Santa Cruz, Gregor Rankine, Monster, 1989

Gregor is a Kiwi skater who, together with Vision pro Lee Ralph, spearheaded the Australasian skating scene in the late 80s.

These graphics were by Jim Phillips, interestingly Rankin is spelt without an 'e' on the top graphic but with an 'e' on the bottom graphic. This version features the monster on the top graphic rather than the SC oval logo.

This board was produced in small numbers (around 1000), I only know of four other Rankine boards in mint (or very near mint) condition. Even Gregor doesn't have one !

I heard from a reliable source that Gregor didn't actually ride his production model, he actually rode a Jeff Grosso model with his graphics on. These 'Team Rider' decks were most often black outlined graphics on a natural deck or at most a two colour graphic.

Where is he now ? - Gregor made a few brief appearances in the Aussie produced 'TicTac2Heelflip' documentary about skating in Australia and New Zealand in the 70s, 80s and 90s. I believe he is currently working for a skate shoe manufacture in Asia.

Reissued ? - No, rumour has it that he didn't even reply to a letter from SC asking him if would given permission to reissue this deck.

Click here for an 'intro' feature on him from RAD magazine in January 1989 (save it to your PC to view it larger).

Click here for the story of when Gonz first met Gregor and Lee Ralph.

Oh and here is an old ad for this board.

Here is a transcript of the RAD 'Intro' interview from 1988 :-

Age : 24
Nickname : Rat-woe
Home Town : Melbourne, Australia
Sponsors : Santa Cruz, Snake Pit
Types Of Skating : Ramp, a little street when I feel like it
Favourite Spots : Changes all the time. Ramps I like though are Vermont or Northcote in Melbourne. Monavale sounds good.
Worst Injury : Kettle of boiling water spilt on me. Luckily the water was cold when it actually happened. Could have hurt a lot though.
Ambition : Capo
Food : Healthy sometimes sort of
Car : Previously stolen Holden Kingswood

Click here and here for other pics of Gregor back in the day, and here, and here, here, here, here - those last 4 pics are by Lyle Donoho who kindly gave me permision to use them.