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MD:
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But you had a son, you had a wife, ...you had a lot of stuff that you had to support. What do you think you would have done if skateboarding had just stopped for you?
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LM:
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It did stop for me. It completely stopped. We were making 20 grand sometimes and then we slowly started getting… I mean it got down to 5 grand to 4 grand...
you can live on that. That’s great. You know...no big deal. Some people couldn’t cuz their life was at a higher level. You know Tony and stuff. I could
live on it. But it just went through it …with Stacy and the whole move and they bought a building and all that stuff. And thats part of why Stacy left.
I don’t even know how much this...it’s just lame. It doesn’t matter. It’s no ones fault. It’s just where it went. I’m not blaming nobody. It’s just
where it went. What we did as a group didn’t work anymore. We couldn’t hold onto the young guys. Vert sales dropped and the only way to keep us involved was
to have the right young guys and we didn’t. And so everything just went to a thousand dollars a month. I couldn’t live on a thousand dollars a month.
And my choices were...I mean I came home from a tour and my friend Pat Brennan which rode for Powell said "Hey Powell’s giving you a company and I’m
going to ride for it." And I’m all "What!?".
Talked to Stacy and everything. And you know...he always wanted to have it...I got on Powell to help run it and to be where he was. You know. But we
knew that that was falling apart when Guy, Rudy, Gabriel and Mike V and all those guys left so...Stacy was saying he was going to leave. George said
"Hey we want do a company for ya da, da ,da... <inaudible> is going to be a team. You can move up to Santa Barbara" I was like...
I wasn’t even going to do it. So it was like, instantly what am I going to do? I’m not a skater anymore obviously. What am I going to do?
Stacy was leaving. We knew all this stuff. And I was like, I just spent time figuring out what I was to do.
Rocco and Natas called me over for a meeting. They wanted me to be involved in everything to make a new magazine, which turned out to be Big Brother.
Mark was leaving Blind. He called me and he’s like "Hey I want you to run Blind. Why don’t you run Blind for me?". Not that Rocco would have
let me but that’s what Mark said to me. There weren’t any options.
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MD:
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And the Firm was born?
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LM:
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Yeah. Yeah… I argued. I didn’t want to do it. I did NOT want to do a business. There’s parts of it I wanted to do. I wanted to work with a team,
I wanted to work with the guys, I wanted to stay involved. I was determined to be around so I could try to influence skateboarding cuz nobody, none of
my peers were going to be around. I enjoyed it. I actually really enjoyed it. It’s hard you know.
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MD:
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You talked a little bit about not wanting to run the company and being involved with Powell but you recently were re-involved with Powell with the special
edition of Animal Chin and also the re-issuing of your Future Primitive deck. How did that happen and what was that like?
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LM:
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It was you know, Stacy did the Dogtown thing you know and obviously since then there was all this Powell stuff "When are you going to do the Bones
Bridgade? When are you going to do the Bones Brigade?". I’ve talked to Stacy a couple of times about it. He asked me what I thought. He goes
"Do you think there’s a story there?" He was just getting information. I was like "Yeah sure. But it’s going to take us getting together
first". Nobody had even talked in years you know? And that’s kinda weird to stem from.
So the first step was to even just to see if anyone would get along to even do a documentary or little commentary on the DVD you know? They had tried
to do it before but without Stacy no one was going to do it. We rode for Stacy. So it kinda stemmed from that. George had certain ideas probably and
Stacy had certain ideas. I wasn’t going to be the one who was like "I ain’t doing it!". Everyone agreed. Tommy even agreed you know? And in
doing so, they wanted to do reissues of all our boards too. And I was the first to say "well if everyone wants to do it I’ll do it of course".
I’m not going to be the one who didn’t. So I was under the impression that everyone was going to do it. But Tommy and Tony didn’t do it. I just didn’t
want to hold any weird grudges. They wanted to run it and run it and run it… do shirts and stuff like that. I was like "Nah… just do 1,500 boards.
Make it a collector thing." The guys that get it want to get it. That’s it. Done. Make it quick and short.
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MD:
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It’s actually been completely sold out.
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LM:
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Oh, it’s been gone for a long time. Oh no… I just wanted to do 1000 of ‘em and sign ‘em. But George wanted to do it differently. He wanted to do it on a
monthly basis sort of thing. Run it for 3 months or something. It was just a short 1,500 boards. It was real quick.
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MD:
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Any thoughts about doing it again in a different colourway or a "Doughboy" series?
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LM:
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Nah nah. I just did it to be cool and not be lame. But you know, if I wanted to ride for Powell I’d ride for Powell. That’s my thoughts.
It’s financially not worth it for us to get 5% of sales on a board and not really be kind of supported by the company. It’s dumb to do it.
It’s financially dumb. I wasn’t going to be lame about it.
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MD:
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You’ve also got a board coming out with John Lucero [Emergency]...
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LM:
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Yeah I know...it’s not coming out. He made 50 boards to give away to his friends cuz he wanted me to ride for... He didn’t know. I didn’t tell him before.
He didn’t know everything. When I stopped doing the Firm we already knew that we were getting on Flip. Like I didn’t just stop and go "Oh what am I
going to do?". I knew a long time ago what the plans were. I stopped it to do Flip. But I didn’t tell anybody. So when I did, they were like
"You’re riding for Label!!!!". Which would be awesome cuz John is awesome. Black Label is rad but I was like "nah nah. I’m actually riding
for Flip". So they were like "Whoah, We already got your board anyways". Just a fun thing you know? So he made 50 boards to give away
to his friends and shops and stuff. I think there are actually only 30 out there cuz he gave me some...so there’s only like 30 that are actually floating
around.
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the never-released, hard to find Mountain "Emergency" model
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