Jordy?

The rabbit holes I fall into… A reader sent in a picture inquiring about a 70’s skateboard he found that had a “Jordy” logo screen printed on the bottom. I felt pretty cocksure that I’d be able to track down an old advert or something. It seemed to me to be an English brand, or otherwise European, but boy did I strike out. Well maybe instead I hit a foul ball over the back fence? I did discover a lot of pictures related to an Italian TV show called Striscia la Notizia that is a satirical TV news program. A quick google image search revealed that it’s like the Daily Show with cleavage, and lots of it. I spent hours on this post. Hours… Dive into obscure Jordy-related Italian skateboard history with me, it’s slightly more interesting than you think!

Here’s the image that started it all, thanks to Randy Surdyk. I wasn’t able to find anything, so if you can help, leave a comment. Based on the mounting hole pattern and hanger shape I’m guessing these are A.L.S. Industries trucks AKA California Free Former.

Now to the Getty Images (1 – 2 – 3) that caught my eye. I have no idea who the knobs in suits are, but the women are Indira Smith and (wait for it…) Jordy Gordon, the only reason my searches turned up anything. Look how excited Jordy looks in that second image…

Getty knows who the knobs are!  Ezio Greggio, Raffaele Pisu (Guerrino Pisu), and Antonio Ricc. The Getty caption refers to the women as “valets.” Wikipedia lists the women by each season going back to its start in 1989, while the male host list only picks up from 1999. The women of the show are referred to as Veline:

The term velina (English: tissue paper) is a figurative term in Italian journalism which refers to government-issued propagated news. It is a parody of the news industry during the Fascist era under Benito Mussolini, where the government controlled and heavily censored all news reports and papers. Within Striscia, the veline are two young women (one blonde, the other brunette) who perform short dances called stacchetti, always finishing up on the news anchors’ desk. Originally, they also came on stage to hand the “news anchors” their news.

If old government propaganda is velina, it must mean it is transparent, or easily seen through, like tissue paper. So the reason for the women being present in this context is equally thin and transparent, essentially to provide eye candy. Don’t get mad at me, get mad at sexism in contemporary Italian society! If you watch any recent clips of the show, they’re still doing it.

I have not been able to find the original photo these ridiculous poses of Indira Smith and Jordy Gordon were cropped from, but both ladies were on the show from 1989 to 1990, and by the looks of it, must have been sponsored by Rector. Here’s a couple more skateboard prop shots. On the left: Photo by Corriere as seen on veline gallery at Momentodonna.it. On the right, a slide from icharta.com. It’s a scan of a slide, but f you try to read it you’ll notice they forgot to reverse it before applying the watermark.

Let’s dissect the board selection from these photo sessions. There’s a what looks like typical 80’s toy store pig (Nash Voodoo actually), a narrow cruiser (Possibly a Skeleton brand Wipeout deck?), a freestyle board that I can’ the bothered to identify, and finally a well used Mike Smith duck model complete with a neon pink/red Go Skate sticker. According to Madrid, that board was first released in 1985. Art of Skateboarding somehow only has a 1986 model that is tapered at the tail. So for some reason, they wanted one beat up looking older board for what? Credibility? Maybe it belonged to someone on the crew. I’m going to take back what I said about that freestyle board. I can be bothered to identify it! It appears to be an Urgh model for Brazilian freestyler Paulo Folha, a guy who still has current models on Rattrap [sic] skateboards. If you squint at that Getty Image, you can see he was into cats back then too. I can’t seem to find a picture of that model anywhere though.

Of course, trying to track down more skateboard pics from Striscia la Notizia turned up some non-Jordy related results. Simonetta Pravettoni and Terry Sessa were both on the show from 1989/1992 and also appeared on skateboards. Near as I can tell, the one with slightly lighter hair is Terry, and the other one is Simonetta. In the first picture below they would be in that order. Of course they are on completely different boards in these photos, boards that look older than the previous group, despite the fact that these images were taken at a later date. These images also belong to the photographer Corriere

I know you’re thinking those veline don’t know how to ride, but this slow loading video from 1991 proves otherwise. They built a crazy simulated roadway set for this. You have to wonder if it was was used for something else too, as the clip archived only lasts about 15 seconds.

Further Striscia la Notizia searches turned up these images on an Italian Olympic Skateboarding site that looks like it was constructed in the 90’s. Despite a google translation, I can’t quite make out what is going on here. It’s possible that they think the show helped promote skateboarding. It’s different batch of veline on the same set. Check those tools posing on the shot in the bottom left.

Is that the end of skateboarding on Striscia la Notizia? Hell no. I’m not sure if these are modern day veline, but they do appear uncredited on the official Facebook feed, this time with a Striscia board, probably a one off. And finally, check out this musclebound bro-dork and current host Gianluca Briganti posing with a skateboard that has a cat on it! And we’ve come full circle! It’s a Ben Raybourn Birdhouse deck so it must be an older pic as Ben is no longer on Birdhouse.

I wasted so much time on this, I might as well post one last Jordy image that turned up in my search. You can get it on a t-shirt if you are an unstoppable, cool dude and are into the T-Rex life.