Girl has been one of the most influential street skate brands since the 90s, and one of the few big ones still in the hands of the people who made it. Two skaters, a film director and an administrator started it in 1993 in Torrance, California, with a logo that looks like the one on women’s restrooms and videos that mix skating with humor and film. Chocolate, Royal, Fourstar and, in time, Lakai all came out of it.
Here you have the history of Girl, where the name and logo come from, who runs it, which videos to watch, what the decks are like, who skates for the brand and how it differs from Chocolate.
Where Mike Carroll and Rick Howard come from
Mike Carroll was born in 1975 and is from San Francisco, from the Daly City area. He started out sponsored by H-Street and the shop FTC, and joined Plan B in 1991. In 1994 Thrasher named him Skater of the Year. Later he went through Vans and DC before starting Lakai.
Rick Howard is from Vancouver, Canada. He met Carroll skating in San Francisco, and Megan Baltimore and Spike Jonze in the World Industries days, when he was skating around Los Angeles with Guy Mariano, Rudy Johnson and Henry Sanchez. He has said that when Girl started he knew very little about business.
Both were on Plan B, a brand produced by World Industries, Steve Rocco’s company. If you want the whole story of that team, you have it on the Plan B page.
How Girl started
Howard talked about starting something of their own first with Carroll and then with Spike Jonze. A good part of those conversations happened on a road trip to Washington with Rick, Spike and Megan. Howard has said that part of the reason for starting Girl was so pro skaters would have a future after skating.
Megan Baltimore, who doesn’t skate and is the most organized of the group, has said they were pretty naive about the obstacles in the industry, and that they saw it when some factories didn’t want to work with them. One deck shop cut ties with Girl, and Fausto Vitello, one of the founders of Thrasher, backed them. Carroll said years later that Vitello let them know he had their backs.
To get the brand out there, the skaters who switched to Girl wore Girl shirts on a Plan B tour. It was risky, but people talked about it a lot. At first Girl shared a distribution setup with ExtraLarge, a streetwear brand, until it started distributing on its own.
The original team was Carroll, Howard, Jovontae Turner, Eric Koston, Guy Mariano, Rudy Johnson, Tony Ferguson, Sean Sheffey and Jeron Wilson. Tim Gavin joined shortly after.
Who owns Girl?
Girl is part of Girl Distribution Company, which is known as Crailtap, the name of its online store and its YouTube channel. It is an independent company, and Carroll and Howard are still in charge of the day-to-day. Carroll is also listed as one of its owners. Megan Baltimore and Spike Jonze work more from the inside, with less of a public face.
There is no known sale of Girl to a group, and no entry of investment funds. The one that did change owners was Lakai, the shoe brand Carroll and Howard founded in 1999: Japanese group TSI Holdings bought it in 2017 and the Inversal group in 2024. In other words, Lakai left the founders’ orbit a while ago, and Girl hasn’t.
The name and the logo
The logo is a pictogram of a woman, very similar to the one on women’s restrooms. It was designed by Andy Jenkins, who was the brand’s art director from the first series of graphics in August 1993. Jonze asked him for the logo. In 1994 he became art director for Girl and Chocolate full time, and in October 2017 he left for Element. Years later he came back to Crailtap as creative director.
The name has a story that Jenkins himself tells: someone told Rick Howard he skated like a girl, and the founders found it funny. Megan Baltimore has denied the rumor that it was her idea: she says it came out of a long conversation between Rick and Mike. It is also said that among the names they considered was “Muni”, after the San Francisco streetcar.
Since then, hundreds of artists have made their own version of the logo. The first wooden sculpture in the shape of the logo was made by Evan Hecox more than twenty years ago, and those figures have shown up in exhibitions, ads and decks.
The Art Dump
The brand’s art department is called the Art Dump and works under the same roof as the rest of the company, in Torrance. Andy Jenkins, Mike Leon, Geoff McFetridge, who did two series for Girl, Kevin Lyons, who helped launch Fourstar, Andy Mueller, who made the Lakai “Flare” logo, and Evan Hecox, who started with the Chocolate decks, have all passed through. Many are CalArts graduates and skaters.
Before computers, graphics were drawn by hand and color stencils were cut with a knife to screen print them. In 2013, for the 20th anniversary, ten Art Dump artists made one-off decks for ten skaters on the team.
Girl has done plenty of collabs: Sanrio’s Hello Kitty, Kodak, Sub Pop, Beastie Boys, Thrasher, Spitfire, Anti-Hero and Volcom. Some are collector’s items today. Among its permanent series is Skull of Fame, by Sean Cliver.
Girl’s videos
Girl Films, the in-house production company, is one of the reasons the brand carries so much weight. Almost all its videos mix skate parts with sketches, humor and, especially in the early ones, a filmmaker’s touch.
| Year | Video | What it has |
|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Goldfish | The first one, directed by Spike Jonze, with sketches featuring the skaters |
| 1996 | Mouse | The second, also by Jonze, with parts from Koston, Mariano, Carroll, Howard, Wilson and others |
| 1999-2000 | Girl in South Africa, Euro Blitz | Tour videos |
| 2003 | Yeah Right! | Directed by Ty Evans and Spike Jonze, with effects and slow motion |
| 2008-2010 | Beauty and the Beast 1 to 3 | Tours with Anti-Hero |
| 2012 | Pretty Sweet | Girl and Chocolate together, shot in Central America, China and Europe |
| 2018 | Doll | The first full-length video since Pretty Sweet |
| 2020 | Nervous Circus | With Griffin Gass and Niels Bennett as new pros |
| 2025 | Neverywhere | A tour of the United States |
Mouse is still on many people’s lists as the best skate video ever made, and it is in full on the official Crailtap channel.
Yeah Right! came out on April 17, 2003. It was directed by Ty Evans and Spike Jonze, produced by Megan Baltimore, with music by Sam Spiegel. It opens with a tribute to Keenan Milton, who skated for Chocolate and died in 2001. The opening credits were shot in ultra slow motion with Jonze’s camera, which shoots at 100 frames per second, and it has green screen tricks, invisible boards and a cameo from Owen Wilson, where the bluntslide was actually done by Eric Koston in a wig.
Pretty Sweet is from 2012 and brought the Girl and Chocolate teams together. It premiered at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. It won the award for best video of its year. Its title comes from a line by Elijah Berle: girls are pretty, chocolate is sweet. Ty Evans left the production company in 2013.
There are more in our list of the best skate videos of all time.
The Girl team
The beginning (1993): Carroll, Howard, Jovontae Turner, Eric Koston, Guy Mariano, Rudy Johnson, Tony Ferguson, Sean Sheffey, Jeron Wilson and Tim Gavin.
The 90s and 2000s: Canadian Rick McCrank came on, along with Colin McKay, who came from Plan B, and Brandon Biebel, pro in 2002. Brian Anderson, Paul Rodriguez, Robbie McKinley and Jereme Rogers also skated for the brand, Rogers going pro in 2005 and leaving in 2007 over a dispute about his royalties.
The 2008 ams and after: Mike Mo Capaldi, Sean Malto and Alex Olson turned pro in 2008. Cory Kennedy won The Berrics’ Bang Yo’ Self 2 in 2009, joined the brand and turned pro in 2011.
The departures: Brian Anderson and Alex Olson left in May 2013, and Anderson started his own brand, 3D Skateboards. In 2015 the departure of Koston and Mariano was confirmed.
The new generation: between 2016 and 2018 Simon Bannerot, Tyler “Manchild” Pacheco, Griffin Gass and Niels Bennett came on, and Andrew Brophy signed when Cliché closed. Gass and Bennett turned pro in 2020. In 2019 Breana Geering joined, the first woman on the team.
Today: Carroll, Howard, Wilson, McCrank, Malto, Kennedy, Pacheco, Bannerot, Brophy, Gass, Bennett, Geering, Rowan Davis and Deandre “Lil Dre” Thebpanya, plus ams like Isaac Relis and Matteo Vandeputte. There are no Spanish skaters on the team.
In 2023 the Skateboarding Hall of Fame inducted Carroll and Howard in its new class.
Girl decks
Girl doesn’t sell proprietary deck technologies: they are seven-ply maple, in a popsicle shape with medium concave. What sets them apart is the art, the team and the series.
| Detail | What it’s like |
|---|---|
| Widths | From about 7.75 to 8.5 inches in the 93 Til series |
| Length | Between 31 and 32 inches |
| Wheelbase | From about 13.8 to 14.4 inches, depending on the model |
| Shapes | Coded: WR41, G027, G053… |
The WR41 is the one that shows up most in the current series, with models from Malto, Gass, Pacheco or Bennett. There are also collector decks, like the Art Dump series.
The brand doesn’t say which factory makes its decks.
The sister brands: Chocolate, Royal, Fourstar and Lakai
- Chocolate started in 1994, a year after Girl, to make room for more friends. Howard and Carroll have said the idea came partly from leaving Chico Brenes behind on a tour because he didn’t fit in the van. You have the whole story on the Chocolate page.
- Fourstar is the apparel. Eric Koston and Guy Mariano founded it in April 1996. Its last big collection was in 2016.
- Royal Trucks are trucks, founded in 1999 by Rudy Johnson and Guy Mariano. They have a lighter Ultra Light model.
- Lakai is the shoes. Carroll and Howard founded it in 1999, and as we said above, it is no longer part of the house.
Girl compared to other brands
- Chocolate: same house, same founders. What changes is the team and the art, not the deck.
- Plan B: where Carroll and Howard come from. Today it is a different brand, with a different owner. You have its page at Plan B.
- Baker and Anti-Hero: other street brands run by skaters. With Anti-Hero, Girl made the Beauty and the Beast video series. Check out Baker and Anti-Hero.
- Element: another big deck brand, where Andy Jenkins ended up. You have the Element page.
If you want to compare more, we have a comparison of the best deck brands. And if you are looking for a brand from Spain, we have an article on Spanish skate brands.
Who is Girl for?
- For people who skate street: mostly with classic popsicle decks, with a familiar shape and concave. Mid-width models work well for technical, flatground and ledges.
- For collectors: the artist series and the collabs are what people look for most.
- For people into videos: Mouse and Yeah Right! are complete and free on the official channel.
Girl doesn’t have a deck designed for beginners or anything special for them. A quality seven-ply deck works just as well, and the choice has more to do with the graphic and the team than with the construction.