me, I’m just trying to go at it from the ground up. I want to see skateboarding grow for everybody and filter into our society, but not in a diluted way. I want to see skateparks and skateboarding everywhere but I want to see it done the right way. I think skateboarders have a lot more to offer than just entertaining people. I think we can innovate in a lot of ways.

I guess the million-dollar question then is what the actual message of skateboarding is then, right?

Yeah. I think it really comes from your experiences that you have in the act of skateboarding. They idea is that it develops along the way. That’s what I meant when I was talking about the message carried by the first generation of skateboarders. What they were representing was something entirely outside what society had ever seen, so it was a very destructive force in the beginning because it ran into so much opposition.

What does real street skating have to do with the message?

Basically, what skateboarders were trying to say was that nobody really owns property. We all kind of share it. You take a piece of granite out of the earth and make it into something to sit on, and it makes your business money—but you don’t actually own that rock. I think the message of skateboarders is that nobody owns any of it. When you use it, you become a part of it. You heighten your sense of awareness to reality. And that’s what gives skateboarders their leg up and an advantage. That’s what should give skateboarders their motivation.

So the act itself sort of gives you the message?

Exactly. But nowadays, it’s turning from that into more of a competitive thing, where skateboarders are trying to do it to impress an online community, or to impress a board of trustees. Skateboarding is an intimate relationship with your reality through challenging yourself to face the nature of it. To take a piece of wood and to go against gravity. Go against society. Go against what they define the uses of public space to be. The conclusions that you come to through your trials and tribulations along the way—security, and people that want to stop us—if you learn to maneuver around them more smoothly then we become more efficient beings and basically are evolving. That’s the message of skateboarding. It’s about bettering yourself through the act of riding one. 

Wow. It also seems like the same guy that wants to own the granite rock also now wants to own skateboarding, No?

Yeah. Exactly. They want to own it and regulate it. They don’t know it, but deep down they are afraid of our evolution.

I think kids see it though, even without understanding…when they see the real thing they know it, like—I want that.

Yeah. They feel it. I hope that they can still experience it the way they should. It’s gonna get harder and harder though. Bigger companies will stretch skateboarding further and further. I think a lot of people argue that basically as long as more people are seeing it it’s good. I think that’s false. I think it should be more of a less is more type situation. There should be more focus on less people. You can get a message out to all kinds of people, but they’re not going to make informed decisions unless they really understand that message. It might work in the short term. But in the long run it will come back to bite us. Skateboarding isn’t for everybody.

Beyond solving skateboarding—where you out at the Awards for The Cinematographer Project premiere?

Yeah. I was there. I was hiding in the corner somewhere but I was there.

How was it seeing that in completed form?

It was stressful. I was coming off the worst injury of my life. I put a lot of responsibility on myself when I’m filming. I feel like filming our interpretation of skating is really the only thing we have outside of doing it for ourselves. So it’s really important to me. I’ve had a lot of second thoughts and distrust for HD and the dynamic that goes with filming HD, so it was a tough project, and I really only had three months time to film.

What is the dynamic that goes with HD? What are the limitations to you?

The limitations of just finding a filmer with HD gear is one thing. Because he has to spend an enormous amount of money on it. Then it’s relatively heavy and a very cinematic piece of equipment. So if you’re spending that much money on it, you’re probably wanting to use it for higher end production. So your mentality is already more production based. Your tendency is going to be to stylize your footage. I think HD might cause kids to think there’s this standard they have to meet. It leads to a more planned out and structured approach to filming. They’re not just grabbing the camera and skating with a friend all day long. It takes over the session too much. It’s getting better now. The cameras are getting more affordable. And I watched Benny (Maglinao) do this and I came to respect his style and understand the medium. But I definitely don’t think that the VX is dead.

Do you think that the VX can make a comeback?

I hope so. I hope that I can be at the forefront of it. I’m trying to push that in my skating. I think a lot of people jumped on board the HD because the industry pressured people to do so. But I think there’s still value in the VX footage. Think about the prime of skateboarding in the 90s to 00s was translated to us through the VX. It’s not just nostalgic, but also the quality of the experience. The sound of the audio. The ability to get close into each spot with the fisheye and the Mark 1. It’s the emotion you get when you watch it. These things all made skateboarding the way we wanted. I think HD excludes certain people too by having standards. I still think skateboarding is translated through your own eyes, a filmer, or a photographer. For other people to experience skateboarding they need to have one of those options.  

HD tends to feel like something is being presented to you, whereas watching VX feels like you’re there with the skater. Like your one of the dudes in the trenches.

I’ve never heard it referenced like that but that’s exactly how I feel. I feel that HD puts a wall of glass between you and the skater. Like you’re watching something in a museum. Sometimes it just feels like a video game. And that’s where it disconnects me emotionally from the footage. I organized my whole life around skate videos—when they were coming out, what year they were released. My whole childhood was basically framed up by the anticipations and then premieres of these videos. I don’t know what kind of an affect the constant Internet updates will have on the youth. I know a lot of people are becoming keener with it, and they are able to take what they want from it and leave the rest alone. I just personally think it’s important to support people that create full length videos and have something physically come out, even if it takes a little longer. I think skateboarding is about patience. Good skateboarding takes time and you can’t rush it. There’s a lot of pressure now, especially for sponsored skateboarders just to produce. They’re being pulled in all different directions. I think they need to be left to develop their own styles. Each scene should develop their own style rather than all try and conform to the Internet. It’s a wash.

How does going pro feel now? How soon do you and Gilbert get boards?

They congratulated us on going pro after the part premiered at the Awards show. I gave Mike (Hill) some suggestions for graphics though. I gave him this book of really strange architectural structures. I told him to do something with a Geodesic dome or something like that. Hopefully within the next few months we’ll have something out. It still doesn’t feel like it’s happened. I guess that’s the corny, stereotypical answer but it’s true. It’s going to be strange to see my name on there.

Both Gilbert and yourself are from back east. Do you think you still have to move out west to make it?

I think that’s one thing that the Internet is really a positive thing for. That idea that I have to move to California to be seen is almost completely gone, I think. I mean, people still want to move to California. But the idea that you have to be there because the Industry is there has almost died out. I’m on tour with Marc Sucio right now, he’s from California so it doesn’t apply on that angle but you look at the following he got from putting out one part on the Internet.  

My generation was right on the border of the Internet. I got on Instant Messenger in 1998. I’d meet kids at Camp Woodward and then keep in touch with them on there. We’d transfer footage in these primitive ways and I’d meet up with skaters in person when I started taking trips to New York. That’s basically what helped me move to NY. I appreciate that side of the Internet a lot so I know it has its good uses. It’s when kids actually believe they can use the Internet to get famous that things turn ugly. Just skate. People will take notice if you’re good enough.

It seems like The Cinematographer Project kind of followed in the return to real city street skating. Like more dodging cars and rough spots with cool backgrounds and less schoolyard ledge combo stuff. Is that type of skating coming back right now?

I think it is. I think it got to a point technically where there’s not too many people that can really push the boundaries. You have your Nuggets and your Nyjah’s, or Marc Suciu. There’s a small group of people that have the technical ability to still innovate. Then on the big side, it really had already pretty much maxed out in the Jamie Thomas' day. It got to a certain point on both fronts where there’s just that much more you can do. So it starts coming back to style and spot selection. I think people that have interesting approaches to even basic tricks start to be what stands out. The visual experience is what skateboarding is all about. Finding those unique locations that incite ideas and emotions to the viewer—that’s the most important thing there is.

Where do you see people doing it right out there today?

Well, I think it’s really interesting in a business as top heavy as skateboarding, now you are seeing people from other countries that have the same passion for the message and are doing it in their own way. I really enjoy watching companies like Magenta, and Palace, and Polar coming up from various countries in Europe right now. I think it’s rad to see them get a little more stylish and creative then some of the big companies.

What pro would you like to model yourself after? Who carries the message, without starving?

I don’t know. I’ve been following Pontus (Alv) pretty closely for the last few years. I’m not sure what his financial state is but it seems like he lives a good life. He builds all these rad DIY projects and creates all these super unique skate spots and artistic installments. He gets to create his own videos, artwork, board graphics, and do it all from his own country. I would say if I could model myself after anyone, it would probably be Pontus. He takes what he does seriously and he gets to have ultimate control of what he puts out. What could be better? Actually, if I could really do it, I would become a hybrid of Pontus and Heath Kirchart. Heath is another guy that takes his skating seriously. He wants to make sure he helps push the limits of skateboarding. He handles everything on a very professional level. So if I could combine both of those things, that would be it.

I’d pay to see that hybrid.

I want to give skateboarders that sense that you can create your own world. I think that’s really the best thing skateboarding teaches people. I believe in my core that this world is a heaven and a hell. It all just depends on how you live it. What are you doing to create it?

Last question—do you think skydiving’s gotten too mainstream?

(Laughs.) Oh fully. It’s not about the spots anymore. It’s too commercial. They’re all jocks now.

The Cinematographer Project ('12) AWS part. Still so good.