Neal Mims, Lipslide To Fakie, Palomar College, San Marcos, CA 1999

Art Director: Ted Newsome

“The back story to this cover shot has a little family twist, one which I caught a lot of shit from my mentor Grant Brittain over the years. You see, the day this photo (and sequence) was shot was the same day my son was born on February 12, 1999. Grant thought it was weird that I actually shot skate photos on the day my wife (no longer that status) gave birth. Well, that might be true in most circumstances but it was a long night waiting for that little sucker to be born and around 9:00 AM he was brought into the world via an emergency C-Section. It all happened so fast. Anyway, while wife and child were sleeping I got a message from Neal that he wanted to skate the big rail at Palomar and I had some free time on my hands, so why not. Neal put it down in a limited number of tries—I shot two frames of stills and a sequence. That’s it, all done and I was back at the hospital before anyone noticed I was gone. And the fact that this made the cover made it even better; I think this was the very first TWS Am Issue.” Prints Available.