Mike Carroll
Birthday: 1975-08-24 Place of Birth: San Francisco, California, USA
Synopsis
Michael Shawn Carroll (born August 24, 1975) is a professional skateboarder from Daly City, California, United States. He is the co-founder and vice-president of Girl Skateboards and the co-founder of Lakai Limited Footwear. He was also instrumental in the creation of the Chocolate Skateboards subdivision of Girl. Furthermore, Carroll is known for being in the vanguard of innovative, technical, and stylish street skateboarding in the early 1990s and beyond. The success of skateboarding videos like Hokus Pokus, Ban This! and Video Days firmly ensconced street as the premier variation of skating (a position formerly held by freestyle and especially vert skateboarding).
Acting
All the Streets Are Silent: The Convergence of Hip Hop and Skateboarding (1987-1997)
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, skateboarding and hip-hop culture collide in downtown Manhattan. Archival footage from the era showcases the fusion of these two forms of expression.
Girl & Chocolate - Pretty Sweet
This is an epic tale of two gangs, like The Jets and The Sharks. But Girl and Chocolate aren't even gangs. Some of them act tough and some of them act like babies. But they are even more unlike the Jets and The Sharks in that they aren't even battling each other for territory. They really don't know what the hell they are doing. They don't have a feud, most of them really like each other so that is another thing they don't have in common with the Jets and the Sharks. What they do have in common with The Jets and The Sharks is they love to dance. And when I say dance, I mean SKATE. And when I say SKATE, I mean really good. From the directors that brought you Mouse, Yeah Right and Fully Flared, another chapter in this tale with no plot, no ending but beautiful inner battles acted out on a little board with wheels.
Virtual Reality
As skateboarding begins to embrace the importance of it's own history, Plan B's second release, Virtual Reality, quickly establishes itself as one of skateboarding's most significant video productions of all time. Only one year after their inaugural release (Questionable Video 1992), Plan B stepped to the fold under the guidance of Mike Ternasky and convincingly shrugged off the sophomore video jinx. In today's massive era of skateboard prominence, Virtual Reality remains a flick that's just as significant for its representation of the period's for and style, as it is for the bar raising development and progression it depicts.
Questionable
The first offering in the iconic Plan B video "fourology", the release of Questionable Video promptly set the skateboard community on its ear while screaming, "change!" into the other. In the age of cut-down high tops and late shove-its, the hellish Plan B roster (brought together by a visionary Mike Ternasky) rose above the transitional feel of the era by pioneering today's tech + handrail methodologies. Shot lovingly with shouldered VHS dinosaurs and screw-on fisheyes, Questionable is an undoubtedly raw, homegrown, and pure skateboarding video that not only reflects a major turning point in skateboarding's evolution, but illuminates the path that the sport will follow over the next decade.
