For the first episode of the Then And Now Podcast, I interviewed the legendary rolling artist, Chris Peel. Chris played a huge behind-the-scenes role during the late 90s to mid-2000s in the aggressive inline skating industry. Growing up in Wakefield, in the UK, he started designing t-shirt's for Puberty Clothing before landing a job with DNA magazine. He then made his way stateside to San Diego, California, in 2000 to work for and design Daily Bread Magazine. In San Diego, he created the initial branding, image, and logos for Ground Control, Rat Tail Distribution, 4x4 Urethane, Vicious Bearings, and Nimh skates.
Chris is a long-time friend who also designed the Big Wheel Blading logo for me in 2017. We haven't had much contact these last few years, so I thought it would be fun to contact him to catch up and reminisce on our years in San Diego, working at Daily Bread together and teaming up on many projects for Rat Tail, and it's brands.
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Show Notes:
- 00:00 - Introduction
- 03:55 - When Chris and I first met at the 1999 British Nationals
- 04:42 - The beginnings, The Jaggers and Re-Hab Skatepark
- 08:50 - Chris's Interest in Art, Designing for Puberty Clothing and DNA Magazine
- 14:28 - Moving to San Diego to design Daily Bread Magazine
- 18:28 - Meeting Jon Elliott, Jon's Daily Bread Interview, Ground Control
- 22:55 - What the Ground Control sickle represents
- 25:29 - The Rat Tail Years
- 28:35 - Favorite Daily Bread Cover?
- 29:42 - Moving back to San Diego, his favorite memories of living there
- 34:50 - Leaving Daily Bread, moving to Orange County, and working for Haymarket
- 40:00 - Moving to Richmond, aggressive skating less, getting big wheel blades, living in Alameda
- 44:50 - Reminiscing on the crazy party we ended up at when visiting the Bay Area
- 47:14 - What Chris is up to now, working at One Medical
- 49:00 - Favorite projects that Chris has worked on
- 51:30 - On becoming a United States citizen
- 52:35 - The start of Vicious, the first tour, the Medusa stencil
- 54:51 - Rat Tail, the state of the industry in the 2000s, Them Skates
- 1:02:20 - bigwheelblading.com
- 1:09:57 - Jan's Vermonting YouTube channel
- 1:14:15 - Outro
You can watch these podcasts as videos on the Then And Now Youtube channel. The YouTube version also features video and photo overlays relevant to the conversation to make it more documentary-style. The channel also includes The Vault, Jan's collection of raw skating footage spanning from 1995-2010. Find out more about the Podcast and YouTube channel at thenandnowblading.com.
Support Then And Now through our Patreon page.
Links
- Then And Now on YouTube
- Then And Now on Patreon
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- Then And Now on Instagram
- Then and Now on Twitter
- Jan Welch's Instagram
