Why is rodney mullen weird

So do you approach your skating in a very non-linear way? The totality of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In your autobiography, you thank Jesus. What role does religion play in your life?

The term religion bums me out. I hate that crap. But yes, I am to fault. I have problems fitting in. I go to sleep when the sun comes up. It hurts me in my social interactions. That has always been my case with skateboarding. But what do I expect? I skate like a goofball. What do you make of the current state of skateboarding today? Skating is one of the greatest blessings I could have. However, nowadays big stuff makes great photos.

It leads people to believe that is normal. I mean, how can that not diminish your career lifespan by skating like that? By doing those things, it ultimately takes away what is most precious to you. So I think it is unhealthy and uncool… I see great skaters and their ankles and knees are ruined. They become ashamed that skating got taken away from them before their time.

So in that way, I can be critical of the hype because it takes away what is most precious. Skateboarding is such a gift. But I still love to watch these stunts, I get so stoked. The hare is going to end up bummed out. Did that stem from your interest in engineering?

Rather than frame it from engineering, even though I used a lot of that understanding and background, the origin was this: in terms of Tensor, the company grew and we realised that everyone could make trucks, not just Indy. Make up a truck! Things like nollie hardflips are pretty awkward set-ups. I wanted to build a truck that would help you do those kind of things better. I understand that you recently had problems with your hip that threatened your skating.

Could you tell me more about that? It was the most dramatic thing. Some scar tissue wrapped around my femur and pelvis and clasped together, pulling my femur into the hip socket. It was calcifying and was going to be the end of me walking normally. The bones had already started to fuse together so I had to physically put enough pressure on myself to break my own bone. I did that for an enormous number of hours.

I stuck my leg in the wheel well of a car and grabbed the bottom of the frame and tweaked and tore as much as I could. After two and a half years, I broke the scar tissue and some of the bone. When I did break it, it scared me to death. I heard it break and after the nausea and the adrenaline, I was lying on my garage floor at three in the morning screaming with my face covered in snot and tears.

Mullen was born with metatarsus varus, better known as pigeon toes, a condition causing both feet to point inward. In a sport where the ability to manipulate the board freely with both feet is everything, this was a significant drawback. But Mullen wore boots designed to correct the condition and practiced obsessively to perfect his technique on the board. That obsession with skating and creating made Mullen a legend, but it might also be one indication that he has a mild form of autism.

Although never formally diagnosed, Mullen came of age in the late s, before the disorder was commonly recognized—particularly in kids who were high-functioning. Mullen himself has mentioned that he believes he may be autistic. The single-minded focus and the almost ethereal aptitude he has shown for skateboarding over the years would tend to bear that out. He was skating some picnic tables at a school out near Compton when two gang members came out and it seemed like they were about to rob him.

Wrapping up the interview, I ask Rodney which character, aside from himself, he would play with. He is the new generation of everything I aspire to be.

And now he can do it. Monster Children. Follow MC. Sign up. Read more. You help us make all these connections we need to make. Mullen takes the compliment in stride. In fact, he has grown accustomed to hearing this type of praise, for his nerdy musings are in high demand these days.

More than 30 years after he invented most of the gravity-defying maneuvers that still form skateboarding's basic vocabulary, Mullen is enjoying a strange sort of second act.

He has become a sought-after speaker on the Silicon Valley conference circuit, making the rounds at PopTech, Foo Camp, TEDx, and myriad other events where technology bigwigs gather to feast on ideas.

As his speaking career has flourished, Mullen also has landed an array of choice consulting gigs: advising the head of a USC research lab that develops virtual reality systems, shooting a short film about creativity for Adobe, collaborating with the Smithsonian to launch a project about skateboarding, history, and innovation. His life is often a blur of product demos and boardroom meetings, punctuated by selfie requests from engineers who grew up playing his character in the Nintendo 64 version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.

Given that he's best known for performing stunts atop a rolling slab of wood, Mullen's sudden rise to prominence as a thought leader may seem a bit puzzling. Though part of his appeal is his polymathism—with interests ranging from quantum mechanics to Russian novels—Mullen does have a core message for Silicon Valley that is as compelling as it is odd: that the tech industry has much to learn by studying the culture and habits of skateboarders. It's a personal thesis to Mullen, a series of lessons and metaphors that he developed as a way to get through some of the darkest moments of his own life.

But now he's found that his ideas and message resonate with others too. On the days he's home in Southern California, Mullen adheres to a peculiar practice regimen. He skates only in the dead of night, typically starting around 1 am. And he insists on skating in private, usually in the cluttered warehouse of the shoe company that sponsors him. There, in deserted aisles lined with towers of cardboard boxes, he hones all manner of flips and grinds while listening to Swedish death metal.

The sinewy and shaggy-haired Mullen, who resembles a slightly less weathered version of Iggy Pop, refuses to let anyone watch these late-night sessions because he doesn't want to spoil his mystique. Skating aficionados would be shocked to see how frequently he falls while practicing: When he was at his athletic zenith as a member of the Bones Brigade, the most celebrated team in skateboarding history, Mullen was known for never making mistakes in public. Mullen's first pro board featured a graphic of a robotic dog—a tribute mashup of his nickname, Mutt, and his style of flawless skating.

Mullen inherited his meticulousness from his parents, who were both brainy overachievers. His mother was an accomplished pianist who graduated from high school at the age of 14 and later earned a physics degree; his father was a dentist and property developer who built self-propelled vacuums for fun.

Though his family was prosperous, Mullen has bitter memories of his upbringing on a farm in Gainesville, Florida. He lived in constant fear of upsetting his father, a surly and domineering man who brooked no dissent from his three children. When Mullen first became interested in skating, his dad refused to let him have a board—he didn't want his son to waste his talents on such a dangerous, marginal sport.

But he finally relented in late , and Mullen responded by devoting upwards of six hours a day to skating alone in an un-air-conditioned barn, which became a sweltering refuge from his father's temper and stern admonishments. Since that barn had a flat concrete surface, Mullen gravitated toward a now-defunct skateboarding discipline known as freestyle, a close relative of ballroom dancing—twirls and fancy footwork were freestyle's bread and butter. The skaters who soared off ramps generally scoffed at freestylers as timid and dull.

But when Mullen started to compete in professional contests in the early s, even the most judgmental skaters were enraptured by his tricks, which reflected the mathematical bent of his mind. You didn't necessarily need to ride on the deck—you could turn it upside down and skate on it, you could skate on the edge of it.

Mullen pummeled his leg with wrenches to break up the scar tissue that was strangling his bones. Mullen's most important breakthrough occurred in late , when he figured out how to make his board go airborne by jamming down his back foot at just the right moment—a trick that came to be known as the flatground ollie, now the most fundamental maneuver in all of modern skating. The following year he devised three more essential tricks: the kickflip, the heelflip, and the impossible. Though his peers were awed by Mullen's talent, they also considered him something of a weirdo.

Mullen was pathologically shy and prone to both anorexia and panic attacks; he once became so overwhelmed with anxiety while on tour that he ran away from the Bones Brigade van during a rest stop in rural Maryland. He was also too hyperintelligent to enjoy typical teen pursuits: While his teammates spent their downtime looking for girls and playing pranks, Mullen preferred to practice differential equations.

He would eventually go on to study biomedical engineering at the University of Florida, though his hectic skating schedule prevented him from earning his degree. When freestyle died out in the early s, Mullen made the transition to street skating, in which tricks incorporate elements of the man-made environment such as steps, curbs, and handrails—often to the chagrin of property owners, who tend to view skateboarders as human vermin.

Mullen hangs out with local kids at the skate park in Camden, Maine, during the annual PopTech ideas gathering.