New Page 1

Mike Folmer was first pictured here in Skateboarder Magazine in 1978 riding his solid wood Nomad. Although they didn't even have his name they ran the photo anyway. Even the mag new that at this early stage Mike had the style and persona of a world class skater. Click on the thumnail to enlarge the photo.

Duane Peters: "I consider Mike a pal for life, when he first came out from Florida to California, at the first Big O contest he was Rolling in on the face wall of the cap frontside. Nobody had done that yet and all the locals were goin, "Who the fuck is this?!!". He made a mark first day!"

folmer_whos_hot_page_1.jpg (264840 bytes)

folmer_whos_hot_page_2.jpg (242587 bytes)

A "Who's Hot" profile from Skateboarder was one of the coolest things a young skater could accomplish. Click on the two thumbnails to read the story (written by Hunter Joslin in 1978). It's amazing to see the transition that took place in skating that year, just look at the Nomad board above and then the cover shot of Mike on the new "pig" boards below.

David Hackett: "Folmer is a powerful rider who was able to combine speed, style, and strength to any terrain with consistency. There were a few pool riding competitions back in the day where he gave Salba, Elguera, Olson, and myself a run for the money!"

Two page spread of Mike crossing the channel at the Big O in the Hester Series. Probably the most prestigious contest series to ever be a part of (prior to the X-Games).

Tom Inouye here, Got am email from Hunter saying your going to do an interview on the Folmer. I'll tell you a funny story it was just after Mike broke his leg and was in a full body cast, you know with just a towel covering his private parts a least it was easy access for the girls. Well we were all at Red's house and was about to leave so I said I would carry Mike out to the car, out the front door we went but forgot about the steps and away we went falling I let Mike go and he landed right in the middle of Red's mom rose garden thorns right into his ass, We all started to laugh our asses off just then we realized he could not get up on his own. need less to say I guess I would be the one to pull out all the thorns.

Mike was one of those skaters that had style. Things I remember most the Big O contest with frontside roll ins and frontside airs across the channel. We skated alot together at Whitter, Upland, Del Mar and surfed North County and Baja. I hear he still rips today so many years later. I'm sorry when we saw each other this past Feb at the old school skate jam he had a hurt knee.

The first Florida skater of only two ever to make the cover of Skateboarder Magazine. We plan to interview the other in the coming months as well.

Quote from Kelly Lynn: - "Mike's wide stance and low center of gravity made him look even faster than he was. He had a full range of moves and feet that were seemingly glued to his board."

Alan "Ollie" Gelfand writes us and says: "Haven't Spoke to Mike in 20 years and he is still a bro, saw him at the old school skate jam and he acted like it was yesterday he is a great guy and still skates with style that you only see in few skaters these days."

"Folmer ripped as hard as anyone, let's just say he was a lil underrated as far as I'm concerned, and to this day he rips as hard as anyone, but let's not forget the word style, Folmer has style and is one of the smoothest skater still. If you don't believe me fuck off............"
Steve Olson

Hunter Joslin: "Mike lives in a time warp and just can't come to grips with the new millennium! He is all about the Good Old Days. And he still rips whenever he skates just like the good old days!"

Bruce Walker reflects here on Mike in the 70's: "Mike Folmer was one of the most advanced skaters in the world in the late Seventies and anyone who saw him skate back then quickly realized it. His Sims Mike Folmer Model deck was a huge seller in the marketplace at the time. Mike's impact was worldwide and we were always so stoked with his success because he was a fellow Floridian. The Florida boys knew how much we, as a group, innovated new stuff in the early days of skateboarding and Folmer was certainly at the forefront of that evolution. I always remember the first time I ever saw or photographed a brand new maneuver later named the "Ollie." It was at a Clearwater Pro/Am contest in '77 or '78 and Alan Gelfand and Mike Folmer were the two guys who were blowing our minds with this new trick. I think Scott McCranels may have also been doing them that weekend. We initially called the trick a "No Hands Aerial Lipslide" which later gave way to Gelfand's nickname "Ollie." If I'm not mistaken, I believe Folmer and Gelfand developed the maneuver at the Cadillac Concourse a week or two prior to the Clearwater contest. If Folmer didn't actually share in inventing the Ollie, he was at least there at the very beginning with Gelfand and certainly assisted Alan in developing it. I haven't skated with Folmer in quite awhile, although I see him from time to time, but I hear he's still ripping in 2001. Hopefully I'll get to skate with Mike in California at the next "Legends Reunion" in 2002."

Doug "Pineapple" Saladino: The guy is still ripping 20 years later. Mike and I have been hanging out and skating quite a bit together after my 20 year lay off. And man ... it's so rad to see him skating hard at 40 years old. Kids watch him and are blown away with his Miller flips, backside airs into fakie, bert reverts and laybacks. The guy still blows me away. It's just like the time I first met him when he came out from Florida way back when. Definitely an inspiration to everybody !!!

I just got back from being on vacation. Its been a 20 years and I'm still trying to think of a quote for Mike. Back in the day, because Mike lived in Florida I never really got the chance to hang out with him that much. When I did see him, it was only for a weekend and at a contest. I remember hanging out with him at Denise Barters house and with Barry Lynn. But that's another story. I know Mike is still skating with Doug Saladino. In fact I was suppose to skate with him on Tuesday. But I couldn't get out of work. So I apologize for not getting back to you on this. One thing I remember is that Mike did all the tricks but also had his own unique tricks. He was the first guy that I remember to do backside airs to cess slide to fakie. He use to float them about sideways for about 3 feet.

Paul Schmitt: "When I was a kid growing up in Florida I used to be like a kid in the candy store skating with and watching the sponsored guys like Folmer. As my rails got better Mike liked them as they worked well. On his travels to California he took my rails with him by the handful. The California skaters liked them and some coverage started to grow. By 1980 I was known as the rail guy and Mike was an important part of getting me exposure to get there. Then the industry disappeared and we all still skated. Mike would still travel and wrote articles for Thrasher and continued to take my rails around on his journeys. When Mike was in the state we would skate backyard ramps together. Then when I moved to Cal in 85 we got to skate together more and eventually he skated for Schmitt Stix till it was over. I'm proud to say that Mike Folmer helped to get me where I am today. When life is not too busy we get the opportunity to skate together and he still rips like he did when he was a teenager!"

Howz it going? Can't wait to see your new site after I give you this reply. The best thing I could say about Folmer would be his incredibly smooth style and to this day he still has the trademark style that made his reputation in the first place.

John Lucero: "Mike Folmer is a legend in skateboarding, still ripping today.."

Where did you skate before Skateboard Safari was around? Did you skate “Hamburger Hill” and places like that?

Yeah, actually I started skating in my neighbors driveway because mine was too rough. They had a circle drive, in Florida all the lawns had kind of a slope so it had kind of a bank to it. I took my Chicago roller skates, cut the plates in half, drew out a shape on a board and cut it out with a jig saw, it had clay wheels. That was in ’70. Pat Love gave me my first skateboard, he stole it for my 11^th birthday, it was an RSI ProLine, Chicago trucks and RSI Mark IV wheels, it was like a plastic/resin waffle deck. I just found one, a red one, the one I had was black, that’s something I want to find one day. We used to go to this little church it had this long smooth sidewalk all around the outside of it and it was covered so it wouldn’t fade and we would do tic-tacs all around it, you didn’t have to put your foot down and push, then we learned to pump. Then from there it was Hamburger Hill and Hypoluxo, that was a nice County-made skatepark! I’ve got some pictures of that I’ll send you.

Yeah, but it had all kinds of little bowls and different sections, barefoot on a fibreflex with Road Rider 6’s! The guy that ruled it was Scotty’s uncle, Paul McCranels, he was like the King there.

Basically through Skateboard Safari, my Mom was working there, she ran the concession stand, so I was pretty much there everyday skating. Somehow me and Mike Brookes, we always skated together, hooked up with Ron Heavyside. They made them there in the shop, a solid wood with a wedge kicktail. Man I would love to find one of those, and my Nomad Jersey. Then we started to enter a lot of contests, I think the first one I entered was at Skateboard Safari.

Hunter was always out on the West Coast involved with surfing and he got in touch with Sims and said hey we got all these guys that are doing good in contests and should start a Sims East team, Tom was all for it and the next thing you know we’re getting packages of boards, wheels, that’s how I got my first Sims Jersey. We went to our first contest and it was me McCranels, Chuck Lagana, Chris West, Pat Love, and John Textor. We went to Clearwater and won overall in the Team placings, so that was like the beginning of it. So when the Hester Series started Tom Inouye and Strople were out here and and the next one was Newark, I was supposed to go to that and didn’t make it out till July of ’78 which was the Big “O”. That was my first exposure to California.

So did you go back and forth for a while? When did you finally end up staying out there?

Yeah, I went back and forth till like ’81. I’d come out here and do contests, photo sessions, go back and forth.

Oh, man, that story. We were all in Hunter’s Dodge Tradesman 200 van, with Hunter, McCranels and Chuck Lagana, we drove from his house all the way to Brunswick, powered it all the way up there, rather than waiting to skate the next day I had to skate right when we got there. I was doing a backside air on the halfpipe and my foot came off and I ended up doing a split. My mind blocked it all out and I just remembered rolling around in the gravel saying, I think I broke my leg. That was November of ’78. The doctor said it would be 6 months till I got the cast off and a year before I could skate, if I could. I broke my femur bone, a spiral fracture with a hairline that followed it. When you do that you can’t move your hips so they give you a body cast, which is all the way from your toe to your chest and half way down the other leg, and a hole to pee out of . That whole hospital experience was a nightmare, it was a pretty run down hospital, when I got there, they pulled it into place, then this guy comes over with a hand drill and I’m going you’re not putting that in me, and I go, you didn’t even give me a shot, and he says we don’t have time. They hand drilled the pin through the bone without any pain killers! That was more excruciating than anything that had to do with breaking my leg. It was kind of a nightmare, really bad hospital. I took bone meal with calcium which sped the healing up quite a bit. I only had the cast for 9 weeks which amazed the doctor when I got back to Florida. I was back skating in a total of 5 months.

Who were some of the guys you skated with in California and also back in Florida?

When I came out to California the first place I stayed was Wally’s house (Inouye’s), Cardiff by the Sea. I skated with Wally and Strople. Skated Pipeline a lot. Mickey, Salba, Waldo. That’s kind of who I hung out with when I first came out here. In Florida I skated with Mike Brookes, Scott McCranels, Chuck Lagana. And then in contests Clyde Rogers, Kelly Lynn, Mark Lake, Gelfand, McGill, Huck Andress.

Whenever the water’s not contaminated I can surf. Last time I snowboarded I kind of slammed and it put me out of skateboarding for a while. I would like to get more back into surfing.

There is a lot going on with skateboarding lately, parks popping up all over with concrete bowls. It’s cool, it’s putting a lot of diversity back into skating, it’s not just about doing flips on a Popsicle stick anymore. The kids are starting to see a whole new side of it. The Soul Bowl contest had a Masters Series, now it’s just a 30 and over division, it would be nice if they kept it a Masters Series and could encourage some of the old guys to come out, and not really to compete but just come out and Jam and give everybody kind of a history lesson of “hey this is so and so who invented that”. Hopefully there will be more of that with all the interest in it now.

There is a lot of money in it now. My kids have all the fingerboards and all that. At Burger King in the Kids Meal you can get a toy skateboarder doll!

Yeah back in our day it was like if you had a model you were somebody, now you have to have a finger skateboard to be somebody.

Oh yeah (sarcastically), I think I got a whole $400.00 a month. There was a handful of people back then making good money, like Stacy Peralta, Lonnie Toft. Where as now you got clothing, shoes, Mountain Dew, everything.

One trip I’d like to bring up is when me and Chuck Lagana, Mike Brookes, that whole crew, we went down to Skateboard USA in Hollywood, that was our first time we saw Alan Gelfand skating, they had this runway that went into this vert wall, it was about 10 or 11 foot, pretty big, a good 3 foot of vert, he was blasting frontside airs smacking his tail no hands. I was doing them more like a carve into a slide. I came out to California with Alan, Stacy picked us up, we were the first ones to do that. Gelfand really put his own trademark on it with the pop. He was doing them pretty far back and on a pre-historic board too.

As far as what I’m doing now, me and Hackett and Pineapple, we’ve been working with Tod Swank from Foundation to try and get a company of the ground, it seems like the timing is right, it’s gonna be called DeathBox Skateboards. We’re gonna make boards and wheels and cater to the old school. Around October through December we should have product out there.

When Duane sent back in his email he said no one was doing frontside roll ins out there:

Actually Kirk Talbot was doing them at that contest as well. I didn’t think anything of it we just rolled in both ways. Not many people were doing the channel jumps either, maybe Olson. Not that many tricks...carves, frontside & backside airs, tail taps. Tim Marting and Olson were doing Rock N Rolls, that was like the first public viewing of that.

Yeah if anyone finds a Nomad skateboard or Jersey that’s something I want to add to my collection.

Nomad Advertisement from July 1977. They are still in the same location. Do you think they have any in the back somewhere???

hard waves soft wheels.jpg (160229 bytes)

Mike was also a featured skater in the movie Hard Waves - Soft Wheels. This was back in the day when you saw skate movies prior to surf movies at your local hotel or VFW hall. All on reel, "click, click, click", smoke wafting in the air, kids hooting like surf hyenas, beach blond girls in sun dresses wearing lighting bolt jewelry. If anyone can find a copy of this let us know.

And then from 1978, Skateboard Madness...Mike was featured in this as well. Probably the first major skate movie (at least on VHS), about a decade before Animal Chin, and very similar in some ways actually.