 Mike Vallely - Interview. p.1 | p.2 | p.3 | p.4Video Clips: (from his Spoken Word date in Ventura) Terrorism Blues 56k, 300k CKY3 Explanation 56k, 300k You're not a vegetarian are you? No,… I was for a long long time. How long was that? Probably about 8 years What would you throw on a pizza today? Pepperoni! Sausage is good too. Maybe a mix. Really I'm down with anything. I can eat anything, I like everything.  Do you have any foods you just can't stomach? Not really. I grew up with the mentality that I have to eat everything that's on my plate. And I've carried that into my adulthood. So if I come over to the Greenwood house for dinner and your serving something I would not particularly care for I will eat it. Do you feel motivated to try crazy stuff for ads/photos/videos? No. I feel motivated to try crazy stuff when I'm skating and there is an audience. Whether its an audience of cameras or video recorders or an audience of spectators at a demo, usually its spectator…it's the kids that get me motivated to push the envelope. I no longer feel it necessary in my own personal private life to push the envelope with skateboarding. I don't know if I ever did feel it necessary. I only just skated and if I was pushing the envelope it wasn't premeditated. But the few times over the last several years that I've gone above and beyond the call of duty, higher, further, longer, it's always been crowd motivated. And it's always because I want to give people that have come see me sk8 everything that I possibly can. When you know you have done something beyond what you've expected do you get excited to go and watch a tape of it or do you not really care? It's cool to see it but for me it never translates properly. Anytime I've ever seen anything that I thought was really cool that I did. It's not the same as actually doing it. The actual experience of going through that process to make that trick is way more intense than viewing it. And I get way more out of doing it then seeing it. Having the footage isn't always the motivation at the time. The motivation is conquering fears and conquering any obstacle that's in my way. For me it always when I make that big trick and I go through that process of slamming 20 or 30 times before I pull something it's like this life lesson reaffirmed over and over. And that lesson is, If you don't quit you'll eventually succeed. What do you think about all the girls skating right now? Do you think they can keep pushing it further and attain more or do you think it might have leveled off? It seems as far as media it seems to have cooled off very recently and unfortunately the media controls a lot of that. If skateboard media started buying into the idea of female skating more and more then I think they'd have a greater opportunity to further they're cause. I think the greatest thing about the girls is that they have a sisterhood and it reminds me of when I started skateboarding, the girls are down for each other and they support each other. They have a close knit network of people that communicate and are active and believe in the power of skateboarding. I was reading on Mike Vallely.com that you didn't want to be remembered as a brawler, how do you plan on re-working that image a lot of people have of you? I don't know. I think it'll always kind of be there. I'm always going to have to answer to it. It's hard to say. I really believe I never was that person that people talked about with that reputation that proceeds me. I definitely participated in creating it, but I think anyone who has ever gotten to know me and knows me knows I'm not that person. So there's not a whole lot I can do about that I mean it's just the way the animal is, it just kind of spins out like that. People have to latch on to it, I think. For people in the skateboard world and industry it's very easy to focus on the physical confrontations that I've had as who I am because when you focus on that it discredits in a lot of peoples minds what I really am about and that I stand for and so it makes me irrelevant. It makes me a fighter, an idiot, a bonehead and then they don't have to pay attention to the other things that I'm saying and doing. Do you think that's the biggest misconception with you or is there something else people might misconceive about you? Any time you're an individual your on the outside. I don't walk with the pack. I don't subscribe to the frat house mentality that has become professional skateboarding. I'm not one of the boys. I have never been one of the boys and that makes people uncomfortable. Being an individual makes other people uncomfortable. So when your making people uncomfortable they have to discredit you because if they can't discredit you that makes them have to discredit themselves. I don't feel as if I'm misunderstood, I feel as though I'm a pain in the ass for a lot of people because I stand up for the right things and most of them are a bunch of slimeballs. And my presence in skateboarding makes them uncomfortable. That's why I get pinned as the maniac who beats people up. It's a reason why I am the maniac that beats people up. These kooks that want to discredit me are stupid enough to get in my face sometimes. Unfortunately I've taken their bait one time too many and lowered myself. That's how I'm going to change my image from here on out, I'm not going to lower myself to anyone else's playing field. If you want to do battle with me you have to come up here. No one has the balls to climb up that ladder so there probably wont be anymore of that. Mike Vallely - Interview. p.1 | p.2 | p.3 | p.4 |