2022 UPDATE: Mike is still holding it down in the streets of Maine 12 years later.
How did you get into skating? What caught your attention to it and made you think it was for you?
Back in ’94, when I was in eighth grade there was one skater in my entire school named Dave Brawn. He was this little gremlin with spiked hair, huge pants and Airwalk ones and I learned about skating from him. I wasn’t down with all the jocks and rednecks in my school and skating appealed to me because it was an outsider activity.
You’re from Bowdoinham, Maine. What was it like learning how to skate in such a rural town? Where would you go and skate?
Bowdoinham was actually a sick place to start skating. I would skate a mile everyday down these country roads to the local school and skate curbs. But because of that I learned to actually ride a board before learning any tricks. Skating that mile was gnarly because there we’re big hills and lots of people driving by super fast in rusted out cars and 4×4 trucks and those people definitely didn’t care much for skateboarders.
What motivates you to keep skating after all these years when most of the people you grew up skating with stopped and moved onto other things?
It’s the best thing ever! Learning new tricks, skating new spots and meeting new people is just as fun now as it was when I first started. Nothing beats being outside, skating with friends and not knowing what’s going to happen next.
Growing up around southern Maine who would you say you looked up too?
The older guys for sure. Ben Mugford was a huge influence. Johne Lawrence, Ammon, Dan Foster, Steve Dolan. Those guys are the raddest dudes. Shawn Connolly and Dan Drehobl we’re legends to us. They had moved out West when I really started getting involved with skating but tales of what they had done around town we’re passed on to us. Brassil Savage was another name we always heard about. I remember hearing Brassil once ollied a full sized Picnic Table in winter boots!
Recently you filmed a video part in Jay Brown’s video “Mixed Effect”. What are your plans now that the video is done. Are you working on anything else?
I’ve been skating around Portland a lot more rather than traveling to Boston every weekend. I head down to Lawrence, MA every other week or so and meet up with Jon Wolf, Manny Aldana and the Lawrence guys, which is always super fun. I’ve been getting clips here and there with Jon and my friend Jimmy Collins which I send to Justin Hogan to try and get a few clips in “Thanks Camera 4: Jump the Shark”.
