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Bones Brigade Rodney Mullen by Powell Peralta
Limited to 2500 Worldwide
Size: 7.4"
Length: 27.68"
Wheelbase: 12.63"
Nose: 4.65"
Tail: 5.4"
Powell Peralta Shape: 202 / FK1 Mold
Powell Peralta bringing the goods with the 16th Series of Bones Brigade, this reissue Rodney Mullen in Gold Foil, Black, Red & bone coloured accents. Limited to 2500 Worldwide - Get your hands, or feet, on one before they're gone! Series 16 includes 6 Decks, & we at Hilltop Skateshop have been lucky enough to have the whole series:
The Whole Series 16 - All 6 Decks
- Rodney Mullen - Mike McGill - Tommy Guerrero - Lance Mountain - Tony Hawk - Steve Caballero -
This decks a little different to the rest of the series, taking its shape from original freestyle decks. The graphic is an chess board & chess pieces all over, with a skeleton twirling a crown on its finger while doing a truck stand on a red RM deck with a jester on it. At the nose it has 'Mullen' in old English style script, with 'Powell Peralta ©1985©' below it. Grip side graphic is the OG Powell Peralta Dragon logo with 'Bones ★ Brigade' © S.O.C. MMXXV, below it. Also has holographic Bones Brigade sticker on the nose truck mount area with limited edition numbered sticker.
Spec's
Size: 7.4"
Length: 27.68"
Wheelbase: 12.63"
Nose: 4.65"
Tail: 5.4"
Powell Peralta Shape: 202 / FK1 Mold
Deck includes cardboard placard (21.9cm x 14.2cm) for each deck
Bones Brigade Series 16
Series 16 is Gold Foil, Red, Black & White accent colourway
Each deck has a sequentially numbered sticker on the grip side at the front truck and will include a postcard with details of the skater.
These decks are Limited edition, with only 2500 made of each of Mullen's, McGill's, Guerrero's, Mountain's & Cabellero's, and to 5,000 for Hawks offered.
Included Rodney Mullen Placard:
Born: August 17th
Stance: Regular Foot/Goofy Foot
@rodneymullen
Deck graphic by VCJ
The teenager checked his Casio digital watch-- ten minutes into his timed session and his shirt was sticking to him thanks to Florida's heat and humidity. Rodney Mullen had already invented the flatland ollie, the principal trick that would unlock street skating's potential, and he snapped the tail to pop one but flailed wildly instead. The board rotated vertical between his legs so he kicked it away and watched as it flipped through the air and landed wheels down a few feet in front of him. By the end of the night he had invented the ollie kickflip, another foundation skateboard trick. The ability to draw inspiration, to mine progression from a "mistake" and push that physical maneuverer, speaks to his unparalleled contribution to skateboarding.
For Rodney's graphic, VCJ toyed with the freestyle champion's habit of discarding trophies. For the skater with the highest winning percentage in professional skating (34 out of 35), this could have been interpreted as contrarian behaviour, but Powell's artist understood Rodney's unique competitive nature. "I can remember walking into Powell when Court showed me the graphic," Rodney says. "Court said, 'You have this crown, but you're so analytical and the way you move every piece is as though you're playing chess on a chess board. The way you hold your crown shows that you don't even care. You just have this whimsical way of holding it, which is exactly how it should be held."
Rodney still skates every day (every night, actually), and now spends time sharing the skate community's significance in forums like TED, JPL, Apple, Conde Nast and MIT's Media lab. He was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall Of Fame in 2013.
Stacy Peralta on Rodney: "Rodney is a fox in sheep's clothing. He is a sweet, well-spoken and well behaved Southern boy, but inside of him is an absolute competitive and creative assassin. Rodney wasn't just going to beat you in a contest, he was going to make you fear ever having to go up against him again - but it was his creative fury that drove him to singlehandedly invent an entirely new vocabulary of skateboard manoeuvres beginning with the simplest trick of them all: the flatland Ollie."
It's not a death metal band, an extreme diet club or historic dominoes association—the Bones Brigade was a talented gang of teenage outcasts. Unmotivated by fame or popularity, they completely dedicated their lives to a disrespected art form. For most of the 1980s, this misfit crew headed by a 1970s ex-skateboard champion blasted the industry with a mixture of art and raw talent becoming the most popular skateboarding team in history. The core unit of the Bones Brigade built an empire that covered the world. They dominated contests, made hundreds of thousands of dollars, created the modern skateboard video, reinvented endemic advertising, pushed skate progression into a new era, and set the stage for a totally new form of skating called street style. There's nothing comparable in today's skateboarding.
In 1978, a mechanical engineer who had developed new skateboard products teamed up with one of the most popular skaters of the era. George Powell and Stacy Peralta created Powell Peralta and immediately began retooling how skateboard products were made and marketed.
George, who had started developing products in his garage and kitchen oven, went on to invent innovative equipment such as double radial Bones wheels, named for their unique whiteness, and trend setting skateboard decks. Stacy recruited the skaters and handled marketing along with his longtime creative cohort Craig Stecyk III. Rejecting the expected action shot marketing, they used their young team to create esoteric images conveying the culture's sarcasm and disenfranchised dark humor. While spitballing about his stable of skaters, Stacy commented that he never wanted to call them a "team," a label that invited all kinds of jock baggage. Craig shrugged and simply said, "Bones Brigade."
Powell Peralta reinterpreted a military motif, warping it with pioneering skateboard graphics more suited to biker gang tats than decks. As great a skater as Stacy was, his scouting skills surpassed any celebrated onboard skills. By 1984, Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, Steve Caballero, Lance Mountain, Tommy Guerrero and Mike McGill compiled the most competitively dominant skateboard team in history. On top of winning large, cheap plastic trophies, Tony Hawk and Rodney Mullen—two 13-year-olds initially ridiculed by their peers—created new ways to skate and pioneered modern technical skating.
Disgruntled at the way the skate mags played favorites, Stacy weaponized consumer VCRs by directing The Bones Brigade Video Show in 1983. The low-budget amateur skateboard video was the first of its kind and sold a surprising 30,000 copies (including Betamax!).
At the time, skating needed all the help it could get. The 1970s "fad" that swept the country after the invention of the urethane wheel had deflated embarrassingly by 1981. Remaining participants' social status ranked below the chess club. Powell Peralta averaged an anemic 500 monthly board sales and Tony Hawk once received a royalty check for 85¢. To increase brand awareness and grow skateboarding, Stacy produced and created a new Bones Brigade video every year, showcasing his crew's varied personalities and invented maneuvers. The videos routinely featured riders crawling out of sewers, skating abandoned pools and back alleys, bombing desolate hills—essentially shredded an apocalyptic world hidden to most non-skaters.
By the mid-'80s, Brigade videos were sold all over the world and a new generation of teens discovered skating, making the Brigade international stars. The dearth of skateparks forced enthusiasts to DIY it, triggering a wooden ramp revolution. Endemic brands had started their own magazines and for the first time skaters controlled every aspect of skateboarding. Powell Peralta peaked in 1987 with $27 million in annual sales while its pro team continued to dominate contests, cash $20,000 monthly royalty checks, tour the world, occasionally cause riots and star in the ambitious The Search for Animal Chin, which remains the most successful skateboard video of all time.
But the activity's cyclical nature reaffirmed itself by the end of the decade and skateboarding descended back to the faded fad category. The industry broke apart as zeros dropped off checks and most top pros drifted away in search of second jobs. Powell Peralta dissolved over the owners' business differences and Stacy left to pursue filmmaking in Hollywood. Almost all the core Brigade members split and started their own skateboard brands just like their mentor had in 1978. George regrouped and continued making skate products under the Powell and Bones banner.
Twenty years on, the Brigade all remain in skateboarding. Although they've succeeded in separate endeavors, they continue to be bonded together as veterans of a culture war. Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, Lance Mountain and Steve Caballero remain skate stars while Tommy Guerrero runs a skate brand and Mike McGill owns and operates one of the most successful independent skate shops in the country. In 2001, Stacy returned to skateboarding with his award-winning documentary Dogtown and Z Boys.
-About the Movie - Bones Brigade: An Autobiography