Rodney just turned 40. <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QLATU6HhRpM"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QLATU6HhRpM" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>
For some reason I always thought this guy was younger. Either way, he's great at what he does, and should be more popular.
i used to hate this guy when i thought he was just a pansy freestyler. Then he switched over and almost single handedly cross bread street skating with freestyle. Dudes a badass. Last few board slides had me falling back.
The 360 flips to wheel slide [not sure what he calls that] -- well anything to wheel slide is just sicko.
i remember my friends and I constantly watching his run/footage on "second hand smoke" when he was with Plan B skateboards 10 yrs ago...just sick.
this brings me back to high school when Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came out and Skateboarding made a big comeback and all the sudden there were skater queers with trucker hats everywhere and someone was always trying to up-close videotape them try desperatley to pull off a kickflip.
qft, even now loads of them congregate and think they have skills but suck. very annoying but its moving to other x-sports as well (bmx)
i got to skate with him for a couple of days in 1985 in houston. he was in town the week before Shut Up And Skate 85 with the Powell & Peralta crew. the guy just constantly blew everyone away (including tony hawk). his vert skills have always gone virtually unnoticed since he never competed in that arena. simply sick. he's a great guy also.
He's a helluva nice guy. I used to Freestyle and I still have my Old Mullen (signed by Rodney himself) in the garage. In '90 he was in Baytown at the SMA show and I was the ONLY Freestyle skater there. It was funny how nobody was really watching Rodney- they were all watching Jeremy Klein and the other skaters. Then when it came time for a break, Everybody crowded around Mullen to talk to him and ask him questions. Mainly about his old Powell days. The other skaters came over, and noone said anything to them. Strange. It actually worked to my favor that noone paid attention to him when he was skating. During the show, he came over to me (remember I was the ONLY person there with a freestyle board). He actually asked if it was his model...and then asked "Can I Skate It". Here was the skater I idolized asking ME if he could skate my board. He was skating a prototype of his new model that was a little bigger and wasn't used to it yet. He then kicked his board over to me and said "Here". So I got to skate on Rodney Mullen's board. I felt like the kid in the old Mean Joe Green Coca-Cola commercials. Still to this day..in his old age, the man has some serious talent.
