Rodney Mullen
Rodney Mullen
John Rodney Mullenis an American professional skateboarder, entrepreneur, inventor, and public speaker who practices freestyle and street skateboarding. Mullen is credited with inventing numerous skateboarding tricks, including the flatground ollie, kickflip, heelflip, impossible, and 360-flip. Mullen has appeared in over 20 skateboarding videos and has co-authored an autobiography, entitled The Mutt: How to Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself, with writer Sean Mortimer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSkateboarder
Date of Birth17 August 1966
CityGainesville, FL
CountryUnited States of America
I've been all around the world, and there will be a thousand kids crying out your name, and it's such a weird, visceral experience. It's like, it's disorienting.
It wasn't until '79 I won my first amateur championship, and then, by '81, I was 14, and I won my first world championship, which was amazing to me, and in a very real sense, that was the first real victory I had.
As a kid, I grew up on a farm in Florida, and I did what most little kids do. I played a little baseball, did a few other things like that, but I always had the sense of being an outsider, and it wasn't until I saw pictures in the magazines that a couple other guys skate, I thought, 'Wow, that's for me,' you know?
Skaters, I think they tend to be outsiders who seek a sense of belonging, but belonging on their own terms, and real respect is given by how much we take what other guys do, these basic tricks, 360 flips, we take that, we make it our own, and then we contribute back to the community the inner way that edifies the community itself.
I like to study a lot of math, physics, and the Bible, too. For me, they all show that there's a lot more to things than we see.
Vert skating was the kind of skating that was done in pools, where you could get airborne and be weightless. The other style, which is what I did, was called free style, which was tricks you could do on flat ground.
Everyone expects me to do certain things,
Any eyes on me - a late-night street sweeper, some dude texting in his parked car, the homeless guy talking to himself - make me feel uncomfortable when I skate. Everyone expects me to do certain things.
What it is is that there's an intrinsic value in creating something for the sake of creating it, and better than that ... there is this beauty in dropping it into a community of your own making, and seeing it dispersed, and seeing younger, more talented, just different talent, take it to levels you can never imagine, because that lives on.
You build something but you cant live in the house because you sit around guarding it.
I can't wait to wake up and try something new. I can't sleep at night because I want to try something new.
Beethoven’s music always struck me. Always. He had this fire you know. I remember reading this story of him going deaf and pushing himself into self-isolation and that’s where he became himself. And to me that was, wow. Don’t let anything poison your individuality. Be away, break away and look in not outward.
There's an intrinsic value in creating something for the sake of creating it.
It puts a ceiling on your progress. You're blocked by your pride. To get good, you have to throw your board around and fall.