\nMIKE MCGILL<\/strong>
\nINTERVIEW by DAN LEVY<\/strong>
\nPHOTO BY DAN SPARAGNA<\/strong><\/p>\n
It would be impossible to describe skateboarding\u2019s biggest trick innovations without mentioning Mike McGill and the appropriately coined \u201cMcTwist.\u201d Although Mike is widely personified by his invention, he is also a truly community-minded facilitator. Mike believes in skateboarding as profoundly as needing oxygen to breathe and it is because of this passion that Mike has found success in his life beyond anything money can buy. It is with great pleasure that we bring you the Juice Magazine Bones Brigade Chronicles with none other than Mike McGill.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the McGill interview. Let\u2019s start at the end. What are you doing?<\/strong> Nice. That ramp is perfect, huh?<\/strong> Have you skated Bob\u2019s yet?<\/strong> Are the transitions all the same or did they change it up? They poured concrete right over the top of the wood ramps, right?<\/strong> Rad. Grindline. Let\u2019s go back to the beginning. When were you born?<\/strong> No kidding. Were you raised in New York?<\/strong> Wait. Did you live in Brooklyn the whole time you were in New York?<\/strong> Where in Long Island?<\/strong> I know exactly where that is. I\u2019m from New York too.<\/strong> I\u2019m from Syracuse, but my uncle and cousins live in East Islip.<\/strong> I bet. It\u2019s not that big of a place. That\u2019s crazy that you\u2019re a New Yorker. I always thought of you as a Floridian.<\/strong> What did your parents do for a living?<\/strong> Wow. What is your fondest memory of growing up there?<\/strong> What did you play?<\/strong> Why did you move to Florida?<\/strong> Why?<\/strong> You had to pretty much audition for your dad?<\/strong> What kind of board did you get?<\/strong> [Laughs] What do you think hooked you on skateboarding so much?<\/strong> How old were you when you went to the park in Tampa?<\/strong> Were you able to cruise around the park and do stuff?<\/strong> How many people were skating at the park?<\/strong> In one day, you were standing up and skating down the snake run?<\/strong> It\u2019s so unlikely being from the East Coast. You think that there is no way it\u2019s ever going to happen, but you still dream about it.<\/strong> Wow. How did you end up there?<\/strong> You\u2019re 12 years old. What were your parents thinking?<\/strong> Total skateboard move.<\/strong> That was definitely a \u2018locals only\u2019 bowl.<\/strong> When you got back, what were your parents thinking?<\/strong> Did you get the magazine and take it home and show your parents?<\/strong> Did you bring that thing to school and show everybody? That\u2019s a huge deal that your first photo in skate magazine is a centerfold. Are you kidding me?<\/strong> I love that. So you end up in the centerfold of Skateboarder, and Stacy called you and asked you to ride for Powell. Did you have any concept of what it meant to be on a team like Powell?<\/strong> Do you remember the first box of stuff you got?<\/strong> Nice. Let\u2019s fast-forward. Now you\u2019re 13 and you\u2019re on your first skate tour?<\/strong> Oh, no.<\/strong> What?<\/strong> What was the vibe in Venezuela?<\/strong> Wow. You\u2019re 13 and you\u2019re in Venezuela surrounded by dudes with machine guns and you\u2019re skating for thousands of people and you don\u2019t speak their language. Where did you guys stay?<\/strong> So your name was getting known around the contest circuit. Did that put more pressure on you or were you just having a blast and you didn\u2019t care?<\/strong> When did you turn pro?<\/strong> I guess Stacy made people earn it to get to that point.<\/strong> So were you starting to have to miss school to go and do skate stuff?<\/strong> There\u2019s always one.<\/strong> They had no clue.<\/strong> What was your next trip out of the country, after Venezuela, as far as skateboarding goes?<\/strong> So the Bones Brigade is going full steam. Had it solidified as you, Cab, Lance, Rodney, Tommy and Tony by then?<\/strong> Were the skaters from those other countries as good as you guys or what?<\/strong> The East Coast mentality of skating is different. In Florida, it\u2019s so hot and humid, that those perfect days, you have to hit it as hard as you can, but you\u2019re skating on the roughest stuff ever. It\u2019s not smooth and perfect terrain. You have to want it.<\/strong> Was the terrain in other countries similar to California or Florida?<\/strong> You\u2019d been skating in front of these huge crowds, so were you ever nervous to go to these places or were you just excited to skate with people?<\/strong> So you and Cab were Ams at this point, and you\u2019re in school and you\u2019re doing weekend warrior sessions all over the world. What happened next?<\/strong> Wow. That\u2019s awesome.<\/strong> You guys were still teenagers living at home with your parents, right?<\/strong> At any point did you think skateboarding was done and it was over?<\/strong> When you built your ramp, the ramp era was in the formative stages. Was your ramp one of the first in your area to have flat bottom on it?<\/strong> I think it\u2019s good to note that. If they hadn\u2019t built that ramp that way, you guys may not have progressed as fast as you did.<\/strong> I don\u2019t think you would have invented the McTwist on a U ramp, do you think?<\/strong> So you have your ramp going. Who was at some of those sessions?<\/strong> Wait. So you were skating your ramp this whole time solo.<\/strong> What year are we talking now?<\/strong> It all went back to the backyards and then it grew again from there. Did you start getting calls again to come to California as things started picking up?<\/strong> When did you move out to California?<\/strong> What school did you go to? Was this college?<\/strong> You were staying at Stacy\u2019s parents\u2019 house?<\/strong> That\u2019s crazy. Did they cook you dinners and stuff?<\/strong> Did you ever go to the beach in Venice and skate with Eric D and Murray and those guys?<\/strong> Technically, you were around when the street ollie was forming.<\/strong> You were at some pretty pivotal places at some insane times. Why did you go to school to take video classes? Did you want to be a director?<\/strong> Well, no offense, but I\u2019m not going to argue with you on that. [Laughs] The fact that you guys kind of sucked at acting was the best part about that whole thing. Did you start filming that when you were still living with Stacy\u2019s parents?<\/strong> You\u2019re living in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe.<\/strong> That must have felt great.<\/strong> You were skating Del Mar when everyone was really innovating stuff.<\/strong> You have a whole bag of tricks, but you\u2019re not an invent-a trick-every-day kind of guy.<\/strong> What was a typical session like at Del Mar in \u201883? Who else was around back then besides you and Tony?<\/strong> Which of the Powell Peralta videos were you filming for at the time?<\/strong> You\u2019re in the first real skate video that really went national. Did you notice that people started to recognize you more after that video came out?<\/strong> Wow. So you were skating Del Mar and then you get a call from the Swedish camps? How did that all go down?<\/strong> Why not?<\/strong> What movie was that?<\/strong> What in the hell?<\/strong> What role did you play?<\/strong> What did you have to do?<\/strong> That\u2019s a full ramp locals before Thrashin\u2019.<\/strong> I\u2019m totally going to watch that thing.<\/strong> I\u2019m already excited about it. Now you\u2019re a movie star, and you were there for 7 1\/2 weeks?<\/strong> You had to skate way more than Cab.<\/strong> Last chance every run.<\/strong> It\u2019s hard to go from being the butler to being a movie star, huh?<\/strong> Did you come back to the butler house after that?<\/strong> What was that like?<\/strong> Trainer Barry.<\/strong> Were you making the money from board sales?<\/strong> Okay. Let\u2019s talk about 1984 Swedish Summer Camp and the first McTwist.<\/strong> Were you just doing demos or were you teaching kids?<\/strong> That\u2019s hilarious.<\/strong> No way.<\/strong> How did you figure out how to huck yourself around the first time?<\/strong> I definitely believe in visualize and attack for sure. The first time you actually tried it, what was going through your mind?<\/strong> When you landed it, what were you thinking the first time you rolled away?<\/strong> That\u2019s just a trip. You land it and it was like the shot heard round the world, but nobody really knew what it was.<\/strong> He shot a sequence of you by shooting you doing it 15 times. That\u2019s genius. Lance is a genius. What was Rodney\u2019s reaction?<\/strong> So you dropped history on Sweden and then you came back to California?<\/strong> Were you busting them there too?<\/strong> It wasn\u2019t at a contest?<\/strong> I saw the video of you in the contest. You threw it into your run, but you didn\u2019t do it as your final trick. You busted it out in the middle of your run and everyone was cheering and then you just kept going and didn\u2019t do it again, and you clicked out and there was this whole world of applause.<\/strong> That\u2019s crazy to me. You just straight did a McTwist and then started doing all kinds of inverts. People were tripping. If you think about some of the other tricks that have been invented since, like Tony\u2019s 900, that was it. That would have never happened without the Mctwist. Now you\u2019re propelled back in the spotlight even more because you\u2019ve invented the Mctwist. Were people expecting you to invent more stuff? Was there more pressure? How did that affect you?<\/strong> You made it so that nobody could win a contest without it.<\/strong> Yeah. It was like, \u201cIf I don\u2019t do a McTwist, I\u2019m not going to win.\u201d Christian said it. Tony said it. Lance said it too. You increased the level of skateboarding to a whole new dimension and everybody had to learn it. That\u2019s heavy.<\/strong> The McEgg is super gnarly. There\u2019s a lot that can go wrong.<\/strong> Did you start to dominate at contests because of the McTwist?<\/strong>
\nI just got back from skating an awesome session at Hawk\u2019s ramp with Daniel Cuervo.<\/p>\n
\nIt is pretty perfect. Now we have to get back to concrete tomorrow because we don\u2019t want to get too spoiled.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. I went to opening day and skated a legends demo with Cab, Eddie Elguera and a few guys. Dave Hackett came out.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. You can actually see the old metal coping in the cement. They just left it in place. It goes up another six inches, so they raised the floor up six inches because there\u2019s concrete there. They drilled holes all over the ramp and put pillars in down through the ground to stabilize the whole thing. It\u2019s ridiculous.<\/p>\n
\nI was born September 2, 1964, in Brooklyn, NY, home of the Beastie Boys.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. I lived there until I was ten, and then I moved to Florida and I started skateboarding in Florida.<\/p>\n
\nWe lived in Brooklyn for two years and then we moved to Long Island.<\/p>\n
\nNorth Babylon.<\/p>\n
\nNo way. I didn\u2019t know that, Dan.<\/p>\n
\nThey probably know my cousins that know their cousins. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nMy parents were both raised in Brooklyn. It was like West Side Story. My dad is Irish and my mom is Italian.<\/p>\n
\nMy dad worked in family bars, and then he was in the Korean War. When he came back, he was a truck driver in New York for many years. My mom used to babysit the kids of the baseball player, Jackie Robinson.<\/p>\n
\nIt was a bunch of jocks. Growing up in New York, there are a lot of team sports, so that\u2019s what everyone does. In the winter, everyone plays hockey on the lakebed in sneakers. There\u2019s nothing to do, so they play team sports. I did too, for a while.<\/p>\n
\nI played peewee football, baseball, soccer and hockey. Then I moved to Florida and I was just over team sports, as you can tell from the Bones Brigade documentary.<\/p>\n
\nMy grandfather and grandmother moved there, and my parents were tired of the snow. They liked going there on vacation, so they decided to move there. I have an older brother and sister and they were just coming out of high school and they were into team sports, so they were devastated by the move. My sister was like, \u201cThere\u2019s no gymnastics team here? Where is the gymnastics team?\u201d For me, I liked to fish and stuff, just like Mike Frazier, but I needed something more. I would always see this skateboard in this girl\u2019s garage, one block over. I would say, \u201cLet me try that thing because my dad won\u2019t buy me one.\u201d He had forbidden it.<\/p>\n
\nTo him, it was dangerous. He didn\u2019t want me doing any of that dangerous stuff, so I just kept borrowing this skateboard. I gravitated towards it. I had to have it. It was a crazy thing. It was so fun and different, and I could do it by myself. I would go over there after school every day for weeks. Once I got brave enough, I begged to take it to my house so I could show my dad. I thought maybe he\u2019d buy me one if I showed him that I could do it. I did that, and he was like, \u201cWow. Okay. Well, let\u2019s go get you one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nYeah. [Laughs] I got my first board and a few weeks later, it was Fourth of July and we went to Clearwater Beach, which was half an hour from our house. It was my mom, my dad and I. We got to the hotel and we hadn\u2019t been there five minutes and I jumped in the pool while my dad was parking the car. I tried a backflip and hit my head on the diving board and had to get seven stitches. I was so bummed because that was my weekend to skate around the hotel, but I was banned to my room and I couldn\u2019t ride my skateboard. It was torture.<\/p>\n
\nIt was a fiberglass flat board with these little tiny trucks with urethane Trickway wheels. They had loose ball bearings in them. I was using it so much that they all fell out because they started wearing out, so I would constantly have to fix them. I would steal the bb\u2019s from my brother\u2019s bb gun to fix it up again. They were almost the right size, so with a little W-D 40, I\u2019d be back in business and rolling around.<\/p>\n
\nI can\u2019t really describe it. I was just drawn to it. It was some force of nature. Maybe it was Animal Chin trying to tell me something. [Laughs] A few months later, one of my friends got a board after seeing me skate and he was like, \u201cHey, my dad passed by this skateboard park in Tampa and he wants to take us out there.\u201d I was jazzed. We went out to the Skate Wave Skatepark right by the airport. It was an old style park that looked like a volcano with all of these snake runs coming down off it. It was really crude, but really fun, snake runs.<\/p>\n
\nI was 11.<\/p>\n
\nI would just go down the snake runs. We would buttboard at first because we didn\u2019t know what we were doing. Then we started standing up and going higher up the hill to get more speed.<\/p>\n
\nThere were a couple of dozen kids there. I remember these older guys there with these water skis and they\u2019d put these big California slalom trucks with Road Rider wheels on them. They\u2019d cruise down the snake run with the dorkiest style with their feet almost together, but it was cool to see.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. We weren\u2019t dropping in from the top. We were going to the bottom and slowly going down and then going up a little higher each time. We were climbing up the bank and turning and then we started kickturning. We had about a half a dozen kids that skated in our neighborhood, so we had enough parents that they would drop us off there once a week, and another parent would pick us up at night. We did that every Sunday for months. Everybody was into it so much. We had these launch ramps that we built that were like four feet high. We\u2019d go up backside and frontside and do these little fakie rock n\u2019 rolls. We started checking out the magazines and I bought a Skateboarder magazine. It had a picture of Jay Adams in the Dog Bowl doing one of the first Andrechts. I had that picture on my wall and I had a picture of Tony Alva riding some ramp with a young Eric Dressen. Then there was a giant poster pull-out of Stacy Peralta. I didn\u2019t know who Stacy Peralta was, but I had that poster on my ceiling and I would just stare at those pictures and think, \u201cIt\u2019s so hot and humid in Florida. I want to go to California and skate those parks.\u201d I was thinking it would be cool to meet those guys one day. If you had told me then that, one day, I would be skating for Stacy and meeting T.A., I would not have believed it.<\/p>\n\n
“I actually won the Shut Up and Skate contest in Texas. There are certain times where you\u2019re just on. I don\u2019t know if other skaters feel the same way, but sometimes you\u2019re just so on that you can\u2019t fall. You try things and you make everything. That was just one of those days.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nI was just an 11-year-old kid in Florida who, a few years later, goes on a tour with Tony Alva, Steve Rocco, Tim Scroggs and Alan Gelfand to Venezuela. I was 13 years old and I was on tour in Venezuela. We were there for a week doing a Super Skate Show. Ellen O\u2019Neal was in that, and we skated the halfpipe with Tony Alva.<\/p>\n
\nWe were going to the skatepark and then I started entering skate contests at the skatepark. Everybody skated everything. You skated the bowl and you skated above the cones in the snake run. It was kind of hokey stuff, but it was fun. They had the high jump and some freestyle stuff that was kind of wacky. You had to enter everything and the top five would get prizes. You\u2019d get new wheels, boards, helmets and pads. I started getting in the top five and I was like, \u201cWow. I won this stuff!\u201d It was a lot to us. We didn\u2019t have a lot of money or anything. Then the skatepark asked me if I wanted to be on their skatepark team that would compete with other skatepark teams around Florida. I was like, \u2018Yeah!\u201d I\u2019d win some stuff and then I\u2019d trade stuff. When Rainbow Wave Skatepark opened up, they were like, \u201cHey Mike, why don\u2019t you skate for us?\u201d The other park was kind of dated and didn\u2019t have a proper half pipe, so then I skated for Rainbow Wave and then Skate Wave closed. At Rainbow Wave, I would compete in contests. In Gainesville, where Rodney Mullen is from, we were skating at the Sensation Basin at contests up there. Then I met this skater named Alan Gelfand. He was like, \u201cHey, I\u2019m going out West to stay at Stacy Peralta\u2019s.\u201d He had gone on a trip to California and Stacy sponsored him through Powell. It was Alan Gelfand, Ray \u201cBones\u201d Rodriguez, Stacy Peralta and Tim Scroggs from Orlando, FL. Alan and Tim had already told Stacy that there was this kid in Florida that lived in Tampa. I lived five hours from Alan, and Tim lived a couple of hours from me. Stacy was like, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you see if he wants to come out to California and he can stay with us?\u201d Alan asked me if I wanted to go, and I remember I had $421 in the bank and that\u2019s what it cost for a ticket to California, so I bought a ticket and we flew to California and met Stacy Peralta.<\/p>\n
\nI know. What the hell were my parents thinking? First of all, Alan lied to them. He said, \u201cMy uncle lives out there, so they\u2019re going to be picking us up and driving us everywhere.\u201d He didn\u2019t even tell them about Stacy Peralta. Stacy was just a kid. He was like 21 at the time. Alan lied to my parents, and I don\u2019t even know what he said. As long as I could go, I didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. I went out to California and had the best two weeks of my life. Stacy took us to Marina Del Rey Skatepark, Del Mar Skatepark and Upland. He took us to some crazy Skatopia park. We skated everywhere. Right before we left, Stacy said, \u201cHey, this guy named James Cassimus from Skateboarder magazine heard that you were doing this inverted layback air. He wants to get a couple of pictures of you.\u201d I was like, \u201cAlright.\u201d When I was at Stacy\u2019s house, right before the photo shoot, Stacy asked me if I wanted one of his old boards. It had Tracker trucks on it. I took my wheels off and put them on his board and started riding that thing. It was an old Ray Bones experimental board with the Skull and Snake on it with his signature above it with pizza grip. I rode that board in the upper keyhole at Marina Del Rey for the photo session. Guys like Pat Ngoho and Mike Smith were there and that\u2019s when I first met those guys. I saw guys like Dennis \u201cPolar Bear\u201d Agnew riding the Dog Bowl. I didn\u2019t really ride the Dog Bowl because it was a really gnarly pool and it was pretty much off limits to Floridians. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nYeah. Shogo Kubo, Shreddi Repas and Brad Bowman were there. Those were the locals. We were just skating the upper keyhole and I was in heaven. It was like going from riding a rock street to a perfectly paved street. That was the difference between a Florida park and a California park at the time. It was ridiculous. This guy James Cassimus took some pictures of me and that was that. I didn\u2019t hear anything. I figured he was just documenting it or something. Then we went home to Florida and I got a call from Stacy Peralta. He said, \u201cWould you like to skate for the Bones Brigade? We like what you\u2019re doing and we think you can help us promote the company. Would you be interested?\u201d I said, \u201cOf course, yeah.\u201d I was stoked that Alan Gelfand and Tim Scroggs would think of me and even mention my name to Stacy Peralta. I would have never made it out of Florida otherwise.<\/p>\n
\nThey didn\u2019t know what happened out there. They still thought I had been at my friend\u2019s uncle\u2019s house. When I got the call from Stacy, he said, \u201cI almost forgot to tell you. There\u2019s a little picture of you in Skateboarder magazine, if you want to go check it out.\u201d I was like, \u201cReally? That\u2019s cool. Thank you.\u201d I was stoked to get a picture in a magazine. I skated to the drug store that night, four miles away, and I got the magazine and looked at it cover to cover and I didn\u2019t find anything in there. I was like, \u201cWow. It must be small, but it\u2019s my first picture. I don\u2019t care!\u201d I went through it again and I was like, \u201cWhere is this picture?\u201d I get to the centerfold and there it was. I had to look through it twice before I saw it. I couldn\u2019t believe it. I\u2019m doing this layback air inverted, and everybody thought that I had made up that trick. They were like, \u201cThis kid from Florida did this crazy layback air,\u201d but I told them that it was Kelly Lynn, a Floridian, who invented the layback air. All I did was invert it a little bit. From there, it just went off.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. They were like, \u201cIs this a joke?\u201d They didn\u2019t believe that I did all this in just a week and a half vacation out in California. They were proud. They were totally into whatever I wanted to do. They were the coolest.<\/p>\n
\nNo. I didn\u2019t bring it to school. It was only my best friend that skated. He was like, \u201cYeah. Yeah. Whatever.\u201d At our school, we had the jocks, the nerds and the stoners. I was in a party of two, the skateboarders. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nI had known Alan for six months, so I\u2019d been watching him. Just from reading the magazines, I knew who Stacy Peralta was. I knew who Tony Alva was, I knew who all those guys were. I said, \u201cI can stay at Stacy Peralta\u2019s house with you? Really?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIt was Brite Lites and the next wheels after the Cubic\u2019s. I was so stoked to get free stuff.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. Later that year, Alan called me and said this radio station wanted him to do this Super Skate Show in an arena in Caracas, Venezuela. They wanted me, Alan and Tim Scroggs to go from Florida. They had a bunch of roller skaters come there and do some type of dancing. I don\u2019t know what they were doing. Then they had Tony Alva, Ellen O\u2019Neal and Steve Rocco skating, and we were the other three skaters. We all wore these capes and we came down these runways, going right and left of the stage. It was the hokiest thing you\u2019ve ever seen in your life. We\u2019d all come down the ramps and then line up and they\u2019d introduce us and then we\u2019d skate the ramp and those guys would skate freestyle. They had this pipe that made a U and I remember Tony Alva would get out there and do a layback and he would grind the lights all the way down and break all the lights, just for the hell of it. The funny thing about it is that we practiced for a day and then we had nine shows to do in six days. We\u2019re getting ready for the first show and we practiced how to come down the ramps and put your skateboard up in the air when they put the spotlight on you, and the first one out of the hole is Ellen O\u2019Neal. She comes down the ramp, and goes flat on her butt. They thought they would wax the floors before the first show.<\/p>\n
\n[Laughs] Oh yeah. Ellen falls and then the rollerskaters come down and they all crash and fall. The rest of us had stopped skating by now, but we had to roll out there and pick them up. There were like 5,000 people at the shows. It was gnarly. I was just stoked to go to another country and skate a new halfpipe. Then Alan and I did a Pepsi commercial down there.<\/p>\n
\nThey took the ramp out of the palladium after the show was done. Jim Goodrich has pictures of it. He was on that trip and he photographed the whole thing. They had this guy on a camera and they built him a bridge on the top of the ramp and they would pull him back and forth on a sled. There were five guys on one side and five guys on the other with a rope. He would roll back and forth and try to film. It was the craziest thing.<\/p>\n
\nThere were guys with machine guns guarding the place. I remember one of the guys stepped on Alan\u2019s board because he wanted to try it and he flew completely back and the machine gun on his back flew off and we all hit the deck. We thought we were going to get shot. It didn\u2019t go off, but everything was in slow motion for a minute when his gun just flew up in the air.<\/p>\n
\nWe stayed at the Orinoco Hilton. It was like two-story rooms with spiral staircases. It was luxury, man. It was really crazy, considering we were skateboarders. [Laughs] From there, we went back to compete in all of these contests in Florida, in Tampa, Gainesville and Orlando.<\/p>\n
\nI was just having fun, and the big names in Florida were some of my heroes, like George McClellan and Kelly Lynn, who I used to idolize. I wanted to do all the tricks that Kelly did. I saw him and I was like, \u2018It must be cool to be sponsored.\u2019 There was Clyde Rodgers and Shawn Peddie. I started competing against all those guys as an amateur. I was slowly climbing the ranks, but I was in a different category from Alan. He was in the older division and I was in the younger division. When we turned pro, we were all in the same division, but then some guys dropped out.<\/p>\n
\nCaballero and I turned pro in 1980. I was 16.<\/p>\n
\nAbsolutely. The second time that Alan and I went out to California to skate, Stacy took us around to a bunch of places and we got this East Coast interview. It was Alan Gelfand and Mike McGill with half of his face and half of my face. Then we became these popular guys that were still amateurs. People were like, \u201cThose guys aren\u2019t even pro and they\u2019re more famous than most of the pros.\u201d It didn\u2019t matter to Stacy. He was like, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to earn it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWell, our skate stuff was out in California, so I would leave on a Thursday night flight and Stacy would take us to the park on Friday and the contest would be on Saturday. We\u2019d skate some stuff on Sunday and then fly back to Florida on Sunday night. I\u2019d get back on Monday morning just in time to have missed homeroom. [Laughs] I missed a few days here and there, but most of my teachers were pretty cool about it. They\u2019d give me work to take with me because they thought it was cool that I was actually traveling for skateboarding. There was one teacher that didn\u2019t like it because he was jealous.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. He told the principal that I had been missing all this school. The principal said, \u201cGive him his work because this is something special. What other skateboarder has actually left Florida to go skate in California? Come on.\u201d I\u2019d come in on a Monday morning and my friends would be talking about what they had done over the weekend like, \u201cI played football.\u201d Or \u201cI went to Crystal River fishing. What did you do, Mike?\u201d I was like, \u201cOh, I went to California and skated a skatepark in Santa Monica for three days and I just got back a couple of hours ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n[Laughs] No.<\/p>\n
\nWell, the contests were all in California and Florida.<\/p>\n
\nWell, this was pre-Tony. I\u2019ll tell you the order of how the guys went on the team. It was Ray Bones Rodriguez and then Stacy Peralta, Alan Gelfand, Tim Scroggs, Jay Smith and the amateur, Mike McGill. By then, Alan had turned pro. Alan had a bigger name, so it was time for him to join the pros. Cab went pro about a month after me. Then it was Scott Foss and Rodney Mullen. There were guys like Mike Jesiolowski and Jami Godfrey. The list goes on from there. During \u201879 and \u201880, it was just me, Cab, Stacy, Jay Smith and Ray Bones. Things moved very quickly after that and a lot of those guys stopped competing, like Jay Smith and Ray Bones, and even Stacy and Alan. Things changed. They were trying to structure skateboarding too much and that didn\u2019t go too well with people like Alan. It was this compulsory bullshit run. It\u2019s skateboarding, not ice-skating. I know that Stacy and Alan hated it. We had to do it because if we didn\u2019t do it, we wouldn\u2019t get flown out to do the next contest. \u2018Oh, you want a handplant? No problem.\u2019 That was the name of the game. You had to do well. A few years later we were asked to go to Sweden. Stacy and Alan went to Sweden in 1981, to teach a summer camp for a couple of weeks. In 1982, they asked me and Cab if we wanted to go teach for two weeks during our summer vacation, so we went to Sweden and met all these cool skaters from all over Europe, like Claus Grabke and Hans Jacobson.<\/p>\n\n
“I started to skate the ramp a little bit and I was looking at the spin, so I started to over rotate some mute airs.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThey were good. It wasn\u2019t like we were doing all these airs and they weren\u2019t doing any airs. They were good. We were like, \u201cWhat? You\u2019re not sponsored?\u201d It\u2019s like an East Coaster coming over to California and skating. They\u2019re like, \u201cYou think I\u2019m good? There are so many guys in Florida that aren\u2019t even sponsored. You should see how many good guys are over there, because they\u2019re hungrier.\u201d They\u2019ve got that hunger that drives you. When you\u2019re too spoiled, you don\u2019t really push yourself, I guess.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. The other thing is that most of the skateparks in Florida were finished in the rain with a broom. They were so rough. If you fell on them, you\u2019d just got torn up. There were bumps everywhere, but we loved it. We loved to have a place to skate.<\/p>\n
\nIt was all of the above. It was a whole mixture. They had asphalt skateparks at some of them. It was harder European asphalt. It was crazy. There were a lot of people that were into skating in Europe. It was cool.<\/p>\n
\nThe crowds weren\u2019t that big, but they were all skaters. They all knew what we were doing and they were all waiting to see these new tricks. They would take that and build off us and learn those tricks. They were excited for us to be there and we were super excited to show them because they could only see stuff in magazines, too.<\/p>\n
\nWhen I was 16, I got my first truck, so I could finally drive to the skatepark. I could only go once a week before that. Now I could drive an hour to the skatepark in Tampa after school every day until it got dark. I\u2019d do that two or three times a week because I was just infatuated. Before I could drive, a pro skater named George McClelland, that I became friends with would actually drive 20 miles to pick me up because he had no one to skate with at Clearwater Skatepark.<\/p>\n
\nMy dad would pick me up at night after work. It was the craziest thing. There were a handful of us that just loved to skate. When I was 16, all the parks started closing down. They didn\u2019t have enough money and it all just caved in. They were gone before you knew it. They brought in the wrecking ball and that was it. I was 16, and it was 1980. Our boards were just coming out and the market crashed. I remember Stacy saying, \u201cWe can\u2019t even afford to make two models for you and Cab. We were thinking about doing a double model and you guys could share the royalties.\u201d We were like, \u201cCome on, Stacy. There\u2019s got to be a way.\u201d We weren\u2019t bummed or anything, but we didn\u2019t need money. We just wanted our own boards.<\/p>\n
\nRight. At the last minute they decided to make two boards, and we both got our own boards. My check was for $1.35 that month. Everything dropped out, but I didn\u2019t pout. I had to find a place to skate. That\u2019s when I built a ramp in my backyard. I already had two little ramps in my yard, and I started to build a bigger ramp, 12-foot wide and 9-foot tall. We had just put all the ribs in and the neighbor complained to the city and I had to tear it down. I didn\u2019t even get to ride it. Then I rebuilt the ramp on my dad\u2019s company\u2019s property and that\u2019s where I had my ramp for the next few years. I had a place to skate while I dreamed of going to skate in California again.<\/p>\n
\nNo. I knew they were skateboarding out in California. Alan Gelfand had built a ramp down in Hollywood, Florida, and I would fly down there for the weekend and it was $20 airfare each way. I\u2019d go stay with Alan for the weekend and skate their ramp and then I would drive to Winter Haven, which is another hour and a half, to Billy Beauregard\u2019s ramp. I\u2019d see Monty Nolder out there. I think he moved there just to skate that ramp, after they closed Sensation Basin in Gainesville.<\/p>\n
\nThe Hollywood ramp was one of the first ones to have flat bottom on the East Coast. It made all the difference in the world.<\/p>\n
\nYou\u2019re right. I never thought of it that way. That\u2019s what brought on that resurgence of ramps. We were like, \u201cThis is even better than the skatepark.\u201d Adding the flat bottom gave you time to set up and do tricks.<\/p>\n
\nProbably not. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nWe had a couple of friends at school that would come and skate and then everyone disappeared and it was just me. Everything stopped. Alan didn\u2019t skate anymore and his ramp got torn down. I was on my own. I would just wait for the next call from Stacy when he\u2019d send me out to California for a contest. It was hard times because they couldn\u2019t always afford to send me. I remember one contest at Del Mar, Stacy felt so bad that they brought Cab and Scott Foss and they couldn\u2019t afford to bring me. Those guys had to take the bus down from San Jose. They actually called me from Del Mar skatepark on the phone. They were like, \u201cHey, Mike, we just wanted to say hello. We wish you could be here.\u201d That meant the world to me. I never said anything, but I think Stacy knew that I wanted to be there. It was a slow gradual thing where skateboarding reinvented itself and went to the streets.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. It sucked. I was thinking I should be in California, but I was only 16. I couldn\u2019t go to California. I couldn\u2019t do anything. I just skated my ramp and dreamed of going to California. It was almost a year, but it felt like ten years that I had to skate by myself. I went to school and I\u2019d wait for those times where I could go to California and skate something different and compare the tricks that I had learned to some of the tricks that the California guys made up. You just hungered for more. I remember one day I was skating my ramp and this group of kids came up. They were a little younger than me and they were like, \u201cDo you mind if we try your ramp?\u201d I was like, \u201cPlease, go ahead.\u201d I was amazed because here was a whole new group of guys that were interested in the ramp. Sure enough all these guys started skating and there were all these sessions, and then other guys started building bigger ramps and there was fun stuff popping up everywhere.<\/p>\n
\nThis was \u201881 and \u201882. It was slowly coming back and ramps were popping up in backyards everywhere. It was crazy. Guys that used to skate were skating again. Everyone was into it even though there were still no parks.<\/p>\n
\nYep. Things started picking up. There were more contests and places to go. Then we started traveling and made it back to Europe. We made it to Sweden in \u201882 and again in \u201884, and that\u2019s when I learned the McTwist, in \u201884.<\/p>\n
\nI came out in \u201882, and went to school and stayed at Stacy\u2019s parents house. I took some video classes and stuff, but I was really kind of shy.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. It was some private school. I would drive out to Upland or go to Lance\u2019s and skate, or I\u2019d drive down to Del Mar and skate with Tony.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. Stacy didn\u2019t live there anymore. He had already moved out, so I was renting his old room from his parents right there in Santa Monica. I was there for like 11 months.<\/p>\n
\nSometimes she felt bad for me and she\u2019d cook dinner because I was on my own.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. I would see those cats down there. I would see Christian down there. We skated some launch ramp they had up against the wall.<\/p>\n
\nPretty much.<\/p>\n
\nYeah, a little bit. I was interested in film and how things went together. Right after that, we did Animal Chin, so I guess that kind of helped me a little bit. It didn\u2019t help my acting, but it helped me. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nNo. I had already moved out. I moved back to Florida because a hurricane came and wiped out the McGill Plant Nursery. I had to help mom and dad put it back together for another nine months or so. I came back later to San Diego and I lived right by Del Mar Skatepark, right in the hills there. Tony\u2019s brother, Steve Hawk, was hired by Kevin Staab\u2019s grandmother to pick up the maid twice a week and pick up some groceries and he got free room and board in this really nice mansion in Rancho Santa Fe. It overlooked Cardiff, so I took over his spot for a year. I would get the groceries a few times a week and that was it. I would wait for Tony to come home from school. Kevin lived in Arizona, at the time, so he wasn\u2019t there. He would just come home for long weekends. I was the only guy that didn\u2019t have to go to school, so I would just wait for the skatepark to open and wait for those guys to come home and we\u2019d go skate Del Mar.<\/p>\n\n
“They were like, \u201cWhat are you doing, Mike?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m just checking something out.\u201d I thought if I could just do the first 360, I could bail to my knees. I didn\u2019t want to get trapped upside down and land on my head.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nYeah. I was living in the maid\u2019s quarters. I remember sitting there thinking, \u201cI don\u2019t have any bills. I don\u2019t have to pay for electric or rent. All I have to do is pay for my car insurance and I\u2019m set.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIt was awesome.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. There were tricks popping up all over the place.<\/p>\n
\nNo. I\u2019ve always gravitated towards new things, but only if they felt good to me. Certain things, like riding my board backwards, didn\u2019t feel right for me. I just stayed away from anything like that. Although, I applauded it, there\u2019s no way. I just had to say no. It was just wrong. Certain lip tricks always inspired me.<\/p>\n
\nWell, besides Kevin Staab, occasionally, it was Ken Park, Owen Nieder, Billy Ruff and a few other locals there. We wouldn\u2019t just skate the pool. I would go back and skate that back pool. That was always fun. There\u2019s one picture that Grant Brittain shot of me in the back there and they made a big poster out of it. It was this big square pool that only had coping on one side. It had a round shallow end that was kinked out here and there. It was fun. I loved it. I would skate that a lot. We would ride the halfpipe back there every once in a while.<\/p>\n
\nWe filmed the Bones Brigade Video Show the year before when I was in California at Lakewood.<\/p>\n
\nNot really. I think because it was so new, a lot of people didn\u2019t really have the machines to watch them. Only certain people did. It was so new. We were just jazzed because it was a movie with us in it. It was cool to get one of those machines and show our friends. It didn\u2019t really start happening right away. Shortly after that, they thought they were only going to sell a few, and they sold 50 times the amount of initial orders.<\/p>\n
\nWell, Alan Gelfand and Stacy Peralta went in 1981, and then Stacy recommended that Steve Caballero and I go to the next one, because they weren\u2019t going to go again.<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m not sure. I guess once was enough for them. [Laughs] You have to want to do it, and we were into it. We went in \u201882 for the first time. That year we went to Scotland and England and did a tour through there. Then we went to Sweden for three weeks. I turned 18 that summer. After we went to Sweden, Stacy called me and said, \u201cThis guy is doing this skateboard movie and you\u2019d be great for this one role if you want to try.\u201d I went and auditioned in Hollywood and they liked me. Christian Hosoi was there, and a few other people, and they picked me. I was like, \u201cOkay. I guess I\u2019ll go. Where do I have to go?\u201d They said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to Spain for 7 1\/2 weeks.\u201d I was like, \u201cBy myself?\u201d They were like, \u201cWell, there will be some other actors there.\u201d I was like, \u201cOh no. I don\u2019t know if I really want to do this.\u201d They had to convince me to go. Stacy was like, \u201cThey\u2019re going to build you a ramp and you\u2019re going to be able to skate there.\u201d I was like, \u201cOkay.\u201d So I went. 36 hours later, we get to this place way in the south of Spain and the director comes up to me and said, \u201cDo you know any good skateboarders that are kind of Mexican looking and short?\u201d Of course, I mentioned Caballero. Within 24 hours, they flew him out. I was stoked to have company and we were both turning 18, so it was great.<\/p>\n
\nIt was called California Cowboys or sometimes it\u2019s called Escape From El Diablo. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nIt comes on about three in the morning. [Laughs] The big name actors were Ethan Wayne and the guy, Salami, from the White Shadow. He lived in Santa Monica. He was the director of The Sopranos, Timothy Van Patten. He and Ethan Wayne were so cool to us. Some of the other actors I don\u2019t even want to mention because they were jerks to us. Those two guys stuck up for us and we were stoked.<\/p>\n
\nI played Tommy D.<\/p>\n
\nI just skated everywhere and said a couple of lines with a high-pitched voice. It was even worse than Animal Chin. They built a ramp on the beach for us and then they burnt it down the next day for a scene.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. It was a ramp they built with little tiny 1×2\u2019s scattered. It was super sketch, but we made it work. We did some inverts and stuff. If you ever watch it, you\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n
\nOh, no. It\u2019s really painful. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nYeah. We were gone for a while. Right after Sweden, we flew to Jacksonville, FL, for the Kona contest. All these guys were practicing all week. We flew in and had one day of practice, and they had head-to-head competition. You take two runs, and they pick the best run and cut it down from 100 guys to 16 guys. Then number one guy goes against number 16 guy. If you lose twice, you\u2019re out. I had tied for 16th place with Allen Losi. Caballero got first, so I had a run-off with Allen Losi and I advanced. I was 16th, so I had to go up against the number one seed, which was Caballero, and he beat me, and I had to go to the losers bracket. I had to skate eight more sets of runs to get back up to skate with Caballero, and then I beat him. He had one loss and then we had to go against each other again and he won. He got first and I got second. It was the craziest contest.<\/p>\n\n
“I went out to California and had the best two weeks of my life. Stacy took us to Marina Del Rey Skatepark, Del Mar Skatepark and Upland. He took us to some crazy Skatopia park. We skated everywhere.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nI had to skate way more than anyone. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nYeah. Stacy flew over there and it was a really good time. Cab and I went and did the movie right after that. We were gone almost six months from our homes.<\/p>\n
\n[Laughs] Well, luckily, the palm trees grew at least a foot while we were gone.<\/p>\n
\nIn 1982, I went to the butler house and then Del Mar closed down.<\/p>\n
\nThat sucked. It was terrible. I moved my whole body out here to be in skateboarding and then the skatepark closes. There was nothing else to skate around here. Ken Park had built a ramp at his girlfriend\u2019s horse ranch, so we skated that a lot and then we started skating ramps in Fallbrook. This guy built a ramp in Fallbrook. His parents owned avocado groves, so it was right in the middle of that, and it was perfect. I skated with guys like Ray Underhill, Jason Jessee, Gator and a bunch of guys. Chris Miller would come down and skate. Upland was still going so sometimes we would go up there. Shortly after that, Upland closed. After my job was done as the butler, I rented a house with my friend Barry Saretsky.<\/p>\n
\nTracker Trucks paid for a third of the house. We had one room that was like a training room for all the Tracker guys. Barry pretty much took care of everybody. Even if they didn\u2019t ride Trackers, he took care of them. That was rad. I lived there for about a year and then we started making a little money from skateboarding.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. That was the first time of making some real money.<\/p>\n
\nWe went back to Sweden for a second time in 1984, and it was myself, Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen.<\/p>\n
\nWe were teaching kids from all over Europe. There were like 50 or 60 new people every week. They were from England, Sweden, Norway, Germany and a couple from Brazil. It was mostly European. We had new people every week, and they would check in and be assigned to a cabin. As the trainers, we had a cabin to ourselves, and the campers had like 8-10 guys per cabin. You\u2019d meet everybody and then wake up in the morning and they\u2019d have to do some stretches and running around the cabin. Then they had to make their beds and clean up. We didn\u2019t make our beds, but we made them make their beds. [Laughs] Then you\u2019d skate to breakfast and help yourself to the breakfast buffet and then we\u2019d break them up into four groups with different teachers and you\u2019d go skate. You\u2019d swap every 30 or 40 minutes and change teachers or change ramps. Then you\u2019d go to lunch. After lunch, you\u2019d come back and skate again for a few hours. After that, you could do whatever you wanted. You could skate or take a nap or whatever. A lot of times, I would skate after lunch because it was open because a lot of people were tired, so we had free time to do whatever we wanted. We did whatever we wanted most of the time. It was funny. Only the Swedes could understand English. All the Germans and French made like they were listening, but they didn\u2019t know what we were saying, so we had to use a lot of hand movements. [Laughs]<\/p>\n
\nWe were teaching these guys to do hand plants and backside airs and frontside airs or whatever they wanted to learn. I would skate in the evenings because it stayed pretty light outside until three o\u2019clock in the morning because it\u2019s so far north, so you could have some pretty good sessions until late. We had taught three weeks of camp and we were going to leave in about four days and I decided that I didn\u2019t want to go to dinner, so I went to go skate. I was skating by myself and I was thinking about this trick that I saw Fred Blood do. He was a roller skater, and in Cherry Hill, NJ, about six months earlier, he had just spun around, on his roller-skates. I thought that was so unfair that he could do that. I was like, \u201cCould you imagine if you could do that on a skateboard?\u201d I was thinking about it for awhile, but I kept thinking that you couldn\u2019t do it low like that because gravity doesn\u2019t work that way with a skateboard, and trying to grab a skateboard and hold it on your feet. I thought about it a lot. I knew that I had to do it out of the ramp to really have a chance of completing it. Those last few days, I brought hip pads and taped my wrist guards up and I didn\u2019t tell anyone. I went to the ramp and there were two kids sitting there hanging out by the ramp. They didn\u2019t go to dinner either, but they weren\u2019t skating. One of the kids was Bod Boyle.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. He was one of our clients and he was there with one of his friends. I started to skate the ramp a little bit and I was looking at the spin, so I started to over rotate some mute airs. They were like, \u201cWhat are you doing, Mike?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m just checking something out.\u201d I thought if I could just do the first 360, I could bail to my knees. I didn\u2019t want to get trapped upside down and land on my head. I did it, within 30-40 minutes. I did it, but I was bailing to my knees. They were like, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m not sure. Give me some time to figure it out.\u201d Another 30 minutes had passed and I actually completed one. Mind you, there were no video cameras there. We didn\u2019t own anything like that, but I was curious that I did it and I wanted to see what it looked like. As I went to ask them, they started running back to the camp like they were afraid or excited or something. They just took off. I guess they went back to the camp and told Lance and Rodney and everyone that I was at the ramp doing this crazy trick and they needed to see it. The whole camp showed up about a half hour later. Lance was like, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ve got to see this. There\u2019s no way you\u2019re doing this trick.\u201d I showed him and I guess the rest is history.<\/p>\n
\nWell, I thought about how I was going to grab because it didn\u2019t seem feasible any other way, grabbing like a backside air. I knew I needed to grab in the middle of my board. I had never seen anyone do anything like that, so this was the first time. I knew I needed to try to ball up to get my body to spin. I started grabbing mute right off the bat. I had done it so many times in my mind that I knew mute was the way to go. It just worked out. I think if you see it and dream it, you can do it.<\/p>\n
\nWell, I knew if I could bail to my knees, I was more than halfway there. I just kept doing it and doing it a little bit more and then I realized that I could put the thing down and not have to bail and that\u2019s what I did.<\/p>\n
\nI was pretty excited. I did get very religious before those attempts. I just thought it would be so cool to do something that no one had ever done in the world. I knew that no one had ever done it, so I thought it would be pretty cool.<\/p>\n
\nIt was a flat spin at first. We only had a few days left and Lance was like, \u201cWe have to get some photos of this for the Intelligence Report.\u201d That was a little mailer that Powell Peralta produced. They would let people know what was happening with the Bones Brigade. I was like, \u201cHow are we going to shoot that? You don\u2019t even have a motor drive.\u201d He goes, \u201cJust pick a spot where you want to do the trick and just keep doing the trick right there.\u201d I did about 15 of them in one spot and he took all kinds of still shots, and put them all together for the Intelligence Report.<\/p>\n
\nI don\u2019t know. You\u2019d have to watch the Bones Brigade video. [Laughs] From what I know, Rodney coined the McTwist, because I was McGill and I was twisting my body.<\/p>\n
\nNo. I went back to Florida for a few months.<\/p>\n
\nNo. I went to Florida and skated my ramp a little bit and the next month I took a ride up to Jacksonville because I wanted to see what my friend Donny Griffin thought of it. I didn\u2019t say anything, but I went there and skated the Kona Ramp and we were having a session with him and Kevin Lambert. I was like, \u201cI want to try something. Let me know what you guys think of this.\u201d When I was confident enough that I had the ramp wired a little bit, I tried one and I made my first one. Those guys just freaked out and started screaming. They were like, \u201cWhat did you just do? Do it again!\u201d It was cool. Two weeks after that, I went to Del Mar, and I was just keeping it to myself, but a few people must have heard through the telephone lines that I was doing some crazy trick. The first person that came up to me was Neil Blender and he wouldn\u2019t leave me alone. I was like, \u201cNeil, it\u2019s not that big of a deal. It\u2019s just a little trick.\u201d I was going to pull it out later, but he would not leave me alone. He followed me everywhere at the skatepark. He was like, \u201cListen, I know it\u2019s more than what you\u2019re saying and I\u2019ve got to see this. I\u2019ve heard you\u2019re doing this incredible trick.\u201d After a few hours, I was like, \u201cOkay, come on. I\u2019ll show you.\u201d It was him and a few other guys there and that was it. After that, everybody and their brother was like, \u201cI have to see it. Do it again. What did you just do?\u201d It was crazy. Del Mar wasn\u2019t the best place to do it. It didn\u2019t have a lot of vert and you hung up as you can see. Sometimes it was hard to pull in, but I was so amped to do it, that it didn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n
\nWe were practicing for a contest.<\/p>\n
\nWell, it was the kind of trick that you couldn\u2019t just do at the end because it took so much energy to do it. I had to do a big air before it. If I waited until the end of my run, I wouldn\u2019t have the energy to do a big air, let alone do the twist. I had to do it in the beginning.<\/p>\n\n
“I did a lot better in contests. If it was a tough cut, I\u2019d throw in a McTwist to make sure I was in there. That\u2019s how it became for a lot of guys. A lot of guys realized that if they could do a McTwist in their preliminary run, they could be in there too.”<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nNo. There wasn\u2019t that much pressure, but some people said that I had ruined skateboarding by going upside down. I was like, \u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d There were a lot of good comments too. People said, \u201cDo you know you just made history by doing that trick?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, I know I made history by being the first one to do it.\u201d They\u2019re like, \u201cYou opened up a whole new world in skateboarding.\u201d I didn\u2019t believe it at first.<\/p>\n
\n[Laughs] Oh no.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. There were a few other tricks like the McEgg, a 540 eggplant. I did that in Animal Chin. I would slide it around. Bucky Lasek does it now straight out.<\/p>\n
\nYeah. I did some little variations of that here and there.<\/p>\n
\nWell, I did a lot better in contests. If it was a tough cut, I\u2019d throw in a McTwist to make sure I was in there. That\u2019s how it became for a lot of guys. A lot of guys realized that if they could do a McTwist in their preliminary run, they could be in there too. I actually won the Shut Up and Skate contest in Texas. There are certain times where you\u2019re just on. I don\u2019t know if other skaters feel the same way, but sometimes you\u2019re just so on that you can\u2019t fall. You try things and you make everything. That was just one of those days. That was the contest where Lance, Tony, Stevie, and I switched t-shirts. We were wearing each other\u2019s t-shirts. Lester Kasai and I made the finals and we were practicing runs before the finals and he said, \u201cMcGill, it looks like you could do an Elguerial over the channel because you do channel plants all the time. Why don\u2019t you just do an Elguerial over the channel?\u201d I was like, \u201cOkay.\u201d In my practice run, I do an Elguerial over the channel and I made it first try. At that same contest, I threw up in the back of the ramp when I was coming up, but I did all my tricks and twists. I did the Elguerial over the channel, in my final run, and a McEgg at the end, and slid around. It was crazy.<\/p>\n
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