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 its brands. - Jan Welch.

Nimh Shima V.2 Pro Skate | Check the Specs of the skates here.

Vicious Liners

Ground Control Formula One Frames

One Last Photo

You’ve been waiting for this project now for two years, and I know you can’t believe it, but yes, it is finally done and coming out. This video has been delayed by injuries and riders having to film profiles for other videos.

We finally managed to get everyone in gear and on the same path to reach the goal of making what will be known as an Epic production. Chris Haffey, Alex Broskow, Pat Lennen and Brian Shima put their hearts and souls into filming for this project and trying to put together the sections of their careers.

Together myself and Pat Lennen sat down for 2 1/2 weeks in my living room spending hours on end working nightly till 5-6 am to get this video pumped out in time for the Christmas holidays.

We had a great time working on this project and together with the 4x4 team the video also features several riders from other Rat Tail Distribution companies such as Abdiel Colberg, Jeff Stockwell, Nick Wood, Connor O’Brien, Damien Wilson, Sean Santamaria, Henry Hubbard, Fabrice Guillion, Chris Cheshire, Pancho Barrera and many more…

This video is a tribute to our sport. To show what you can achieve when you really love something. - Jan Welch.

Source: 4x4boozers.com

Leading the Blind - Full Video - PLAY.

Back in november 2020, Jan Welch launched a fundraiser called “The Tapes Project”. Quoting Jan Welch:

I’ve spent 20-years shooting video and documenting some of the top professional and amateur inline skaters from around the world I now have hundreds of tapes of footage that I am going to digitize and archive online. I plan on posting each tape onto a new YouTube channel for people to watch, along with commentary from myself and from people featured on each tape. These are the original tapes for many classic skate videos and edits I’ve made including Last Call, Urban Decay, Steal This Video, Quatro, No One’s Children, Trash, Sleaze, Drip Drop, and Leading the Blind.

So far I’ve logged about a dozen tapes. I’ve acquired several consumer miniDV cameras so far to try and capture this footage and they have either been dead on arrival, have issues capturing audio, or eat and destroy the tapes. Consumer decks are notorious for dirty heads and have further potential for damaging these tapes. To archive this many tapes of historical skating footage for all to see, I need to purchase a professional MiniDV deck that will safely capture these tapes at the highest quality and a 4 or 5TB USB-C hard drive to store them on. This project is going to take a long time but it is important to preserve this footage. I’m asking for those of you who are interested in seeing all these tapes get captured and posted to help contribute to a GoFundMe to purchase a new MiniDV deck.

What I Need: MiniDV Deck (approx $750.00), 4/5 TB Harddrive ($169), Life Flix Software ($100), Topaz Video Enhance AI ($299.99), Total - $1,300.

September 2021: The project is now starting: Jan Welch opened a new Youtube Channel, called “Then and now, an inline skating channel”.

The first video for my new inline skating YouTube channel, Then&Now, is now live. This is a short introduction to what the channel will be about. The first episode of the Then+Now Podcast will be released tomorrow. My first guest is Chris Peel, who designed Daily Bread Magazine and did all the original branding for Rat Tail, Ground Control, Vicious, 4x4, Nimh, and Big Wheels Blading. The first episode of the Vault, which my tape archives from the past 25 years of rollerblading, will release a couple of days later. - Jan Welch.

Visit Then & Now Youtube Channel.

Classic Section: Chris Haffey Section in Drip Drop (4x4 Team Video), the long awaited sequal to Leading the Blind. Edited by Pat Lennen.

A 2008 Rat Tail Media Production.

Sleaze features a huge roster of talent from around the world and has full profiles with Jon Jon Bolino, Joey Chase, Jeff Stockwell, Keith Brierley, Adam Brierley. With mini views with Marcus Benavides, Ben Schwab, Michael Collins, Montre Livingston and Joey Graziano.

Full Video - PLAY: Part 1 | Part 2 (Joey Chase) | Trailer.