A Godfather of Six-Figure Ledge Skating [#TBT]

So I often ask the subjects of these interviews who they consider to be the most underrated skater of the 1990s and your name has come up more than a few times. Do you think there were aspects of your career that went underappreciated or didn’t get their proper due?

Do I feel like I didn’t get enough shine? No. I don’t feel that way at all. To hear that people think that is awesome but I don’t feel that I’m owed anything or that something should’ve have gotten more praise than it did. At the end of the day, I don’t know what I could’ve done more than what I did. But that’s cool to hear. — The Chrome Ball Incident / November 2, 2012

Nobody was as much of a precursor to today’s brand of highbrow ledge tricks as Jerry Fowler. Look no further than onetime six-figure ledge skater, Brian Wenning, admitting last week that the origin of the backside nosegrind pop-out craze (which very much still resonates in today’s fickle beanplanted times) leads back to a jack-move pulled on Jerry’s west coast-bred, east coast-honed bag of tricks.

Everyone knows that the “this could come out today and still hold up”-hyperbole is wishful thinking 95% of the time. Wenning says it about Photosynthesis in the aforementioned interview, but we have gotten lightyears past the new AM being able to end off his first part with a switch 360 flip down nine. Although his 411 section gets the most burn on the social media circuit, watch Jerry Fowler’s DNA Continuum part. You’ll see the half cab nosegrind revert fishhooks that Puig does, the frontside 180 no comply fakie 5-0s that Aaron Herrington does, and the backside shove-its into backside grinds that Hjalte does — a decade-plus before said tricks would come to occupy the minds of today’s most #trickselection savvy skateboarders.

Six-Figure Ledge Skating: The “Hundred Dollar Autograph” of the Skateboard World ;)