For the latest instalment in our “Visuals” interview series we connected with Mike Sinclair to find out about some skateboarding imagery that has forever lodged itself into his grey matter. Strap in for a trip in the Delorean before finding out more about Mike’s plans for Slappy Trucks and the year ahead…
Words and interview by Jacob Sawyer. Mike Sinclair in the field shot by Tania Cruz
Mike Sinclair is a lifer, a storied team manager who has dedicated decades to honing that craft. His days are filled with the many duties wearing that hat encompasses for brands underneath the Tum Yeto umbrella and the newer generations who are joining the Nike SB program. Outside of those responsibilities he can often be found doing more of the same for the X Games. Making sure so many skateboarders are taken care of must feel like herding cats at certain points but Mike has spent a large portion of his life making sure things run smoothly, in and out of the van, and he’s good at it.
When the pandemic forced us all into lockdown and normal service had no sure signs of resuming that TM role loosened up somewhat leaving Mike with some time on his hands. Rather than resting on his laurels, he used this opportunity to tackle something that had been bugging him for years, and his quest to perfectly situate a kingpin with optimum clearance became a prime objective. Every tweak in the product development stages became an exciting step that led to him creating a product he felt other people would like. Slappy Trucks were born and his instincts were right as their popularity continues to grow. To coincide with a bumper crop of Slappy trucks hitting our cabinets we reached out to Mike to work on this article.
Having spoken elsewhere about his brand exclusively we hit him up instead to speak about some things that have stoked the fire still burning and embedded themselves in his subconscious. Before life managing teams Mike was killing it on other people’s and his selection for this interview aligns itself for the most part with his time skating for Blockhead. It was a treat to hear him talking with the same excitement and awe he felt about some things which made their mark, both on his young mind and the pages of skateboarding history. His selection includes a Todd Congelliere video part that inspired his own progression, a Pat Duffy three-piece from a video that progressed the culture exponentially, a Matt Hensley gem captured by one of his greatest collaborators, and a Tommy Guerrero board that plays a memorable part in the start of Mike’s journey. The article closes out with some talk about the here and now, dips into the Slappy Trucks origin story, and finds out what is on the cards next for Mike Sinclair…
Todd Congelliere – Liberty Skateboards Horror (1990)
I’ve never met Todd Congelliere but this is one of my favourite video parts. There are obviously other favourites like Mark Gonzales in Video Days, that is the favourite but I’m going with Todd Congelliere for this one. It’s a part I’ll often think about through the years, how rad it was that this dude was on a small brand and he was doing his own thing. He’s skating his own backyard vert ramp, he’s not a street skater but he’s out skating street, eating shit, and having fun. His personality really comes through, it just spoke to me, I like this vibe. Even to this day I try to find skaters who have a Todd Congelliere vibe, because it’s sick, it’s real. Gonz was so fucking good that people aren’t at that level, still. Congelliere had some really unique tricks, and power, and style about him so you could say that about him to0. It’s all kind of about what speaks to you, favourite is one thing but a part that really hits you is another. I always thought this part was cool.
I skated everything growing up so to see a part of someone ripping their own ramp resonated. I never had my own ramp like that so it was kind of a dream. Having your friends over there, a sketchy ladder going up the side instead of some well-built stairs. I just vibed with the whole thing, a shitty boom box on the deck, lighting shit on fire. I just liked everything about it. Then he was skating a parking garage at night, and that’s what we did. We would skate vert, or mini ramp, or whatever and then go skating parking garages and kerbs at night. He’s skating everything and that vibe spoke to me, it was all totally relatable. I remember seeing this for the first time. A couple of my friends had already seen it and they were telling me about the video, explaining that it was like a horror film. I didn’t want to watch it because horror films made me feel uncomfortable, and still do. They told me I was going to like this one though. I thought it was going be gnarly but I was hyped when I watched it, that’s the type of horror movie I like, I wish they were all like that because it’s just ridiculous. It was funny. I would have eventually just got a dubbed copy of this from a friend, I never owned the original.
I would have been on Blockhead at this time. I’m not sure if I saw Todd Congelliere do it first but I did a bigspin back tail on vert, not a slide just a bigspin to back tail stall. Congelliere used to do bigspin backside disasters and I wanted to learn that. I’m not sure if I did my trick after seeing his or couldn’t do it to disaster so I did it to tail. But that illustrates that it was relatable and fun, that’s still what it’s all about to this day. I see people stressing over tricks today and just think, dude just do what’s fun and comes natural. I didn’t kill myself to learn the bigspin back tail it just worked when another trick didn’t and it was fun.
Todd Congelliere wasn’t this big popular dude but I think if you skated vert during that time or paid attention to it you would have seen something unique in what he was doing and respected it. What he was doing wasn’t corny, it wasn’t the best, but it was cool. I still dream about having a mini ramp in my backyard but I’m in California where the size of your yard is like the size of a doghouse. So there’s the space issue and also your neighbours are just too close. I’ve never lived anywhere that building a ramp could be possible. I guess the dream involves having that ramp and having people over to skate it with you. The reality is that right now there are so many skateparks that no one would come over anyway and the skatepark is probably where you would end up to skate with somebody. We’re living in a different time.
“I think if you skated vert during that time or paid attention to it you would have seen something unique in what he was doing and respected it”
What Todd Congelliere was doing spoke to me on that level though, wishing I had a backyard ramp where the homies could come over filming, then go out at night and continue filming other places. That’s kind of what we were doing anyway just not at his level. I became aware a bit later about FYP [Five Year Plan] and learned that was his band but I never got into it at the time. Back then I was probably listening to Dinosaur Jr who I still listen to. I also listened to a lot of hip hop at the time, a bit of everything. So I didn’t get into his music but I respect that he did that, it’s part of what made him so sick, he just did his own shit. He was one of those unique, creative people and that’s probably what drew me to him, he was cool, he was different.
He did so many tricks so well, people would maybe call the trick a bigspin pivot fakie but it’s a shuvit to me, he did that trick so well. His stalefish disasters were incredible, I’ve never done that trick still but it looks so cool to do it. Everything he did was powerful and I didn’t skate like that, I would’ve loved to. Everything he did was done the way you would want to do it. I would like to meet him one day, I recently found out that his band had played through some friends but I don’t follow his music. They say don’t meet your heroes but it would be cool to meet him and ask him some questions. Maybe I should just leave that memory as it is to me though, I don’t really need to dig any further. I just remember loving this part and the effect it had on me.
Still to this day running teams I look for a Todd Congelliere, there hasn’t been one but I’m still looking. The closest person I have found and this is no disrespect to Todd or the skater but Jesse Lindloff “Beanwater” who is on Foundation has a similar appeal. When I first saw him the way he skates was close to Congelliere to me. I’m still looking for that though, it’s still in the back of my brain. It’s not the only thing I’m looking for but it’s embedded in my brain, someone who can skate with that approach and style. I haven’t skated vert in a long time. Tony Hawk’s vert ramp is close to me and I can skate over there. I was just there the other day. Bam Margera was doing doubles with Tony but I didn’t drop in. I have been skating some smaller bowls recently, some midi ramp-style bowls and I started padding up. I’ve been going to parks no one is at, padding up and seeing if I can get back on some transition again. I definitely wouldn’t show up at the Vans combi like “I’m here”, I’ve got some work to do first.
“Still to this day running teams I look for a Todd Congelliere, there hasn’t been one but I’m still looking”
I didn’t skate bowls growing up, we would find a pool occasionally and do lip tricks or things we could do at the skatepark on it and that was cool. I still don’t think I’d be that good at skating a combi-pool but I would like to be able to do some bare minimum shit on it. I had this bet running with Jaws [Aaron Homoki] years ago but his dad called it off. He said that if I could do all of my vert tricks he’d give me $1000 for each one I re-learned. Then he bet me that if I could do them in a line he’d give me $10,000. He’d never seen me skate vert because it had been that long, the deadline for the bet was the finish of the Dekline video. So I had this seven-month deadline and was determined to go to Tony’s ramp every day to win $10,000. I was down to do it but then his dad called me because he was concerned about how much money his son could be wasting. I said that’s exactly why I accepted it because I would take his fucking money, hahaha. His dad was looking out for him so I called it off. I didn’t want to take his son’s money if it was going to make him uncomfortable even though Jaws didn’t seem to have a problem with it. I would like to think though, that if I spent seven months focused on that for a couple of hours a day, I would hope that I would at least get half of my tricks back and maybe I could get $5000 off him. It was such a funny challenge. I’m not that motivated by money but if someone challenges me and puts something down I will die to win. That’s just something that’s in me and I don’t know why. I did the same thing with a weight loss bet with Jamie Thomas. At the time I had never even been on a diet but I blew him out of the water on that one. I’m so stubborn, I WILL win.
Pat Duffy – Plan-B: Questionable (1992)
I don’t think people know. You can’t go back in time, take something from the past and show it to the present, then expect them to feel what you felt. I’ve shown this to people coming up who have said “that video is kinda cool”. I’m like “kinda cool?” They just don’t understand. I was a sponsored skater when this video came out, and when it came out I couldn’t do anything that was in the entire fucking video, nothing. It was all SO next level. It didn’t bum me out, it motivated me, but it also made me feel like shit. How had I not seen or felt what these guys did to bump it to the next level? I had work to do. I was living on the East Coast at the time so I’d go and look at a big rail and know there’s no fucking way. So seeing Pat Duffy annihilate all this shit, doing things that nobody has ever done before, and then this giant 50-50 straight down in these little fucking shorts, to then slappy the kerb and do a tre flip? It was insanity. Who is this guy? Where did they find him? Then the rest of the video is everyone going nuts as well.
I couldn’t believe how high the bar got raised in one video. Then for it to be loads of stuff done by a guy who I had never heard of. Back then there was obviously no Instagram. That’s a space where there’s always someone new, someone who is cool, or someone who has a nice style or whatever. Watching this you were being introduced to someone who is better than anyone, and is an amateur, doing tricks you’ll never be able to do and defying laws of gravity. Grinding a round rail down a double kink? No one had even done that on a flat bar, we didn’t even know what a flat bar was at that point so it really was – how is this possible? It was just shocking. Props to Mike Ternasky and Pat Duffy, whatever they were doing back then I would just like to listen in. What they did not only changed skateboarding and left its mark, it was like somebody landing on the moon. It was crazy and no one told you it was going to happen. Turn on the television-what’s going on?…they’re on the moon! What! How?? It was so crazy.
“What they did not only changed skateboarding and left its mark, it was like somebody landing on the moon”
I first watched this at my mum’s house. Someone brought the video over and none of us had seen it. We watched it and it was pure silence, we just could not believe what we were watching. I remember going out in my driveway afterwards and trying to do tricks off my driveway into the grass ditch. I wanted to try a kickflip late shuvit but had no idea what I was doing, haha, it was fucking nuts. After the video came out Airwalk ran an ad that was just a photo of the rail itself. I’ve been telling people this, the trick he did was so fucking gnarly that they went back and just took a picture of the spot. I’ve never seen that before, that’s fucking crazy. It’s insane what he did, what’s wrong with him? What made him do this? Did someone tell him to do this or ask him? I just didn’t get it, I still don’t understand it. I actually don’t even live that far from this spot, I might have to drive by there someday soon just to look at it.
The advert which Airwalk ran following the release of the Plan-B Questionable video
Doing that slappy straight afterwards too. Think about this, at the time slappies weren’t even that popular back then. It wasn’t something you saw someone doing every day, and if you were doing a slappy you probably weren’t the guy grinding a giant rail. So you combine them all, the giant grind, the slappy, and then the tre flip, and the conclusion is that this guy is the best at everything. It’s almost like he should have turned the corner and done a backside noseblunt slide on a fucking ramp – he’s the best in the world, what can he not do? This was around the same time when I saw Jeremy Wray skate for the first time. I was on the same team as him, he wasn’t Jeremy Wray yet, he hadn’t filmed a part. I saw him skate and thought what’s wrong with this guy? How can he be this good? I’ve said this before in other interviews but I wondered if it was his setup. Then I asked to try his board and ruled that one out. When you see someone with that much talent and that much skill it makes you feel weird. You think why don’t I have this? It’s not jealousy, it’s just that what they’re doing doesn’t seem humanly possible. When you see someone on this different level it’s hard to conceive how they got there, it’s shocking.
“at the time slappies weren’t even that popular back then…and if you were doing a slappy you probably weren’t the guy grinding a giant rail”
We lived by these videos and it wasn’t like there were a thousand videos At this time there would be like one good video a year and it was fucking insane. Maybe Tracker trucks would come out with a video for instance and that would be cool, you would be stoked on it. But with the Questionable video there was no other video out there to match it. You would watch it ten thousand times and it was worth it. I was talking to a friend about something recently. Obviously this video, and the time it came out was a quantum leap for what was possible but we were inspired by so many different times in skateboarding. Later on in the mid-nineties we were stoked on Gino [Iannucci] for instance, and we loved the different tricks he was doing and his technique. The tricks we were watching had probably been done a year or two prior so we were chasers instead of innovators and we didn’t even realise it. To us this stuff was brand new but the people we were watching were already on to something else. We couldn’t even think fast enough to stay caught up. We were just such fans of skating and loved it all, I loved street, vert, mini ramps, ditches, pools, everything. It was all just skating to me and I wanted to skate everything. The mini ramp section in Questionable is still full of the craziest shit you’ll see to this day.
Pat Duffy needs a statue at that fucking High School, put a statue of him at the top of those stairs. Can we raise money for that? I’ve got a thousand on it just for getting me hyped because I had never been so shocked with excitement before.
Matt Hensley under the 805. PH: Daniel Harold Sturt (1990)
I was a big Matt Hensley fan and I don’t know anybody who wasn’t. I came out to San Diego later on to visit and we were driving down the freeway, suddenly I shouted “Oh my god! It’s the bridge!” Everyone I was with was like “Yeah that’s cool” but I was like “Yeah that’s cool? That’s the coolest!” Straight away I started asking if we could skate it but everyone said it was too rough and made excuses that you had to put down wood to get to it. Another year went by, and then another, and I kept on driving by it. Then I remember one day I was driving past with a friend and I said “fuck this!” I pulled over on the side of the freeway with cars going by at 90mph and I ran up the fucking hill with my board. I asked my friend to grab the disposable camera we had in the car and we got up there.
I had heard repeatedly that it was rough up there so I had no idea what would be possible. It was rough but I rode down it, and I remember people blowing their horns at me from the freeway below. I went up it a couple of times and I did a little kickturn and an ollie or whatever, definitely not like Matt Hensley but I got up there. I had to skate this fucking thing, I couldn’t drive by it one more day. So I went and did it, and it felt like a childhood dream. How could you not? How could you be a skater and not get out of your car and go to try and skate this thing? I’m glad I did it, I don’t have the photos but they must be somewhere. One of them was of me rolling along the bridge towards the transition and I remember that one. The ollie or the kickturn I did was so bad so I don’t want that photo but I was happy to get the photo of me rolling there. I just had to prove that I was there. It’s hallowed ground up there, it’s skate history. We were talking about Pat Duffy needing a statue at the top of this stairs. At night time there needs to be an LED hologram of Hensley doing that frontside ollie projected up there. That would make me so fucking happy, hahaha.
“At night time there needs to be an LED hologram of Hensley doing that frontside ollie projected up there”
It didn’t feel too sketchy up there actually because it’s really wide. You can’t fall of the thing unless you’re crazy. It’s just one of those photogenic, iconic things. They both had an eye for it and that was the perfect spot. He had to skate this thing – it’s a giant quarter pipe underneath the top of a bridge, and hundreds of feet up from the freeway. Matt Hensley and Daniel Harold Sturt were an incredible partnership, and the fisheye angle made this one. There are a few people in the background on the bridge, Steve Ortega and a couple of other people. They have their arms up and they’re standing far apart which gives you an idea of the scale. Back then I wouldn’t carve into a frontside ollie, you would just kind of go straight up and down on vert or transition. It would be sketchy if the thing was four feet wide but it’s probably about twenty feet wide. It didn’t feel sketchy in that way but it did feel sketchy that you could get arrested at any time.
It’s so cool. I clearly remember seeing it for the first time, it was from Hensley’s pro spotlight in Transworld. You opened the mag and there it was, that one instantly joined others on my wall. Matt Hensley and Daniel Harold Sturt were an incredible partnership and the fisheye angle made this one iconic. It’s a classic move, an epic dude, a great photographer, and an insane spot. This beyond left a mark, just like the [Pat] Duffy part.
Powell Peralta – Tommy Guerrero “Flaming Dagger” (1986)
When I went to buy my first board it was at a bike shop that was in my hometown. They had a bunch of boards there, a Lance Mountain, a McGill, a Gonz board, and a few more. They didn’t have a ton of boards in there, maybe about fifteen but there were some popular boards to choose from. For some reason, I bought a Brand-X Weirdo. I have no idea why, it was bright yellow with these squiggly lines. I just picked it up and chose it, I guess I wanted something different, I didn’t want the McGill because everybody had it so I bought something completely dumb. I think my next board was the Guerrero. I chose it because it wasn’t the [Tony] Hawk or the [Christian] Hosoi. I knew Tommy Guerrero skated street and I wanted to skate street too, I couldn’t do a 540 so what he was doing was relatable. I don’t know why I liked the board so much, I don’t even like flames. Something about it was just so sick, it was black with the orange and yellow flames, the sword was blue. It was just cool you know?
“Something about it was just so sick”
I had a couple of those boards and it would have been around 1986. The one I had was the original shape with the round nose. I wanted to get one of the re-issue boards but all of those have the later pointy nose and I don’t want that because it’s not the shape I had. That’s why I haven’t bought one yet. This will always be the board though, this one spoke to me. We had so many boards growing up because we used to trade boards. I would have the Guerrero and skate it for a while, then someone would have a Jeff Grosso for instance and we’d swap. I’d skate the Grosso for two months and then see if someone wanted to trade the Grosso for a [Neil] Blender. We just wanted all of them, we wanted to skate all of them. We didn’t have money so we weren’t buying all of these different boards, we were just trading with friends. Then finally when you had been trading so much it was time to get something new because you are down to a board with no tail on it. We just wanted to see what every shape was like. There weren’t so many brands and you wanted them all, it was all so new. Now if you were to try a board from every brand that exists you’d go bankrupt, there’s so many but back then there were only about ten so you wanted them all.
There isn’t a specific Tommy Guerrero photo skating this board that’s particularly burned into my mind but his Future Primitive part is. He’s skating in San Francisco and it looks amazing. I grew up in North Carolina so I was blown away – where are there places like this? My friend had a driveway and Tommy was skating driveways but we didn’t have anything that looked remotely like San Francisco. I would be out there all day if there was something like that, watching him ride on 5-0 grind that metal-edged kerb was so cool, I just wanted to find me one of those.
What’s funny is that I don’t have any skateboards on my wall or anywhere at home. I worked in skate shops, and around skating for so long that the last thing I want to see is a fucking skateboard on my wall, hahaha. I’m not really a collector of anything but during Covid I started buying boards that I liked or wanted when I was young. So I probably have about thirty boards, they’re not worth anything but they’re worth something to me. It’s cool looking at the shape of a Blender board you used to have. It’s not like I’ll even do anything with it, I wanted it, I have it and it’s cool. It’s not on display but it’s in the closet. One day I’ll probably give it to someone who is more excited about it than I am. I never had any room until recently so there was no way I could collect anything.
Mike closing out last year with a satisfying Slappy-enabled feeble grind
Thanks for your time Mike. Let’s catch up on right now. What do you have on the cards this year that you’re excited about?
I’m going to try to put out two Slappy videos every year. We released one called Spicy a few weeks ago and so we’re going to try to do another one later. I want to get back to doing some travelling. I usually go back home to North Carolina for the whole of October if I can. I want to do that again this year and take some people out there with me. Basically, I want to keep skating, promote the brand, and have fun. The whole point for me with all of this and why I still do it is because I can’t picture myself doing anything else and I want to have fun doing what I do. I’m making these trucks, I’m working for these brands, and I’m going on these trips. If I’m going back to visit the family then I want to bring people with me to skate. All of these things are fun, and I’m still having a blast doing it.
There can be stressful moments with anything but if I start tripping about anything I realise that it doesn’t really suck at all. It would really suck if I was working a normal job with people I don’t like. I like pretty much everybody who I sponsor and travel with. We have bad days sometimes but we’re always going to get through it. This is fun as fuck and that’s why I’m still doing it. I definitely feel blessed, very lucky, and I appreciate it. I don’t take any day for granted because it’s crazy that I’m still able to work in skateboarding. I would never have guessed I would still be able to do this because it’s a dream, it really is. I’m a big skate nerd and I’m a big kid, I haven’t grown up, I still love it, and I still pay attention to it. Things are still refreshing for me, stuff changes but I roll with the changes.
There are things that I liked back in the day that I don’t even try to explain to these kids because they weren’t there. I don’t want to say anything was better it just was what it meant to me. Some of these new kids tell me what it was that sparked them and it’s crazy. It’s fascinating, it could be something from eight years ago that feels like it was two years ago
Are there any new team acquisitions who have been blowing you away recently that we should be aware of?
I just started giving Gavin Bottger boards from Toy Machine. I sponsored him with shoes at first, when he was eight or nine years old he was already incredible. For some reason, he never secured a board sponsor. Recently I suggested he visit Toy Machine, I got him in there and have tried to get him around the team and get him on a trip. I started giving him some boards and I’m already sold on him because I know him. So now it’s about seeing if we can travel, if we can take him somewhere, how he fits in over there, if he likes it. I always want it to be an organic thing, I don’t just want to throw someone on the team. I also want to take Slappy and do a slow growth with it which has been working. I didn’t want to come out with ten superstars on the team. I want the product to speak and then if people like the product I feel the pros will come. I didn’t want to piss off the other big truck bands, I just wanted to exist and have it grow naturally. Lots of the kids I work with are up-and-comers, we’ll get some pros, and some of these up-and-comers are gonna be pros. I don’t want to rush anything. I feel like there’s still a lot to do with the trucks themselves. I’m already constantly thinking of what else we can do. There will definitely be some new team additions along the line but I’m not putting any pressure on that.
“When it all started working together, the kingpin was how I wanted, and they turned just right, I knew that was it. That was the turning point where I felt that other people might like it too”
a full range of Slappy Trucks are available now from Slam City Skates now
We’re glad to have Slappy trucks in the cabinet. What are you happiest about achieving with the design-was there a moment where you finally tweaked something and knew you had nailed it?
The first thing that got me excited when I was in the sampling stage was the turn. When I really liked how they turned, that was a moment. I always knew that I could get the grind-clearance I wanted, I could lower the kingpin and raise the hanger, I knew that wasn’t going to be a problem. That was something that had always pissed me off, my kingpin was hanging on every truck I’d ever skated. I had that figured out and how I liked it but when I got the turn and it felt good it was amazing. They felt better to me already than trucks I had ridden for years. So when I figured out the bushings, the geometry, and the turn it was a very exciting moment. You always feel like you’re going to have to compromise somewhere, if you have a lower kingpin then maybe it’s not going to turn so well? I was making that up because I didn’t have to compromise on anything to get what I wanted. It just involved some patience, and trial and error. We were testing and testing the trucks but it all went off feel. There was no designer there saying here’s your finished product, we just tweaked everything more and more until it worked perfectly. We made the bushings a little softer, made sure they were coned a certain way. When it all started working together, the kingpin was how I wanted, and they turned just right, I knew that was it. That was the turning point where I felt that other people might like it too.
We’re at a good point in history where people are open to trying something new also.
I hear what you’re saying. There are more people out there willing to try something different because there are other things out there that have been out forever. So if they’re trying something and it is different then it stands a chance. There have always been new trucks that came and went. I feel like Slappy is working because it’s a good product and that’s what I want the people to find out. It’s not based off a superstar team telling you that’s what you should buy. I wanted to make the product and have the team evolve later because of the product. We’ve seen that old-school way of polishing a turd where the product isn’t working but there’s a sick team behind it so they figure they’ll nail it for the next run. I wanted these to be how I thought they should be from the very beginning. It didn’t matter if I sold one set or one case, I was in it to do it, and it wasn’t to compete with the other truck brands it was just because I wanted to fucking do it.
It must feel good to have created something so difficult to get right that has traditionally been dominated by a few companies and win people over.
It’s been crazy. I see people on the street or at the skatepark who have them. Some people know who I am, and some people don’t. I get, not embarrassed, but it doesn’t seem like it’s real. How is this real? It is still crazy to me at this point.
Who has been the most surprising Slappy convert?
I actually really can’t say but there is a legendary skateboarder who has ridden for another truck company for his whole career. Then someone told me that they saw him at their local and that he was riding Slappy trucks. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that. They had a conversation with him about how good they are, and told him he should make the switch. I’m not even sweating that though, the switch will come. There has been no force on the switch so if legendary skaters are trying them just for the sake of trying them AND liking them then that’s enough for me. I can die happy just with that. That was so cool to hear but we can’t print who it was. It’s stories like that which get me even more motivated.
We enjoyed Spicy, such a sick squad. Was it refreshing after so many years managing teams to assemble one for something that’s uniquely yours?
Thanks for the kind words. I wanted to do something that was s bit different, the whole ethos began with “Have Fun With Us”. I wanted the videos to have a fun vibe. I feel like there are so many companies out there that are predictable. If it’s a gnarly company the video is going to have Slayer or some heavy rock. If you’re skating a ditch you’ll have certain music, it’s almost like a uniform. That’s not me, I like that but I want to do something different. I want to have R&B music, and dance hits from the 80s. I want you to feel the video and fuck with it because it makes you feel good. The trucks are meant to make you feel good, it’s all about a feeling. So if you can get that vibe from the video, and you get it from the product then that’s all I ever wanted. I’m not the best, I’m not the gnarliest, I’m not the fuck you. I just want people to check it out, let’s go and have some fun, let’s skate. That’s why I started skating.
“Spicy” Featuring: Cordano Russell, Georgia Martin, Nathan Ko, Curtis Fontenot, Anthony Rare, Chris Powers, Ryan Hamburg, Christian Hall, Schianta Lepori, Sebas Garcia, Carlos Albi & Tania Cruz
Can you give us a good story from the last few years where your TM skills have successfully steered the ship away from the rocks?
Ah man, I feel like we’re always on the rocks, hahaha. That’s a tough one because I’ve been doing this for so long, and there are so many different personalities and egos at play. There are lots of people who don’t want to bother anyone and are introverted characters, then there are people who are the opposite. Being a team manager for so many years for so many different brands, it has taught me more and more over the years that everybody, whether they appear to be super gnarly, or super tough, or super nerdy. They are not what you think they are. They say don’t judge a book by its cover but it really makes you rethink everything. Sometimes the person you think is the biggest dick can be the loveliest person, and someone who is so nice to everybody can be kind of fucked up. You love all of these people for who they are though, and you really get to know them.
To me, it’s weird when a rider who you have worked with closely for ten years just loses touch. I want to talk to all of these people for the rest of my fucking life. It’s so much easier now, you can send them a message via Instagram or over text. If that didn’t exist I would still be sending handwritten letters to a hundred different people over the next however many years. It’s all memories and that’s all it is. It doesn’t feel like steering the ship so much to me because when we’re together we’re together, it’s a group effort. I do try not to be on anybody’s ass too hard. If someone is really getting off the rails I might say something but everyone makes their own choices. Lots of people ask me for my advice but I’ve been kind of holding that back a lot lately. I have given advice and watched people do the exact opposite so I wonder why they asked in the first place and it makes me feel weird watching them do exactly what I told them would fuck them up. That affects me personally and it’s sad.
“ We’re all working on the boat, we’re all trying to repair the ship so we can keep sailing”
With the crew though, if I keep going, I just want to meet more people, more personalities. I thought that by now I wouldn’t be in skateboarding anymore because maybe someone along the way would have offered me a different option. “Mike I had a lot of fun with you four years ago, I started this thing, do you want to come and work for me?” You always think that skateboarding is going to end but nobody has ever contacted me with a better option. They’re all still skating, still doing the same thing I’m doing. We’re all working on the boat, we’re all trying to repair the ship so we can keep sailing.
Thanks for your time Mike. Any last words?
I’m just thankful to be here, to be creative, and to make something that people can enjoy. Hopefully Slappy trucks will still be here when I’m dead. I hope people will still be skating them and they’ll still be making people smile.
We’re honoured Mike took time out for this one. If it has inspired you to try something new then shop with us for Slappy Trucks. If you want to hear more about his story we recommend his recent interview for The Bunt. We would like to thank Neil Macdonald [ Science Vs. Life ] for the mag scans and Neil Perry for the Tommy Guerrero photo that didn’t make it.
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