The story of the 9 Ball starts in a La Jolla backyard in 1993. Our house consisted of a bunch of good friends, a pool table, mini-ramp, ping-pong table and shaping room all across the street from some nice smooth hills down to the local reefs.  As you can imagine, since the house had all of these fine features, it became quite the hangout spot. At the time, we had a friend from Hawaii who used to always razz people by calling them "Nineballs." One day he called to see what was going on at the house, but we were all out "studying," so he had to leave a message on our answering machine and asked, "What’s going on over there at Sector 9?", which to all of us meant a house full of "Nineballs." Coincidently, one of our favorite neighborhood hill cruisers, that was a snowboard-turned-skateboard, had recently been stolen. A few replacement boards were almost finished and just needed the finishing touches of a logo… The answering machine message was heard, and "Sector 9" not only had a nice ring to it, but also seemed fitting, so it stuck. When people saw us skate by on these boards, the interest was immediately apparent and we started making skateboards in the backyard. Lots of learning, and a couple of evictions later, we were forced to move into our first warehouse that would become the Sector 9 skateboard factory.