Making of the 15 Minute Promo video, getting busted, and some little known ND facts.
— By Steve Douglas

As Paul said in the first email newsletter, it was a fun and exciting time hiding out at his house in Costa Mesa, California in early Spring 1990. Andy and Gorm were making the art, and I was working with the team, on the 15 minute promo video, and setting up the international distribution. We had to keep all this quiet from Vision as we needed to keep getting our board royalties from Schmitt Stix. Unfortunately our cover was almost instantly blown...

When we were ready to launch and wanted to let the distributors know, we still wanted to keep Paul's involvement quiet for as long as possible. What we didn't realize though, was that Paul's fax machine added his name and number to the top of every fax sent from it! Paul Schmitt and his fax number right there for everyone to see… BUSTED! The word was definitely out and it was another push for skater owed and run companies, ND was a big part of that change that we are really proud of to this day.

Videos were one of the main focuses for New Deal so back to the 15 minute video... After all these years it's still hard to believe that I made the first 3 videos (before I passed the torch to New Deal team rider Josh Friedberg). I had studied skate videos for years and I was eager to learn and be involved in what I felt was a key part of skating - video... Thank goodness for Paul being there to help me and show me what to do.

We had years of footage for Schmitt - 100s of Hi8 tapes and S-VHS tapes, and as this was way before we had started 411VM we were sitting on piles of footage with no plan of how to use it. What is funny Is that some of the footage I used in the promo video was almost 4 years old at the start of 1990!

Back in those days you had to lay each trick in order one after the other, there was no insert editing with the equipment we had. I had to make the whole video in order of what I thought would work, then study it and write each part out in order how I felt it could work better, and then that was it - 2nd time was final. Slo-mo had to be done at local studio and then we added them together, thankfully Paul took care of that. It was a painful experience which took so much time, but I did not care as it was so much fun.

A little known fact is that the music for the 15 minute promo video was going to be Agent Orange. As the video was wrapped up and I was getting ready to drive back up to Nor Cal where I lived, Paul called me saying the bad news that he had spoken to Agent orange agent and they had said if we used the music it would ruin their release. I was gutted as we were almost done. When I got back to San Jose I met with my good friend Ray Stevens II and I told him my predicament. He simply handed me a tape of a local band of the Odd Numbers, and the rest is history. They say things happen for a reason - The Odd numbers are huge part of New Deal and I am still great friends with them today, many people tell me that when they think of the New Deal they think of the Odd numbers as much as the riders and art. Looking back it was the perfect mix that quite easily could not have happened. As Kirk Dianda (411Vm/On Video) said to me after hearing that story: 'Wow I wonder if New Deal would be been so well received if you had used Agent Orange, basically an old band starting a company called the New Deal?" luckily we will never know…

Random fact, the white LS shirt I am wearing in my video part, is a New Deal Skates shirt, as is the black sweatshirt I wear at the start and end of my 15 Minute Promo part. (New Deal skates was a name from a shop close to the Harrow skatepark where I grew up outside of London, England) Most of the team rode for Schmitt Stix, Schmitt being with Vision we needed a New Deal, the name was perfect, for more check #mynewdealstory

- Steve

This #MyNewDealStory comes from our first email newsletter courtesy of Professor Schmitt…

Spring 1990 was a really fun time with the team hiding at my house in Costa Mesa and having the freedom to create Art, Catalogs, Videos, and Skateboard Products the way we wanted to. Most of the Promo video was shot over the prior 3 years with my personal SVHS video camera. These first videos were edited deck to deck in order. Steve Douglas spent a lot of hours making it just right.

Andy and Gorm were drawing art and product creation was rolling forward. The excitement lead us to the first New Deal flyer that was a simple black & white DIY looking catalog. We did not want to waste our dollars or energy on the polished corporate full-color look. It was just 8 pages long like a zine, it started with the logo on the cover with a crayon drawn border to match the texture in the logo. A few interesting tidbits were listed about riders on their page. Ed Templeton, Steve Douglas, Danny Sargent, Andrew Morrison & Andy Howell. There was a page with board dimensions and a listing of Skateboard Products. On the bottom, it said; "KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR OUR PROMO VIDEO." On the back, it said “Once upon a time there was a group of skaters who weren’t happy with the way things were. Fed up with politics and fashion, they decided to get together and form a new company, along with the same friends. Upon trying to decide exactly what they wanted, the name became apparent.”

There was no return address and retailers were curious when received and they did not know where it was coming from. I had not told Vision that I was walking away from Schmitt Stix at this point so we were playing it quiet. Due to the riders being from my Schmitt Stix Team the curiosity and rumors were flying and riders were still being paid by the old boss. The Promo video shipped out to skate shops with the same secret approach with video of the actual products we had been working on filmed in my backyard. We were just doing what we wanted to do, not even clear if anyone wanted it.

-Paul Schmitt

P.S. THE OG CATALOG WAS RE-MAILED A FEW WEEKS BACK (MARCH 2019). PLEASE GO TO YOUR LOCAL STORE AND SEE IF THEY HAVE ONE….

Check out #MyNewDealStory on social media and if you have your own story, share it with others by using #MyNewDealStory as we are all in this together.

By Mackenzie Eisenhour

For those of us who started during the late ‘80s, the period of time between ’89-’92 was simply an incredible run of progression the likes of which may never be seen again. In all of two years and change, skateboarding shifted from a boneless and a launch ramp to switch flips and noseblunt slides on benches. At breakneck speeds, and without equivalent in any other modern “sport”, skateboarding was almost entirely reinvented—sometimes by the month, sometimes by the week.

As it pertains to Ali Mills, an entire reboot of what was deemed possible arrived via one trick— a single nollie flip in 1990—casually tossed into one of his only video parts. While I can’t state with any certainty that it was the first time anybody did the trick (I’m waiting to hear back from Rodney Mullen as to his understanding of the first nollie flips*), I can state with certainty that it was the first time myself or any of my friends saw one. In that single pixilated second—couched in New Deal’s Useless Wooden Toys (90), and sharing the latter half of an Odd Numbers song with Chris Hall—the nollie flip became a reality. Having stepped away from skateboarding (at least in the public sense) not long thereafter, I have wanted to ask Ali about that single trick for some 27 years.

In addition to the nollie flip, almost every other clip in the Useless Wooden part is highly progressive for the time. It contained the first frontside flip on flatground and first front 360 pop shove that I know of in a video. And while I shouldn’t really have to mention it, Ali also rifled off a variety pack of 1990 NBD’s with flowing style. He made the tricks look good; probably the greatest feet of all from that “anything goes” era. Nearly three decades removed, here was Ali’s take on that part, the nollie flip, leaving amateur skateboarding and what he has been up to since.**

 * Rodney did get back to me. Read his take on Ali and the nollie flip at the end of the article.** This was the extended interview from the Skate Nerd page in our July/Aug. issue.

The nollie flip in question. Useless Wooden Toys (1990). Note the size of the board.

Hey Ali, first off where was that wooden roller-skating rink/skatepark in Useless Wooden Toys?

The Useless Wooden Toys roller rink was up in Massachusetts. The rink was hosting a skate camp that summer, and Andy Howell, who was the reason Chris Hall and I were on New Deal, asked us to come up to the camp and film.

I have to admit, the Odd Numbers song plays a huge part in my love for this whole segment, including Chris Hall right before. Were you feeling the song then? Now?

Absolutely! The song, “It Makes No Difference”, is amazing! Andy gets all of the credit for the production of that part. He picked the song and took care of all of the editing.

Then almost everything in the part was groundbreaking. I’ll start with the nollie flip since that one gets the most attention. When did you make your first one? Had you seen anyone else doing it? Was it a big deal then?

Ha! Thanks. The first nollie flip I ever tried was at a contest in southern Maryland. I don’t remember the exact date, but, obviously, it had to have been sometime in the late 80s. Chris (Hall) and I were off to the side of the contest skating flatland by ourselves and decided to try nollieing into flip tricks. Chris started trying nollie heels, and I tried nollie flips. We were both pretty driven to be innovative and learn new tricks, and by the end of the contest we’d learned them. Chris could do nollie heels, and I could do nollie flips.

Even though neither of us had ever seen someone else trying to nollie into flip tricks before, it didn’t seem like a very big deal that we just had. We used to do a lot of tricks that we hadn’t seen people do before. And, honestly, that’s how skateboarding was in the ‘80/’90s. Making up tricks was part of the game. Chris had nollie heels down, but he didn’t do them very often. I, on the other had, loved nollie flips and did them all of the time. They joined my standard trick rotation.

Ali’s full Useless Wooden Toys part. Song: The Odd Numbers, “It Makes No Difference”.

I love the cut coming out from the boardslide. Was that intended? Like you had just landed the boardslide and were now about to nollie flip?
Yessir. The plan was to get a line that started with the rail. The boardslide followed by a nollie flip and then an impossible was the plan.

Even that boardslide is one of the first boardslides through a knob/seam that I can think of. What was the thinking on that one?
I’d never seen anyone boardslide over an imperfection in a rail before, so I thought, why not? I’ll give it a shot. That’d be rad to do. Sal Barbier was at the camp and gave it a go with me. We took turns hitting the rail and eventually I got it. Sal was robbed. It was the ‘80s, and he had rails on his board that kept getting hung up on the knobs.

The wheel slide on the slider bar between the two pipes was pretty creative too? Ever do that one before or after? Inspiration?
I started skateboarding in College Station, Texas when I was eleven years old. When I was thirteen, I moved to Richmond, Virginia and quickly became friends with the Virginia Beach crew. By the time the VB guys started turning fifteen, many of them discovered girls and skating stopped being the top priority. That’s when I started skating DC regularly and hanging with Chris (Hall) and the rest of the gang. The Virginia Beach crew were masters of the powerslide. While I’ll never do them as loudly or stylishly as the VB guys, I definitely developed an appreciation for a good slide. I love getting some speed and whipping out a no-comply slide, nose wheelie slide, back wheel slide, or just standard four-wheel barker. The wheel slide on the slider bar was an effort to do a tech powerslide. Looking back, I’m not so sure that it worked.

Then of course, the shopping cart divider thing with the noseslide tailslide (straight and to fakie) seemed like nobody had really done that yet either. I remember Simon Woodstock did one for his Check Out around ’90 but he admitted it was a bail. Was this just a random trick that you thought up? Any story?
I remember being excited about skating the middle bar of those shopping cart racks. You had to stay off to the side while grinding because of the top bar. During one of those sessions, we realized that you could move the rack to adjust its spacing and narrow it down to a width where a board would fit perfectly for a nose/tail slide. I’m pretty sure we’d heard rumors of Gonz doing a nose/tail slide, which is what made us think to try the trick after we realized the cart rack was adjustable.

The front 360 shove for myself was certainly the first time seeing anyone do it. I believe Steve Rocco and Rodney did front three shoves on freestyle boards.  Had you seen anyone else do this? Inspirations?
Nope. I hadn’t seen anyone doing those. I don’t really remember when I started doing them, either. I really liked Impossibles, but I wasn’t a huge fan of front-foot Impossibles because I couldn’t really see applying them to anything. 360 front shoves were like a sort of symmetry to Impossibles for me I suppose.

The first frontside flip I ever saw on flatground. Ali Mills 1990.

Same story for the frontside flip. I had seen Natas and Hensley do them on quarter pipes and miniramps (Speed Freaks [89], Hokus Pokus [89]) but this was the first one I saw period on flatground—landing rolling backwards. Did you call this a frontside flip at the time? Had you seen anyone do a frontside flip on street or on a ramp?
Back in the day, guys were doing backside flips on flat but no one was trying frontside flips. Why? I thought that I’d just try to figure the trick out. Natas was doing sick ones on transition, and I thought it’d be cool to do on flat. A big part of what motivated me in skating back then was doing new tricks. An easy way to do a new trick was to just go the other way. Guys were doing the trick backside. Why not try frontside?

Last one, the darkslide stall thing over the block. There was always a rumor that Gonz was messing with Darkslides, especially after his Poweredge photo of one on a rail (June, 1990). But this was the first closest thing to a make I can think of. Did you ever try to slide it?
That Poweredge photo of Gonz darksliding on a rail was so confusing and mind blowing! I wanted nothing to do with darksliding a rail, but I was pretty curious to try the trick. I definitely tried darkslides on benches, but they were really hard and trying them destroyed my grip. The “Darkstall” was a result of being excited about nose bonks and trying to think of different ways to get over a bench. It occurred to me that that maybe it’d be possible to do a darkslide thing to get over. I tried, and it worked!

The “dark-stall” ender.

You came out with a bang, had a bit more footage in Dave Schlossbach’s Quiet Storm(1991) then that was pretty much it. What made you step back? What path did you choose instead?
Back in the day, even during the New Deal years, I’d tell people that I skateboarded but that I wasn’t a skateboarder. It feels weird admitting it, but it’s the truth. It had to do with the fact that I wasn’t excited to be a part of the ‘get wasted, get rowdy, and fuck shit up’ image that some skateboarders seemed so attached to. I remember feeling that some guys were just using skateboards as fashion accessories to be part of the scene. I wasn’t into that. I loved skateboarding. I loved the activity. It’s all I wanted to do, and I wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t in line with that goal. I almost went down the pro skateboard path with Planet Earth, but a college opportunity came up that I couldn’t turn down. That’s when sponsored skateboarding ended for me.

What have you been up to over the last 26 years?
In the years since ‘91, I’ve lived in Boulder, CO; Missoula, MT; Haleiwa, HI; and San Francisco. After a few years of college in Virginia and a short break in Boulder, I studied Computer Science at the University of Montana in Missoula. Today, I’m an engineer at YouTube. If you’ve watched YouTube on a TV, Chromecast, game console, or Apple TV, you’ve used apps that I helped build and work on daily.

You have probably been asked about the nollie flip repeatedly for years. Do you get annoyed with it, like people rehashing the past over and over again—or do you see it as sort of an honor?
Thinking about where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and what’s shaped me along the way, I can say with absolute clarity that I don’t just skateboard. I’m a skateboarder. My values and the people who I get along with the best—they’re all rooted in skateboarding. Being a part of skateboarding’s documented history is probably my greatest honor. I’m fucking proud of it.

* Rodney Mullen responds regarding Ali and the Nollie Flip

As with all things flatground—like the Origins of the Front Pop Shove article a while back—the best hopes of determining when any flatground/ollie-based trick originated is to hit up the Maestro himself. Enter Rodney. I asked him specifically when he remembers doing his own first nollie flip. He didn’t really have a timeframe for them as to him, at that time, they were all just variations of the kickflip.

Here’s Rod, “Heelflips were done with hardly a nod, merely as putting a minus sign on a kickflip, on one axis. I don’t remember when, but it was clearly shortly after KF’s were first done (Ed Note: circa 1983). Fakie KF’s were not even considered a variation then—same with Fakie HF’s. Minus signs, directionally. Could make the same argument for double flips. Point being, I’m not sure if it’s worth bothering—certainly it isn’t for me.”

Basically, Rodney learned every trick every which way. This certainly included what would today be called a nollie flip. But at the time, calling those variations anything different than a kickflip hadn’t even occurred to anybody. Rodney did remember learning nollie back heels and switch front heels on his SMA/World Industries board (That would be circa ‘87/’88), but only as precursors to the Helepop heelflip (nollie back 360 heel). Still, he was willing to give Ali credit with some caveats, if only for officially making it a street trick.

Rodney Mullen: “By all means, give Ali credit for nollie flips as a street trick if that’s in your heart to do, but also realize by that time, clearly other forms were done, and could be as hard to designate as a bs shuv, concomitantly potentially taking credit from other street dudes and stirring up strife, as these things sometimes do.”

This #NewDealStory was ripped from our friends at Transworld Skateboarding, hit the link above to see the original article.