Time for some Team Pain history! Back in 1996, MTV commissioned Tim Payne and our crew to build them the first real “street plaza” of all time for their first Sports and Music Festival. MTV wanted the course to match the set with an “industrial wasteland” look, with an emphasis on graffiti and the look of destruction (MTV’s “cool” view of how a city would look). Tim approached the project the way only a skateboarder could. Street skating was more popular than ever at the time, and we wanted the course to be as if a skater was actually skating a downtown atmosphere. Tim quickly shot down the idea of an “industrial wasteland” and went to work designing a street course including things a skateboarder would see and skate while downtown, like trees, bushes, and working water fountains. We wanted the ground to resemble real concrete, and used materials like cultured marble for the very first time. In the end we compromised with MTV’s ideas of the course containing graffiti and an old car in the middle of the course. Here is an edit of some of Team Pain’s archived footage from the MTV Sports and Music Festival in 1996 featuring some of the world’s most legendary street skaters Chris Senn, Ed Templeton, Sean Sheffey, Eric Koston, Rickk Howard, Chad Muska, and Geoff Rowley.