There are worse places to start charting his cultural ascent within skateboarding than his breakout section from Powell Peralta’s game-changing 1988 video release Public Domain. Skateboarding was changing daily at that point with the genesis of street skating and Mike V’s East Coast aesthetic and floppy- wristed silhouette caught the attention of an entire skateboarding world that had realised that there was more to this culture than hero-worshipping the MTV- generation of sleeveless T-shirted Californian vert professionals who were appearing more dated and anachronistic by the day.
His double-kick Barnyard board for World Industries effectively signalled a new era in skateboarding trick development which Salman Agah would later pioneer and effectively treble the skateboarding trick lexicon by adding nollie and switchstance possibilities to every trick hitherto utilising the ollie alone.
Despite being on a tangent to what the skateboarding mainstream was doing, Vallely was still an enticing prospect to sponsors precisely because he has always had his own constituency within skateboarding: 120,000 Mexicans turned out to watch him put on a one-man skate demo in 2008.
Accordingly, he would ride for brands like Powell, Black Label and Element Skateboards when each of those brands were at the peak of their powers before finally starting his own Street Plant label in 2015 while somehow finding time along the way to front the re-formed punk band Black Flag and have stints in both semi- professional wrestling and ice hockey.
Now settled with his family in Des Moines, Iowa he has enjoyed a 35-year pro skating career on his own terms. There are no other Mike Vallely’s.
Madars Apse hits the streets with a true original to learn about Street Plant, punk rock and the journey of a street scoundrel from New Jersey.