THRASHER
On his way to a second place win at the Great Desert Ramp Battle' at Palmdale, Mike blasts this
beauty of a backside air over the channel.
normal, they see what kind of reaction they get
and if it's not good enough, which maybe it
wasn't, I don't know, they try and fix it up before
they go big with it.
KT: Does it look good though as far as
showing up at 'theatres near you..."
MM: Oh yeah!! It's just under a different name
now. I don't know when it's going to happen
though.
KT: How much skating is in the film?
MM: There should be a lot on the street, riding
down the street, like, McNichol (Jimmy
McNichol) coming down some stairs and stuff.
Ethan Wayne rides in it. But, as far as actual
halfpipe skating, there's an opening scene
where they're surfing and right after that there's
an opening halfpipe scene with Steve and I.
KT: Who are you cast as in the movie?
MM: Tommy Dee.
KT: The 'All American Boy"?
MM: Tommy Dee's a skater. He skates, the
director told me I should play myself as if all I do
is skate, I have a lot of lines. Caballero and I
were having a good time and this guy was com-
plaining, really a lot. So they sent him back to
California, they didn't want him anymore after
the first two weeks. He had a big role. They
broke his lines up and gave them to me and
Steve and this other guy. They sent him home!
There's really not that much vertical skating, just
in the opening scene. We did doubles, they
made a quarter pipe ramp that we were doing
doubles on. Backside air and then Steve would
grind under or triples runs even. This guy from
Santa Monica, Danny McClure, he was in your
magazine. He would go up and do a rock 'n roll,
Steve would go right after it and do a pogo over
the rock 'n roll, and I would come up and do a
front side air over the two boards. But they didn't
use any of that stuff, I guess it didn't go together
with the plot. Also one thing, in the movie, I go
through a glass window, a sugar glass window,
candy glass. It was so hot that day and the glass
was starting to melt. They had fans on it; right
when they said 'Action' they took the fans away
and I came up this little ramp that they built to
launch you through the window and then land on
the floor of this little cafe. I had to do it in one
take, they called me 'one take' McGill. Because
all of the glass kept breaking, the special effects
guy had made them up the night before, there
were six of these sugar glass panes in a wooden
framework so he had made like a dozen the night
before and six had already broken, so this was it,
they had no more and they had to shoot it.
KT: You mentioned Florida and going to
St. Pete and skating around. Where do you
live?
MM: New Port Richey. It's about 45 minutes
from Tampa on the West coast a couple of blocks
from the beach, there's no waves, it's the Gulf.
It's nothing to drive 45 minues to St. Pete, in Los
Angeles you drive 45 minutes and you don't get
anywhere.
KT: What's your ramp like?
MM: It's 12 ft wide and 10' high with a foot of
vert on each side with 9' transitions, and a true 8
feet of flat bottom.
KT: 9 foot transition, that's a little soft isn't
it?
MM: No. It's perfect, it's compact but it's good
to practice on, not for a contest though.
KT: What else are you involved in during
your daily routine, when you're in Florida?
MM: I help my mom with our nursery, a plant
nursery, with some of the money I earned from
doing the movie I set my mom up with a lot and
made all these little green houses.
KT: Do you hang around with a lot of non-
skater types?
MM: Well, most of my friends have skated be-
fore or skate once in a while with me.
KT: Did you graduate from H.S.?
MM: 82.
KT: So you haven't entered college?
MM: Well, last year I was busy for 4 months
with skating. We started out in California, went to
Sweden for four weeks, then went over to Scot-
land for a week, then England for a day, then
back to San Diego, skated Del Mar for a couple
of weeks and then straight over to Spain. So last
summer was pretty busy. I had a scholarship at
a community college. I had to miss it 'cause I was
in Spain. I'm glad I did that rather than go to
school. You leam a lot in a different country. I'm
going to start school this year in L.A.
I was talking to Tony Alva at Del Mar and
we were reminiscing about Venezuela, I guess it
was about four years ago.
KT: I was going to ask you about favorite
trips that you've been on. Is that one of
them?
MM: Venezuela was fun. We all went there for
10 days, Tony Alva went, Alan Gelfand, Tim
Scroggs, Steve Rocco and Ellen O'Neal, who
wouldn't skate unless she was paid right there.
One thing I got to tell you. We did these
shows while we were down there, seven or eight
shows, and it was in this big coliseum where they
have fights and stuff. Anyway, about the fourth
show we did they had waxed the floor to make it
look nice or something, and they didn't tell any-
body. Ellen was the first out every day and she
came down the ramp to open the show and kind
of did a little slide into home there. The biggest
crowd we had was about four or five thousand.
We also had tons of stickers, over there a sticker
is worth about $2.00. We were just throwing
packs out into the crowd, all these little kids and
they were just going wild like it was money. All
these guards came in going stop! stop! 'cause
they were fighting for these stickers. So we had
to stop the sticker throwings.
While we were in the hotel, I guess the
President was there and there were all these
guys with machine guns standing around. So
while we were in the coliseum one day this guy
stepped on my board, he wanted to take it for a
little ride, I guess, so he stepped on it and went
wham!! to the floor, his gun went up in the air and
it was like slow motion. Everybody was watching
his gun thinking it was just going to go (rat tat tat)
when it hit. Everybody hit the deck, everybody
was on the floor. But it didn't go off. That was
something else. But it was fun. It was my first
time out of the country, I had to get a passport,
now my passport has got a lot of stamps on it.
KT: What was the first trip you did?
MM: I used to try and count how many times
I've come out here but I lost count. The first
travelling was when I payed my own way out to
Marina Del Rey to skate with Alan Gelfand. Alan
was the first one on Powell at the time. Stacy had
just come into the company. Alan told Stacy
about me and Stacy suggested I come out and
skate so I did. Payed my own way and stayed at
the Peralta's house. That was when I was doing
the layback air. Kelly Lynn invented it. A lot of
people think I did but he invented and I just kind
of inverted it.
Then, at Marina, Jim Cassimus was kind
of flippin' out going, "What's that kid doing?" All
these guys came down and were taking pictures
of me and I did a whole session for the center
spread. A couple of months later I was in Florida
and I looked in the center of the magazine and
there I was. That was my first picture in Skate-
boarder. From then on I was sponsored by Pow-
ell and Tracker. But before all this, a lot of people
forget about all the little stuff before you got the
major sponsorship, I used to skate for a little park
team, Skate Wave in Tampa, and then I got on
another park team called Rainbow Wave, which
was a better park. I used to compete against.
guys like Chris Baucom, he skated for Sensation
Basin skate team. One time we went to Cadillac
Wheels Skate Park, the park that Frank Naswor-
thy owned. Everybody knows who Frank Nas-
worthy is, he came up with the first urethane
wheels. If you ask ten skateboarders who he is
maybe one will know these days.
KT: So you skated with Shawn Peddie and
those guys?
MM: Now Shawn Peddie, he goes way back,
okay. That guy's been pro as long as Micke Alba
I think.
KT: Doesn't Shawn have a pool in his
backyard?
MM: Yeah. Oh yeah!! It's a fun pool. We
should have a contest there. It's still there just
waiting to be skated. He skates once in a while,
there hasn't really been a contest there ever.
KT: How were things like between you and
Alan at the time he was breaking in with Pow-
ell and then you got on the team? Were you
neck and neck with him ability wise?
MM: Alan was...he seemed like he was al-
ways ahead of me. But his tricks were different
than what I would do. Like when I was first start-
ing hand plants and stuff he would be working on
all kinds of lip tricks like the reverse frontside
ollie, the ollie-oop.
KT: What about the ollie? Did you work
with him on that?
MM: A lot of people ask about that and many
people don't know the whole story. There was a
guy in Fort Lauderdale that invented an ollie pop.
It's like a lip slide, popping and landing on the
top. But Alan, okay, when he came out to Califor-
nia with Dan Murray a long time ago, before I
came out, he started doing it at Winchester pool,
I think, but without landing on the lip which is just
a totally different trick. To even think about doing
it was just incredible. And he was doing this trick,
the no hand aerial, and people were just going
wild. To this day, you know, I haven't really seen
anybody do it with his kind of style. He just
floated 'em up there. I think Lester Kasai does
them really well and David A used to do them
well. But...a...you miss the style of a skater like
Alan.
KT: Who are some of the most interesting
characters you've met in or because of skat-
ing?
MM: It was really weird looking at people in
the magazines while I was first starting to skate.
I'd see Stacy Peralta and Tony Alva and get
thinking, "Gee, wouldn't it be neat if someday I
got to talk to these guys," and it happened.
KT: How old were you then, in your early
years; right around the time of the center
spread photo?
MM: About 14.
KT: And you're 19 today, that's about five
solid years of heavy Involvement and travel-
ling. What's it like now as opposed to then?
Are you bored or would like to see some
more activity happening?
MM: After skateboarding died a little bit I was
thinking, "Well, I'll do all I can now," 'cause I didn't
think it would come back for awhile. Then around
'82, I was doing well in contests but not as well as
I wanted to do, I must have been in thousands of
amateur contests and when I got into the pro cir-
cuit I didn't come right off by winning, like Steve
Caballero came right in doing well, but, it was a
battle for me. My first Pro/Am was at Whittier and
I got ninth, back then that was pretty good. There
was like 27 pro's that entered and I was still
amateur.
KT: When did you turn Pro?
MM: Well, me and Steve both turned Pro at
the first Gold Cup, I didn't do too well at that, it
was at Oasis, a little glass-like pool. Anyway, I
felt that I had done a lot at the time and it looked
like skateboarding wasn't going anywhere and
then all of a sudden I was going places again and
then last year I went back to Sweden and just did
the full-on tour. Since the beginning of the year, I
started doing good in contests, since January
I've placed...second behind Steve at Palmdale,
second at Hayward, the Ramp Jam, Upland I
won, first Pro contest I've ever won.
KT: Who would you put on top consis-
tency wise? Who's the man to beat?
MM: Oh! well Steve's had a lot of wins, Billy
Ruff had a streak for awhile, he's been in there
for a while. Tony Hawk skates a lot and he's been
placing pretty good.
KT: Do you tend to size up your competi-
tion or just try and skate your best?
MM: I check out the scene. I know who's skat-
ing and who's not....you know what's surprising,
at this contest my first match-up was with Jeff
Phillips so I said to myself, "Well, I don't want to
give it my all, I just want "to complete a run." He
went first, then I skated and then he went again
and beat my score and I had to go again and,
well, this is it!
You know then what you have to do, you
have to turn on. I had to skate against him again.
It's weird watching guys like Jeff, who's from
Texas, 'cause all he skates is ramps, usually,
and that's all we did for a while but we always
came out West and learned how to carve and
skate pools and stuff, so we had a pretty good
continuity. But whereas Jeff and some of the
new guys from Kona, they don't really carve, for
instance, Jeff Jones at Del Mar, doesn't really
carve at all, more of a back and forth style, they
don't have the kind of environment that a lot of
skaters out here had. I think a lot of them like the
change. If you're stuck in a halfpipe all the time.
you're just going to get bored with that.
KT: Do you consider yourself a veteran, as
opposed to the people you skate with now.
MM: A lot of people think I'm older, like 22 or
something, but I'm not that old yet, 19 today.
KT: That's older than most of the other
Pro's?
MM: Well, let's see, there's Micke, well he's
17...going on 28. It seems he'll stay 15 forever,
he's been skating longer than anybody on the
Pro circuit and he's still skating respectably.
KT: Are you still into skating? Can you get
39%
Bon
BRGIDE
McGill has been on the skate scene for quite some years,
thus making him one of the most experienced contest pros
in the world today.
enough of skating? Nothing else matters?
MM: Well, I've started getting into other
things, but, when I'm skating good, I feel good,
and it makes my day, just like when a runner
runs his five miles in the morning or something
like that. But uhm...I guess it wears off in a while
but something always makes you want to keep
skating.
KT: What else is happening in your life
right now?
MM: I'm excited about going to school now.
I'm taking an acting class and I'm curious to see
how that goes. In my spare time I'll skateboard.
KT: You and Caballero have skated and
travelled quite a bit and get along pretty well,
yet many of your views and activities differ.
He, for instance, with his band (The Faction).
Is music something that is by no means a
giant part of your lifestyle?
MM: Well, I like music, but punk is a thing of
the past for me. I don't particularly like it any-
more. I never really have gotten into it. I listened
to the music 'cause a lot of the other skaters lis-
ten to it. It was alright, it was fun, everybody cut
their hair, now it's sort of a way of life for some of
these people. It doesn't bother me-I get along
with all of the people.
KT: What do you listen to?
MM: I listen to the Police and...a lot of dif-
ferent stuff.
KT: Do you rush out and buy the latest
happening stuff?