### Edison Teen Gains Fame as ‘Streetstyler’ By ALLAN HOFFMAN **SEPTEMBER 1986** Skateboard fanatics in New Jersey don’t have fancy ramps or sanctioned skating spots. They’ve got pavement, lots of it, and the challenge of eluding cops, storeowners, and hostile drivers. Local skaters don’t let these obstacles hinder them. Instead, they take their quasi-urban environment – the walls in back of grocery stores, the Rutgers College campus, and New Brunswick parking decks – and make the best of it. Some of the East Coast’s best “streetstyle” skaters hail from Edison, a community crowded with traffic jams, townhouses, industry, and malls. In Edison, kids consider the asphalt behind Acme prime open space. “We don’t have any ramps around here, so we just use our environment to make up tricks,” said Mike Vallely, a 16-year-old Edison skater. “We just use anything. We could have a major session right here,” he said, waving his arm at storefronts, the sidewalk, the air. “These walls. Anything.” That attitude has made Vallely one of the best, if not the best, street skater in the country, according to skateboard industry insiders. In August, Vallely was on the cover of “Thrasher,” the major magazine for skateboard enthusiasts. When representatives of Powell Peralta, the nation’s leading skateboard manufacturer, saw Vallely skating at Virginia Beach in June, they immediately recruited him for their skateboarding team, the Bones Brigade. The team has twenty members, with only four from the East Coast – Vallely and three others from Florida. “He’s one of the best I’ve seen for a street skater,” said Todd Hastings, promotions coordinator for Powell Peralta of Santa Barbara, Calif. Over the summer, Vallely won a National Skateboard Association contest in Oceanside, Calif., as a sponsored amateur, surprising the West Coast competition. “He had to beat everyone in the whole state – all of California,” said Hastings. “People were mad he did so well. He totally took them by surprise.” “The tricks the kid was doing and the energy he’s got are unheard of,” he said. “Eventually he’ll probably get his own model – a board with his signature on it,” said Hastings. “I can imagine that happening in the next couple of years. The kid is just Mr. Talent. He’s good enough to go pro.” One day last week, Vallely and another sponsored skater from Edison, Al Battaglotti, 15, were skating at Washington School in Edison. About 20 other youths watched as Vallely, wearing baggy black pants and a pink wristband, went wild on the pavement, stunning the others with his insane style. Vallely and Battaglotti have become local heroes of sorts, with a slew of younger kids learning from them, following them and seeing them as role models for their greatest aspirations. “It’s taking skateboarding to the extent, what we’re doing,” said Battaglotti as he watched Vallely skate. “We can have an empty space, just flat ground, and have a good time. We can make a lot out of nothing.” In the year and a half Vallely and Battaglotti have been skating, they’ve come a long way, impressing people with their original style of tricks. In a society which values safety, they rebel and follow their instinct’s wild behavior. --- Two articulate youths defend skating as a sport. “People don’t understand it. They think it’s dangerous and a toy,” said Vallely. “I get the impression they don’t want to see us having fun. They’d rather see us on a football field. You get hurt skating and they want to ban it. Why don’t they just ban activity?” “I consider skating like an art form, and they can’t appreciate that,” he continued. Every skater has stories about being chased by police or property owners, who fear lawsuits from injuries. “Around here, you get the feeling that they’re trying to ban skaters, but they’re not telling you,” said Dave Haines, 14, of Edison. “A lot of burnout kids, if you’re skating in the street, they’ll try to swerve and hit you,” noted Tom Aszman, 14, also of Edison. But as Vallely said, the youths make the best of their environment, looking for anything – a fence, a shopping cart, anything – to add to their skate. Some kids take the train from Edison to New Brunswick, where they skate at Rutgers College or in the smooth-surfaced city parking decks that usually are vacant on weekends. In Edison, they’ve got parking lots, schools, and the walls behind them. In a town which, says one youth, has no tolerance for skaters, the duo have taken art to its extreme. Action East, a New York skateboard and surfing company, plans to attend next Saturday’s contest to film some video clips, possibly for inclusion in “Along the Eastern Edge,” the first video to feature East Coast skaters exclusively. Vallely has “been in almost every segment of the video so far,” said Joe Willis, president of Action East. “I’d say he’s probably the best street skater on the East Coast, and maybe further than that. He’s got a great attitude. He’s a level-headed, nice kid.” But for Vallely, the best praise may come from his peers, whose admiration for him seems infinite. Once, watching Vallely skate, a friend called him “the Elvis of skating.” “Such an innovator,” said Battaglotti, watching Vallely.

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