Annoying Rodney Mullen in 1986

In the last post, I told about meeting Rodney in August of 1986, and shared the short interview I did with him, along with a ton of links.  Here's a bit more.

In those days right after meeting Rodney, Lew spent his spare time at work trying to figure out some trick that Rodney wouldn't be able to do.  Then Lew and I would head down to The Spot in Redondo for our nightly sessions.  After we'd been riding for an hour or two, Rodney would roll up on this black, rickety beach cruiser he called Agnes.  He'd tape his fingers and get ready to skate.  Then he'd get to practicing.

Up until that time, every BMX freestyler or skater I'd met went out and sessioned.  We'd ride around, try some old tricks.  Go get something to drink.  Hang out for a while and heckle our friends, and then maybe try some new trick for a bit.  Rodney PRACTICED.  He would warm-up and then skate non-stop in a little area for 2 1/2 or 3 hours.  In that time, he MIGHT step off his board two or three times back then.  The word "perfectionist" doesn't even begin to describe it.  It was like watching an Olympic athlete training on a skateboard.

After Lew and I were tired out.  We'd roll over and watch Rodney for a bit.  Then Lew would challenge Rodney with his impossible trick idea of the day.  The only one I remember was when he asked Rodney to pop an ollie and then land in a one wheel wheelie.  Rodney immediately replied, "I don't have the balance for wheelies."  Really.  Then he tried the trick.  He was a freestyle skater, and they rode their trucks so tight that there was almost no movement.  On the second try, Rodney landed on one back wheel and set it down pretty quick.  On the third attempt, Rodney snapped an ollie, landed directly on one back wheel, and then rolled a good fifteen feet before setting the other wheels down. After five or six days of thinking up "impossible" skate tricks, and watching Rodney land every one in a few tries, Lew gave up.

He would usually talk to Rodney a minute or two when done riding, and then head home.  I started hanging out longer watching Rodney, and we'd wind up talking for a bit.  One of the first nights, Rodney let me try his board.  I rolled about four feet then fell off because the trucks were so tight.  He laughed.  A couple nights later, Rodney showed me how to do the original kickflips.  Before he did ollie kickflips, he did them as a pressure flip.  He'd start with both feet pointing forward on the board, and then press down to one side.  The board would flip sideways and he'd land on it in a normal stance.  With his help, I landed a couple that first night on his board.

One night I finished my session, and headed up to the pier to get a Coke.  Riding back down the bike path, towards where Rodney was skating, I heard another skater rolling through the parking garage on my right.  The sounds got closer until some dark haired kid on a street board ollied the curb high, four foot wide concrete island between the parking garage and the bike path.  "That must be that Gonz guy," I thought to myself, as he skated up the bike path towards Rodney.  It was.  I had heard Lew and Andy Jenkins talk about Mark Gonzales, THE street skater then in 1986, although Tommy Guerrero was a close second.  Mark rolled up to Rodney, and they started talking.  I decided to sit on one of the concrete benches and hang out as the two of them talked.  They start comparing tricks, and at one point, Rodney started showing Mark how to do ollie impossibles.  Nobody did those on the big street board then.  Mark came pretty close, but never landed one that I saw.  They went on trying different stuff as I chilled with my Coke 50 feet away.  Mark skated off after a while, Rodney went back to his intense practicing, and I headed home.

A few days later, Lew and I were both talking to Rodney, who was staying with older freestyle skater Steve Rocco at the time.  Rodney mentioned that Rocco absolutely HATED BMXers.  Lew replied, "You know, we have a bunch of I heart BMX stickers at work that some guy gave us."  We all decided it would be hilarious to give Rodney a pack of 50 of those and let him stick them all over Rocco's house.  The next day Lew gave Rodney the stickers, and we all brainstormed crazy places to stick them.  Rodney got to work on Operation I Heart BMX the next day.  He plastered all 50 all over Rocco's house, including one right smack in the center of a canvas Rocco was about to paint.  According to Rodney, Rocco went ballistic and searched the house ripping them up.  But he didn't find all of them.  When Rodney headed back to Florida a couple weeks later, there were still BMX stickers he hadn't found.  We all got a good laugh out of that.  What's even more funny is that when Rodney flew back out to stay with Rocco about three months later, Rocco found two stickers in places he never thought to look, and flipped out again.  I <3 BMX, but Steve Rocco doesn't.

In those few weeks hanging out with Rodney, I saw him learn some new tricks.  Fingerflip daffy ollies (later called fingerflip ollie airwalks), half flip underflips, and handstands to inward flips to board.  That's in addition to the double kickflips, helipops (flat ground Caballerial ollie), 720 shove-its, 360 flips, and all the other stuff he was doing then.  He even mentioned that Stacy Peralta, creator of the Bones Brigade, was trying to talk him into doing some street skating.  Rodney said he had no intentions of ever doing that.  And then Mark Ternasky slowly and steadily talked Rodney into it.  then Rodney Mullen completely changed the game in tech street skating.  For years afterward, every time a young street skater told me he wanted to get sponsored, I gave him the same answer.  "Go watch old Rodney Mullen videos, pick three Rodney tricks that no one does, and learn them down a five step."  No one ever actually did it.  But it would still work today.