MIAMI — I remember one time, when a group of people passed me while they were on a walking tour of Miami Beach that I heard the guide announce “…and, over there, we have a group of skateboarders. They are an inherent part of the beach’s rich culture.”

That really blew my mind.

Having skated for over 23 years as well as having been deeply involved in the skateboard scene, I’ve never really heard anything that positive ever said about it before. I’ve seen it at its lowest low and now at its highest high. If that’s what you want to call it.

When I was younger, what intrigued me most about skateboarding was the fact that people hated it. Mostly parents. Which is the reason why that made me want to do it even more. People will say, “Yeah, I used to skate,” because now it’s “cool.” Those were probably the same jocks that spit on me at one point. Not many people “really” did it. I was an outcast- along with the punk rockers and goths- at my school because I skated, which was fine with me because they accepted me for who I was.

Years ago, skateboarding thrived during the punk rock era because the lifestyle kind of went hand in hand with it, which was probably how the bad boy image associated with it came about. Now that skateboarding has become more widely accepted, it has taken some of the thrill out of it for me. Now a majority of kids want to skate primarily because of the money and the fame that can be achieved through it, rather than because of the feeling one gets from it. In my opinion, that’s the wrong reason to do it. Although I do meet kids from time to time that have their own style and seem to enjoy the actual act of skating.

I’d much rather view skateboarding in the raw essence of where it was born: in the streets. To me it’s much more abstract and aesthetically pleasing to watch. In my opinion, ESPN has turned skateboarding into a circus, perpetuating the idea that whoever does it will be rich and famous from it one day. Thinking that way misses the whole fun aspect of the experience.

I’ve always loved skating because of how the board felt under my feet as well as the feeling of rolling away from a good trick, which is why I still do it to this day. Skateboard videos influenced me greatly in the late 80′s and early 90′s. I lived vicariously through them. Now, videos have become disposable partially due to the Youtube era and it saddens me. The originality and the evolution of tricks is what always inspired me the most- like a never ending puzzle.

An unidentified reader commented on the interview I gave to Blast Magazine a few months ago, an article written by Gabriella von Rosen, making the comment that “since he makes no residuals from skateboarding then it’s probably not legit." Well, because I do it for fun. Isn’t that legit enough?

Honestly, when I was getting paid to skate, it made me not want to do it anymore. But why should I quit? Skateboarding has taken me to so many places I would have never been had it not been for this piece of wood with some wheels on it. The art has also introduced me to many influential and interesting individuals: artists, musicians, celebrities, athletes, comedians, etc. Skateboarding has been a very enlightening experience for me and has made me who I am.

Here’s a video I filmed and edited of some friends in Miami. We did it for the fun of it and I hope you enjoy it!

P.S. and YES I did get paid at one point in my skateboarding “career” and am also well known in the skateboarding world. I never knew that “Dango” (my nickname) meant sticky rice ball in Japanese until a few years ago. “I’M BIG IN JAPAN!!!”

Here’s something for your viewing pleasure — five things that are technically possible in real-life, but that a normal person can never do.

1. Throw a Major League fastball.
2. Take a cruise on the Titanic
3. Do ridiculous skateboarding tricks without ever dying.
4. Reunite the Beatles or just become a rock star.
5. Fly an F-14 Tomcat like in “Top Gun.”

What do you think? Leave comments.

TAMPA, Fla. — "I used to get banned from a number of the bars on the Beach, but now I’ve started to really mellow out,” Michael Mancini declares as we drive north on the Florida Turnpike.

"Without skateboarding, I would probably have gone down the wrong path, like many of my friends who ended up in prison, on drugs, or dead,” he adds calmly, flipping through songs on his iPod. "And the irony of it is that people’s perception of skateboarders is that they’re the delinquents, when it’s really skateboarding that’s keeping us out of trouble."

It’s 11:30 a.m. and pouring rain. After hours of working hard, the windshield wipers of the car can barely keep up with the deluge from above. I expect them to quit anytime. Barely anybody is on the road (smart) and we are surrounded by flat plains dotted with cattle huddling together rather uselessly for protection against the weather. At this point, we’re somewhere in between Miami and Tampa, and two and a half hours into the road trip. Mancini is behind the wheel, while his girlfriend of more than three years rides shotgun, and me, the plus one with a press pass, in the back seat.

The destination is Muvico Theatre in the Ybor City section of Tampa for the Hollywood-esque premiere of “The Dango is Dead,” a skate video that Mancini has been working feverishly on for the past year. As is the case with most skate videos, the filming required him to travel to different cities — the more gritty and urban, the better — to get good footage highlighting three generations of highly respected skaters, from teenagers to some in their late thirties.

"The old school generation, like me, focus more on refined skating and clean lines while the younger skaters are mainly doing things like wild stunts and maneuvers," explains Mancini, 34. "Also, you can see the difference between the two styles. Whereas the old school skaters have been doing this for 15, 20 years, it becomes more natural with the younger kids. The footage you see in the video, it’s usually the first time that they landed that trick. Don’t get me wrong, I mean, they’re doing really, really hard tricks. But style wise, it’s different."

Along with showcasing these athletes’ ability and distinct style, the movie also serves as another purpose: In this particular skate video, “The Dango” dies.

“Dango” is Mancini’s nickname among the skateboarding community. But, as much notoriety as the name gets, it’s something he’s ready to bury and start fresh.

"Now I’m ‘The Kleetcha’. It’s a spin on ‘The Creature.’ I have my own language where I tend to use a lot of ‘l’s." Mancini laughs. "I have an infatuation with skeletons, but if anybody calls me ‘The Dango,’ I’m going to correct them. It’s ‘The Kleetch’ for short."

So, in short, “The Dango” must die for a “Kleetcha” to be born.

Mancini said he first got into skateboarding at the age of 12, when a kid skated in front of his house on the street in Oviedo, Orlando, where he grew up. Mancini asked the youngster — who’s now one of his closest friends and is thanked in the credits of “The Dango is Dead” — where he could get one of those things. The following Christmas, his first skateboard awaited him. He has not stopped skateboarding since and gained recognition by word of mouth, mostly through his participation in competitions and posting skate videos on YouTube. Some skaters think posting videos on YouTube is controversial, but doing so has become a launching pad that has helped the underground skating community get noticed. The counter argument is that it takes away from the hard work of people behind the scene who video tape the skaters, when the clips become public online for free. Mancini doesn’t receive any royalties whatsoever from his videos.

"Skating is an outlet for me, not a sport,” says Mancini, who at a rest stop took note of some places — a ledge, some stairs — that would be perfect for tricks. “I don’t look at it like a sport, but more of an art form. To let out my anger or how I’m feeling. We took a board and a ledge and made a video from it. I just love to skate and see the end product. From nothing into something."

“The Dango Is Dead” is the fifth installment of Mancini’s DVD career, one that spans well over a decade. It’s being sold as a box set come this winter, along with his other four other videos: “Volume” (2002); “The Dango” (2004); “The Good Life” (2006) and “Last of the Mohicans” (2008). They’re being sold through The Westside Skate Shop (www.westsideskateshop.com and www.theoriesofatlantis.com), a well-respected store with headquarters on the outskirts of Tampa. It was John Montesi, the shop’s founder and a major player in the Florida underground skateboarding scene, who came up with the title ‘The Dango Is Dead,’ influenced by the hip-hop album “De La Soul is Dead.”

Mancini is no stranger to the underground skating community. He, along with many other skaters, prides himself on being “underground” or, better yet, the “underdogs.” With this video, Mancini also hopes to get skateboarding back to its roots.

"Ninety-five percent of skateboarding is bullshit to me. And you can quote me on that,” says Mancini, laughing, but with a stern tone. "I’m over the whole blown out, Mountain Dew, helmet, elbow pads … How hip hop was great in the 90′s, is how I feel skateboarding use to be back then. Nowadays with hip-hop and skateboarding, people unfortunately don’t pay attention to the skill or style. Anybody can land a trick, it’s just how you put your own personal flavor or spin on it."

For Mancini and a number of other skaters, there is a sense of pride, bordering on nobility, when it comes to skating strictly for the love of it and not for potential business opportunity and ventures that could make skating less authentic by making money off it.

But, strangely enough, as much as Mancini the obscure underdogs of the American skating community, he is anything but that in Japan. He’s very well-known there, he jokes, since “Dango,” means “sticky rice balls” in Japanese. In turn, the Japanese skateboarding community has embraced him with open arms. As Mancini says with a smile, "Whatever we love, the Japanese love a hundred times more."

Tony Hawk: RIDE details continue to trickle out of the closed mouth of Activision today by way of USA today and their exclusive look at the exciting new game.

The Tony Hawk franchise, which began in 1999 with Tony Hawk Pro Skater, has since grown to a $1.1 billion dollar series with the latest installment, RIDE, due out in the fall complete with a groundbreaking plastic skateboard peripheral for full body involvement in the action sport.

According to Jesse Divinich with Electronic Design and Research “RIDE will be priced at $80 or $90 and be a tremendous success.”

I believe that price assertion seems logical, as another board-based title, Wii Fit, bears the same price tag, while offering what looks to be significantly less than a new Tony Hawk experience.

Josh Tsui from developer Robmodo also spoke of the expected success of title, saying:‚  “(Tony)Hawk has long wanted to do a video game with a skateboard controller.‚  He loves those gigantic (skateboarding) arcade machines, from back in the day that you would stand on, over the years, technology has gotten a lot less expensive and a lot more accessible, and there has been a huge acceptance of alternative controllers.”

Mike Snider of USA today got an exclusive feet-on look at the title at the Santa Monica HQ of Activision, and with that came the first solid look at game-play and the artistic approach to the game.‚  Check out the video below for a truly informative preview of Tony Hawk: RIDE.

Read the full story at USA TODAY.

Electronic Arts announced Monday that the newest version of their Tony Hawk competitor Skate It, will be released for the Wii and DS later this year and utilize the Wii Balance Board, looking to give a more realistic skateboarding experience.
 
“We knew it would be an exciting challenge to bring the soul and feel of skateboarding to the Wii and Nintendo DS,” said Scott Blackwood, executive producer of the Skate franchise. “With fresh new designs and gameplay components built from scratch, we’ve been able to, once again, capture the true experience of skateboarding in a completely innovative way.” 
 
“The Wii remote becomes a skateboard and reacts to gestures that mirror actual skate flips and moves,” EA said in a statement Monday. ”Players can also deepen this experience by planting their feet on the Wii Balance Board. Skate It brings the hit Skate franchise to a new level of creative ingenuity and gameplay excellence.”
 
Skate It has not been rated yet and will ship some time later this year. 
 
EA is also developing Skate 2 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Proving Ground is the deepest “X-sport” video game ever developed, and that means something considering the Tony Hawk franchise singularly created the alternative sport video game genre.

That said, Neversoft should have done a hell of a lot more testing.

Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground brings new features like “nail the grab” and the speedy aggro kick to the table, but two main negatives prevent the game from being truly great.

First of all, there are several graphical glitches like getting stuck behind objects that slow things down. This leads to the second problem — not made any better by the graphical glitches. The goals are often ridiculously hard to get passed on the lowest, “amateur” mode. The other two levels of difficulty are “pro” and “sick.” Indeed it would be absolutely sick to accomplish some of the goals on “sick” mode.

Proving Ground breaks the game up into three distinct player paths, which involve career aspirations, rigging and tough street skating. You’ll find yourself going after all three to keep things interesting and to learn new skills.

The “separate but equal” game mode model is a sidestep from previous Hawk games that usually bind random skate life aspects into a linear game. Now you have the freedom to focus on what interests you. I liked going after the career mode, making videos and competing against other skaters, and then I would fall back on my “roots” and do some street goals like taking back the local skate park from hoodlums and skate checking people across the road.

The story is fun, and like I said it’s really deep involving a ton of professional skaters like Jeff King, Mike Vallely and Dustin Dollin. The game just doesn’t go far enough. You’ll spend several hours battling a whiny little runt with a tricked out car who’s supposed to be a great skater. You complete against him in two big competitions, but the game doesn’t cut away — you never see him compete or land and big tricks. It’s just assumed. The game has a million videos showcasing every goal and pro you’ll encounter, but the videos are just highlights that don’t have any bearing on the game. There aren’t any real epic story cutaways.

The competitions are a joke. They’re like every other goal — you get timed and have to rack up points, or you fail. I wanted to see some X-Games, live on ESPN style scenes. Tons of pros lend their voices, so have some of them do commentary … just make the scenes more interesting.

Still, rigging is the weakest point and makes everything else look gold. The editing mode is really buggy, and the things you build never work quite as intended. This made the “Jeff’s Demo” goal really hard to get past.

Throughout the game, you’ll find yourself trying to time tricks just right for magazine photo shoots and videos. This is a fun element that adds a lot to the standard gameplay. The standard gameplay is fun in and of itself. Proving Ground recreates an interesting map of Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C. As expected, every jersey barrier, curb, fountain, electrical wire, train track and federal government monument is usable for air, grinding and all kinds of tricks.

Once I created my character and put him in Globe gear, I had plenty of fun trying to master a backside indy 720, but in the end, this became a game that I picked up to let of 10 minutes of steam, get really frustrated, throw the Sixaxis and try again and again until I barely scrape by the slash grinding the pool or rigging some god-awful contraption.

Proving Ground is fun, and most of the graphics look beautiful. But you’re gonna throw the Sixaxis. Poor bastard of a controller never gets a break.

Quick hits:

Publisher: Activision
Developer: Neversoft Entertainment
Platform: PlayStation 3 (reviewed), Xbox 360, Wii, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS,
Genre: Sports
Players: 1-2 (Online 2-8)
Launch Date: September 12, 2007

Playability: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Learning Curve: 2 out of 5 stars
Sound: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall: 3 out of 5 stars