Mike V.’s Greatest Hits

“Caught on video and made available for the first time,” reads the cover of Mike V.'s Greatest Hits, a documentary that came out on VHS in 2003. “Skateboarding legend and all-around badass Mike Vallely lays the smack down on security guards, cops and random jocks in this action packed collection of frontier justice.” “You mess with skateboarding,” it continues, “you mess with Mike V.”

For the better part of his career, Mike Vallely has functioned as skateboarding's self-appointed enforcer—what Chad Muska semi-ironically dubbed “skateboarding's security guard.” Throughout his decades-long presence in the culture, he's confronted just about anyone in uniform, fellow skaters who transgressed unwritten codes, professional wrestlers in the ring, strangers in parking lots, and perhaps most consistently, himself. The 1990s marked a peculiar moment in skateboarding—and in American culture more broadly. While the Clinton years often represent a placid interlude of economic prosperity and relative political stability, an undercurrent of aggression accumulated throughout the decade, eventually crystallizing in the figure of the punk outsider seeking catharsis through relatively predetermined forms of rebellion. Some gravitated toward skateboarding for its dance-like fluidity and grace. Others appreciated its expressive alternative to conventional athletics. And a small but influential minority valued it as a theater of pain.

Mike V.'s skateboarding trajectory began auspiciously. At sixteen, he caught the attention of Powell Peralta, the industry's preeminent company, and joined their roster as an amateur rider. He appeared in Public Domain, received a solo part in an industry-defining video—all as a relative unknown from Edison, New Jersey, a locale so peripheral to skateboarding's epicenter that he might as well have emerged from the Soviet bloc. After being directed to run through a graveyard for his Public Domain part by director Stacy Peralta and art director Craig Stecyk—a sequence that made him an object of ridicule—Mike V. quit, only to sign with World Industries, a nascent company that would soon lead skateboarding's transition from the day-glo theatrics of vert skating to the baggy-pants authenticity of street. Yet even there, Mike V. remained an outlier, his suburban discontent ill-suited to the company's deep-seated irony and hiphop driven ethos.

In many ways, Mike V.'s career traces a constellation of grievances—the resentment toward Peralta for the graveyard sequence; the animosity toward World Industries founder Steve Rocco for publishing a caustic advertisement following Mike V.'s departure; the bitterness toward former friend Ed Templeton over Television, their failed board company; the broader indignation toward the skateboard industry for misunderstanding him, losing its way, compromising its authenticity.

By the mid-1990s, however, Mike V. forged his own path—and took it straight to the people. He transmuted his accumulated grievances into a kind of heel persona—borrowing from professional wrestling's vocabulary, becoming a deliberate antagonist, a character designed to absorb punishment for the audience's catharsis. This identity fit naturally for Mike V., who had long positioned himself as an outsider. During this period, he reunited with Powell long after the company's cultural relevance had waned—when it could scarcely have been less fashionable. Leveraging the subculture's extensive distribution networks and word-of-mouth channels, he began touring nationally to stage massive demos. His contest appearances became notorious for their volatility—he consistently pushed venues to their structural limits, launching himself from “the top rope” (i.e. the rafters of sporting arenas) into quarterpipes or forgoing the skateboard altogether to front flip onto the hood of a car.

What's striking about Mike V.'s legacy now is the sheer volume of documentary material dedicated to his persona. There's the etnies-produced Sponsored (2001), which allowed Mike V. to reclaim his narrative from what he insinuates were the skateboarding industry's distortions. There's DRIVE: My Life in Skateboarding (2002), chronicling his global skateboarding pilgrimages—later expanded into a television series that ran from 2004-2008. There are self-produced projects like Suburban Diners (1994), documenting his cross-country travels and Japanese tour with Steve Caballero. He became a fixture in Bam Margera's media universe, first in CKY videos before recurring on MTV's Viva La Bam, where he once attempted to confront a backhoe. He regularly contributed to instructional videos, offering kids a roadmap to the ollie, as well as other quick and dirty techniques to maximize spectacle. I learned bonelesses from him, but they never took.

And then there's Mike V.'s Greatest Hits (2003). The 1990s and early 2000s represented a peculiar media landscape where VHS tapes, if properly distributed, could reach targeted consumer demographics directly—achieving mass influence, without the aesthetic veneer of mass culture. I recall staying awake late to glimpse blurred boobs on Howard Stern, surrounded by advertisements for Girls Gone Wild and backyard wrestling compilations (notably, Mike V. himself participated in backyard wrestling, complete with thumbtacks and folding chairs). Skateboarding had developed parallel distribution infrastructure through mail-order catalogs like CCS, skate shops, and magazines—I purchased my first skateboarding video by simply mailing cash to a company and trusting they would fulfill my request. They did.

While most professional skaters focused on advancing technical progression or aesthetic innovation, others redirected the activity toward vaudeville's legacy—toward more accessible entertainment. This became Mike V.'s trajectory—channeling aggression to capture the outcast theater kids of the wrestling audience and other violence fiends. Mike V.'s Greatest Hits embodies this approach—featuring Mike V. narrating his greatest confrontations, supplemented by commentary from Tony Hawk, Chad Muska, and Mike V.'s wife, Ann. The altercations carry titles like “The Muska Incident,” “The Boycott in Germany,” “The Wembley Arena Brawl,” and “The CKY 3 Beatdown.” The documentary contains moments of unexpected tenderness, such as a staged wrestling match in his kitchen with his four-year-old daughter, who strikes him with a soda can. With his shaved head, goatee, and muscular forearms, he presents as a DIY Stone Cold Steve Austin, ultimately more committed to physical sacrifice. “I went to the wrestling school five or six times,” he explains to the camera. “I got some of the basics down. But I never use the basics in my matches. My matches were punches, kicks…you know, weapons.”

Mike V. has evolved—somewhat. After accumulating significant head trauma, he now wears a helmet. His contrarian trick selection persists, as does his self-mythologizing tendency in self-produced videos. And there's something almost visionary—even abstract—about his Label Kills (2001) part, in which he pushes relentlessly for several minutes, barely doing any tricks—a meditation on movement and speed that communicates a burning, internal intensity more than any single trick could or would. But like many contemporaries, he has inevitably joined the content creation economy. He's a family man with a respectable shaggy haircut who collaborates with his daughter in the family enterprise of content production. In a sense, Mike V. remains fundamentally unchanged—he was always one to grab the mic (indeed, he even fronted a recent incarnation of Black Flag), and the world has only made that mic bigger and more accessible.

If anything persists from that young boy from Edison who never wanted to run through a graveyard, it's his relationship to the skateboard itself—both tool and adversary. This duality manifests in my favorite of Mike V.'s performative gestures—you could even call it a trick. It occurs in various contexts, some choreographed, some spontaneous. Sometimes he fails to land a trick. Sometimes he purposefully bails an air on a mini ramp. Sometimes he slams violently, picking himself up as blood streams down his face. Whatever the circumstance, Mike V. launches his board skyward. It rotates through the air, spinning like some grime-covered, grip-taped roulette wheel. And then he punches its lights out.