Chris Nieratko On Mike V.

American humorist and author Chris Nieratko pontificates on Mike V.


By Chris Nieratko

It’s hard to believe someone as unpopular as Mike Vallely ever got so popular. Back in the mid-80’s when Mike was growing up in Edison, New Jersey skateboarding barely existed on the East Coast. Normal folk didn’t understand it and thus didn’t like it. Mike found himself, like so many skaters of his generation, literally fighting guys just because he was a skateboarder.

Within his own world of skateboarding Mike has made one unpopular move after another. When he was coming up through the ranks vert skating was the center of the universe. Yet Mike chose to help pioneer street skating. Then when vert supposedly died out the first time in the 90’s and it was unheard of to do anything but skate street Mike chose to include footage of himself skating vert in his ground breaking Rubbish Heap video part. While other pros and companies tried to decide what zany cut or notch to put into their archaic whale-shaped skateboards, Mike went and changed the skateboard world forever with his Barnyard Deck by having the first symmetrical popsicle shape (where the nose and the tail could both be skated the same). Nearly 20 years later the majority of all skateboards sold in the world derive from that first Mike V shape.

I could easily write about Mike for days. We grew up just two towns away from each other and his accomplishments are a great source of pride to me and all New Jersey skaters. Perhaps I’m the wrong person to write this. I am, at heart, a huge Mike V fan and when I try to remove myself from that everything I write comes off as a history lesson of everything Mike has accomplished in his 25+ years as a professional skater. That’s not the message I want to send although I do think it’s important to know what Mike has done for skateboarding.



By default, if you love skateboarding you have to love Mike V. It’s really that simple. A few years back Mike V did a demo at the Sayreville Skatepark in New Jersey and he literally did every trick on Earth, that includes both flip and step off variation. Recently the world saw him annihilate the world-famous Berrics skate park at mach 10 speed. Over a decade ago I remember seeing him on his second go-round with Powell Skateboards eat a traveling mini-ramp alive like he was the prophet of Cheese & Crackers yet to come. When skateboarding was at its smallest I recall Mike and Ed Templeton touring roller rinks in a beat up car to promote their brand, TV Skateboards. My point is that every step that modern street skating has ever taken, Mike Vallely has been there to help it along. And he’s still going strong. It’s a pretty heavy statement. Most pros are generational. They were at the peak at one time or another and then disappear often-leaving people to wonder, “What ever happened to that guy?” Mike has lived on the skateboarding landscape as long as many of us have been skating, as long as a lot of skaters have been alive.

Recently skateboarding has granted Mike some extracurricular work outside of skating; most notably music and acting and like everything else in his life he puts his whole heart into and is naturally good at it. Just as I get stoked when I hear the sounds of skateboard wheels rolling down the sidewalk or when I’m driving my car and I see skaters, I have to tell you when the van door swung open in The Hangover and there was Mike on the big screen for ten seconds handing off the laundry, I felt like a little kid that just saw a frickin’ unicorn (not the fake goat one with the glued on horn that Barnum & Bailey tried to pass off as real in the early ‘80s). That was our guy, one of us, in a big-time movie. I turned to my wife with pride and was like, “I KNOW THAT GUY!” And all skaters can say that, “I know that guy,” because Mike was, is and always will be one of us.

I’ve never in my life fanned out on celebrities, musician, athletes, models, anyone. But I do fan out on skateboarders and their achievements. I am happy when I see them successful. And I am unbelievably proud to see someone as unpopular as Mike V get so popular.