Interview with Chris Mulhern by Marcus Waldron

What’s up? Where are you right now?
We’re skating at the art museum, up top with the flat gaps and the little fountains.

Nice, not at Muni today?
Nah, finally somewhere else. But yeah, most of the time we spent filming there just cause I think that’s where Kris always likes to go every day. It’s a good starting place. Usually, we’ll start there, and try and film or if someone has a spot in mind we’ll do that. But the police have been coming again and actually chasing, so it’s been kind of hard to skate at Muni lately.

That sucks. It was pretty good for a while before that right?
Yeah. All through quarantine you could go there midday and no one really said anything. Once It warmed up and spring hit they kind of started coming again. It’s weird. It’s been on and off.

How long have you been skating Muni?
The first time I came to Philly ever to skate was probably 1998, but at that point you just went to Love. We would go through Muni, but you couldn’t really get time there, it was a huge bust back then. The security guards would come out straight away. I always knew it was there but at the same time Love Park and City Hall were still so good that you kind of weren’t too interested in Muni. But now that’s the last one left. That’s all there is.

How long have you been skating with Kris Brown?
I met Kris around 2017 right after Love was gone and everyone was going to Muni. I knew he was good straight away. I remember he backside flipped the 10 stair out front of Muni and that day I hit up Paul Shier like, “Hey, you guys should give him shoes.” He’s young, he’s already doing crazy stuff. And I just felt like he had a good style, good head on his shoulders, and would be a good person to hook up. I’m happy for him. Well deserved and I’m glad to have someone in Philly I can skate and film with all the time, and work on projects with, so it’s good.

How would you say that the soundtrack for this project came about?
Once I filmed with Jamal it just made sense to use one of his songs and then Quentin also has always done a lot for the Philly scene in terms of music. So I just thought, if the skating in the edit is going to be representing Philly, so should the music. It just seems to make sense to have Jamal do a track, Q do a track. Keep it in the circle.

This edit is mostly at Muni and a couple other classic Philly spots. Philadelphia has a lot of very famous spots, but has there been any new spots popping up?
There’s some new ones, but it’s kind of easier to go downtown and spend the day there. It’s easy to get stuck at Muni, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. You can always either learn something there even if you’re not filming, or you can at least skate. But then again, Philly has a lot of areas where if you venture out of downtown, there’s always new stuff popping up. If you’re willing to get in the car and explore, there’s tons.

How has downtown skating changed over the years? Obviously the landscape has changed, Love Park’s not there, City Hall is not there, but have the skaters or crews changed?
In a way it’s definitely changed. But I don’t think it has in some ways from the late nineties. Those guys wanted to just stay in Love and film there. I feel like that’s still kind of carried on today by some of the crews here, which is cool. Muni is definitely one of the last plazas in the world that is set up that well for skating and you can actually get time at and film there. But then again, there are other crews here who want to go explore the city and find the untouched stuff. That’s something that kind of started here in the early nineties. So I feel like in a way, all the skating that goes on here now is an extension of what happened throughout Philly’s history. I see it in a good way. I think it’s cool that people here respect the roots and want to carry that on.

Lastly, what’s up with your documentary?
I’ve been working on it a bit in 2020. I couldn’t really interview anyone last year for that, which made it tough, but I’ve found so many tapes and so much old footage that people haven’t seen. Roger Brown spent a weekend here last year and he was one of the first pro skaters in Philly. We met up with the guy he filmed with and he has like eight or nine VHS tapes dating back to 1987. So that’s for sure like the first document of Philly skateboarding. So last year was good for that, archiving, finding stuff people haven’t seen. Hopefully this year I can get back on the interviews, and meet up with all the people I need to.