chrome ball interview #67: mike daher

 chops focuses power with a true legend.

Alright Mike, coming out of New Jersey, how big of an influence did Vallely have on your skating? Not sure if a lot people know this but you and your brother George were super tight with Mike back in the day and I’ve heard he was very instrumental in opening some doors for you guys, career-wise.

Yeah, we grew up skating with Mike and helped us out a lot. He was definitely a huge personal influence on my skating.

We were all into riding BMX bikes back then and just happened to find skateboarding all within the same month. He accelerated way beyond everyone else very quickly. He was always more aggressive and opened our eyes to a lot of things. If we were jumping off a little drop-off, he’d be jumping off a 6-foot high wall.

I can definitely see a lot of his type of power in your skating. But that must’ve been a trip to watch him blow up with Public Domain, right? Your childhood friend is now one of the most popular skaters in the world.

Yeah, my family and I ended up moving to Florida right before that but he still came down to visit us in Florida every couple of months. He’d do a demo while he was down there to make it a free trip. It was cool to watch the evolution with his first experimental board coming out for Powell and then just blowing up like he did. He blew up quick.

Did he play any role with your brother George becoming one of the first initial amateurs chosen to ride for Blind?

Yeah, that really came about by meeting people through Mike V. It was pretty epic how it all went down. Mike had hooked George up with the original SMA/Rocco Division and through all that, he started hanging out with Mark a lot and ended up moving in with him and Jason. George was actually living with Mark when he quit Vision to start Blind. He would call me up back in Florida to tell me all of these things… like Mark wants to start his own company called Blind, the opposite of Vision. Boom! Within a month, the first shirts and boards were out and George was on the team.

Insane. And such an incredible time with Jason and Mark living in that house together. Do you remember any stories from back in the day that George told you? Were you ever able to go out there and hang out?

I got to hang out with them a few times but most of it came though those late-night phone calls from my brother. He was more their age and would always be out with them, doing their thing. But yeah, I’d get a call at 3 in the morning from George telling me all of this crazy shit that was going on. Mark hopping out of the car and boardsliding some crazy 10-stair curved rail that no one had even looked at before. Just out of the blue before hopping back into his car and going about his business.

I remember George calling me the night Mark invented noseblunt slides. He was trying to explain them to me over the phone and it sounded so crazy. But it was cool because my friends and I would be fresh on all the new stuff as it was happening. Through George’s phone calls, the Conklins, Bo and I were able to get the info quick, straight from the master. It’s funny because we weren’t able to see anything so we’d all be trying to visualize it in our minds, trying to figure everything out on our own.

So sick. But the million-dollar question here is: did George invent “the focus”?  A lot of people point to him as the true originator. And is it true that it’s a Karate Kid reference?

Yes, George did invent the focus but no, it’s not a Karate Kid reference.  It’s actually from Bruce Lee. 

“Focus power. Use your mental focus power.”

I still remember the night so perfectly. I was sitting on my bed when George comes home from skating and his board is broken. With it being broken in the middle like that, I asked him if it had gotten run over by a car.

“No, I just stomped it.”

It was funny because he wasn’t even mad or frustrated. Nothing like that. “I just stomped it. I don’t like this board.”

I honestly didn’t believe him. There’s no way he just did it like that. I happened to have my board in my room at the time so I told him to do mine. He lays it down and snaps it first try.

It became a joke after that. All of my friends would come by and they wouldn’t believe it either so he’d focus their boards, too. Then they’d get all bummed and he’d give them another board.

Good man.

But Mike V thought it was so insane. He ended up telling Gonz and everybody about it when he went out to the West Coast. Word spread pretty quickly but evidently, nobody out there could do it. They’d all try and end up bouncing their foot off their boards, almost breaking their ankles.

So when George and I finally go back out to Cali, we’re hanging out with Mark at this contest in Santa Monica and Mark wants to see it. George snaps his board first-try barefoot and Mark just starts tripping.

Two months later, George flies back out to the World warehouse with Mike V when Jeremy Klein and Ron Chatman come up like, “Is this the dude? The focus? We heard about it! Let us see it!”

George shows them the focus and they love it. They start setting up all of these complete boards just so George can focus them. Lining them up in a row and George stomps them all without even taking a step in-between. Just one after the other, walking through them. They were amazed.

A couple months later, Rubbish Heap comes out and the focus was sold like it was their thing. George never got any credit for it. Mike V once brought it up in an interview for Thrasher years later but that was it.

The legend of the focus. But what ended up happening to George’s skate career? Being on such an elite team like Blind back then, it seemed like he was set.

George didn’t really care about any type of career. He was so off-and-on with his skating… he really didn’t give a shit. He just loved skating with those dudes and happened to fall in that mix when the team started. Evidently Mark was even telling him that he’d be pro by next summer but George ended up having to move back to Florida. After that, he wasn’t into it that much anymore. Moving back to Florida and trying to skate after staying in LA for the last year or so with Mark Gonzales and Jason Lee made it pretty difficult for him to stay motivated. (laughs)

We’d all be telling him to get back out to Cali but he was over it.

"Mike Daher" actually John Montesi. Poweredge 1989.

So what made you decide to ride for Powell instead of going a more Rocco-centric course like your brother did?  Was that your first board sponsor?

I skated for G&S for like a year before that… back when Neil Blender and Chris Miller were still on. That just came from winning a few contests. Powell came about when Mike V came down a year or so after we’d moved to Florida. Powell was asking if he knew of any potential young riders down in the South and he told them about this kid he was hanging out with. They hooked me up.

My brother was actually always telling me that I didn’t want to ride for Rocco. He’d tell me all of this shit about how the industry was so fucked… stuff that I kinda already knew but now with extra weight since George saying it. I was getting hooked up pretty good with Powell early on and Mike left Powell only to ride for Rocco for barely a year. Powell hooked me up with product and sent me wherever I wanted to go so I decided to stay there and not deal with any bullshit. I just wanted to skate with my friends. That’s all I cared about back then.

Coming out of the Tampa scene with Lance Conklin probably didn’t hurt either. And of course, you can’t really bring up that scene without bringing up the notorious antics of Lance’s brother Scott and Mr. Bo Turner. I know you were close to those guys, care to share any of your favorite stories of these two notorious dudes?

Yeah, we hung out a lot. And yes, everytime was pretty much a ruckus. Those dudes were so psycho crazy.

I gotta say that I wasn’t there for some of the more legendary stories you might’ve heard… like those guys fighting an entire football team in Taco Bell or Bo taking on 30 people from a different school by himself and sending them running.  I wasn’t there for any of that. But I will say that you always felt safe skating with those dudes. You knew you didn’t have to worry about people heckling or somebody trying to pick a fight because those dudes were gonna handle it. They were fucking ruthless. They’d just rip people out of their cars and beat them. Straight-up, they weren’t fucking around.

“What you say? Did you call me a fucking faggot?”

They’d seriously beat someone out of their car and just laugh about it as they left them lying there. So insane.

But no, I never really got involved in any of that. Usually everything would happen so quickly that there wasn’t a need for me to get involved. Those dudes had it handled. But to witness it was always something.

Definitely. So your first bit of shine came in a post-credits part in Propaganda. Was that just you and your bros filming for a couple of days and sending it in? I can’t imagine Stacy came down to film that, did he? And did you know your part was gonna be slated past the credits like that?

No, I honestly didn’t know anything about how that one was going to go down. I only got a few days notice and it was all filmed in one day. Lance Conklin filmed it, the only person I knew who had a camera back then. I didn’t really have much warning on that one and it was kind of a mess.

Then they spelled my name wrong in the video. I have to say that them doing that was when it became a bit too obvious that they didn’t really care. I honestly didn’t think that far ahead with what I was doing in skating, but by that point, I’d been on the team for 5 years. It made me realize that they really hadn’t done anything for me. They barely even acknowledged that I rode for them and then they spell my name wrong in the video? Fuck that. I quit shortly thereafter. I didn’t need them. I would’ve rather not ridden for any sponsors than that.

Powell became a little too business-y, I guess. They had made an investment in someone and were now looking to get something back out of it but they had no idea who that person was. I didn’t need that shit.

I would’ve probably quit, too.

Yeah, man. I just ended up going back out to Cali to stay with friends and skate. Took a Greyhound bus out with John Deago and stayed with Joe and Keith Gruber. They were already on the Firm and I was actually in the process of getting on the Firm when Stereo came about.

That’s an odd one to think about, you on the Firm.

Yeah, I was skating with the Grubers and Ray Barbee a lot at the time and they all really wanted me on the Firm but it just didn’t feel totally right. I was trying to make sure that the company I was going to ride for would be one that I’d want to stay with for a long time. This was just out of respect for Lance and everybody. The Firm seemed like it was going to be good but I still wasn’t totally sure. I was probably a little bit too wild at the time.

So did Stereo enter the picture through John Deago? I know he was an early Stereo rider back then but I didn’t realize the Nor-Cal ripper spent much time in Florida.

Yeah, John came out to stay in Florida for a bit and we hung out together a bunch. When we got out to Cali, he got hooked up with Stereo pretty quickly. He ended up bringing my name up to Jason and Dune, who remembered me from back in the day. Now that I was out in LA, it all worked out. I got a call from John about Jason and Dune starting this news company called Stereo and boom, boom, boom.

Stereo’s premium on style had to be refreshing at a time when so much in skateboarding was looking so bad. Was this an explicitly-stated philosophy amongst the team to keep the skating clean or did it just come about naturally? Did you feel at the time that a focus on style was something skating really needed?

That’s exactly right. It’s funny you say that because it was Jason’s complete intention and drive for Stereo and A Visual Sound. He stated it so many times back then and the entire team recognized that. That’s who we were. It was obvious. Skateboarding was changing so fast yet we were always going to be the type of skaters we were. We weren’t that type of skater to be following the latest trends or whatever.

When we all came together on a team like that, we didn’t need to be so outspoken about style as it was would naturally come through in the skating. We were trying to bring back some of the soul in skating. We recognized that things weren’t so flowing in skateboarding at the time as opposed to how we had always done it. The type of skating where people are moving, not just running into block repeatedly.

Watching videos actually got a little depressing back then. It was so weird in that you didn’t really see people pushing around or actually going anywhere in them. I mean everyone’s different and it’s all skating but some of that stuff would make my eyes twitch just trying to keep up with the maneuvers.   

But don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we were on some crusade to save skateboarding or anything like that. This wasn’t something we felt like we absolutely had to do. It was more like just a questioning of what was going on. Skateboarding was going in such a strange direction at that point where I think everyone had to step back and really look at it.

I know you were very outspoken at the time about what you called “spot camping” with overly tech tricks… questioning the value of a lengthy attempt process in order to perform a trick once and then never doing it again. A valid point, for sure, but do you think this might’ve ostracized you from certain other pros or crews? Anybody ever bring it up to you?

No, I never really heard anything about that from anyone. But that’s a tricky one because it’s not something that I was totally “against” on principle. It was more about thinking that style of skating just didn’t seem like very much fun to me. Going skating just to sit there like that. It really seemed to me like all those dudes doing that seemed so stressed about it. Not really having fun with their skating.

Honestly, I didn’t really see why they were putting themselves through all of that. I know that it was supposed for the videos but I still would’ve rather watched Video Days instead.

I think a lot of that type of thinking still holds true today. People are still driven to setting up in front of cameras so they can try that next biggest thing. It’s just at a whole different level now. I do enjoy watching these crazy stunts that take days or even weeks to do. I respect it. It’s still skateboarding and it shows what it all has evolved to. The difference is that there are so many different styles to it now that can be enjoyed where as when A Visual Sound came out, it was a much narrower way of thinking.

It’s nothing against those dudes, I hung out with the most technical skaters in the world back then. I skated with the Girl dudes almost everyday and they’re amazing. We just did different things. It’s all energy. The thing is that not everyone has to skate so much alike.

You were known for a more flowing, pop-heavy type of style. Having said that, Japan grabs and laybacks were a gutsy call for a time when people largely “weren’t allowed” to do Smith grinds. Did anybody ever talk shit on your trick selection or ever try to force you into doing more trendier tricks?

I’m sure there were people out there that talked some shit because it supposedly wasn’t the “time” of something but I never gave a fuck about any of that silly shit. If something felt good to me, I did it. I never even considered anything else.

The Layback at Embarko was honestly a product of Gabe and I fucking around. I pulled one out and Gabe thought we should shoot it so we did. It was fun and just so happened to get used in that interview. It was almost comical in a way.

As far as grabs, I guess they could’ve been considered “outdated” by then but I never heard anybody talking shit when I did them. If anything, people thought they were sick. I never heard from anybody at Deluxe or wherever about wanting me to change up my trick for an ad or for sales. People always seemed pretty psyched on them.

I never thought of tricks as things that I should be doing for any other reason than what felt good to me. I know people did or didn’t do certain tricks due to politics or whatever and they probably missed out on a lot of fun. I was influenced by people like Neil Blender and Lance Mountain, the pros that always tried to not to be so serious about it.  Skating is fun. Goof around with it.

Perfect. So I have to bring up one of my all-time favorite sequences of you: the Japan grab out of a frontside tail that ran on the Contents page of Slap. How did that even happen? Is there video of that anywhere? That couldn’t have been the only you ever did that move, was it?

Nah, that was just dorking around with Gabe. I was actually waiting around to shoot some other photo when I happened to do that and he liked it. He saw me messing around with it and he was setting up another roll of film. At first, it was to stall then I started doing them sliding and Gabe started tripping out.

“Dude, we have to fucking shoot that!”

The one we shot doesn’t slide very far but I got enough pop out of it so I was happy. It was completely out of the blue. It wasn’t like we set out that day to shoot that trick, it just felt good to me and he thought it looked sick. Fuck it.

Those are always the best kind of things.

So let’s get into your classic A Visual Sound part. Was there any “career”-type pressure involved in the filming for you personally after finally escaping the Powell situation?

Oh no, there was no pressure. After we all got together and formed the team, it was just like skating with your friends everyday but with a video camera. No pressure at all. It honestly felt like a whole new world for us.

A Visual Sound started with about a year of filming around LA before we got delayed for 6 months due to Jason’s tendonitis in his ankle. He was only maybe a third done with filming and it wasn’t like we could put out that video without him. No way. So after moving up to SF and filming up there for another 6 months, A Visual Sound took around 2 years to make.

But there was never a deadline. We just went out and filmed stuff. Old-school style. When it was done, it was done. It just went a little longer than expected and because of that, a good portion of our footage started to get a little outdated and didn’t get used.  

Did you know going into it that the video was going to have such a different look? That it was going to have an all jazz soundtrack with different types of film?

Yeah, just from living around Dune and Jason and hearing how it was being put together. Hearing about their vision and checking out all the Super-8 cameras they were buying. All the experimentation we were doing with the film and everything, we knew it wasn’t going to be another skate video. There were all these ideas behind it… with the jazz and all the different colorings in the film. Jason took so long mastering it. It really was like his little baby. He was always so careful with it.   

How did you feel the video was received overall at the time of its release? I remember it being pretty polarizing for whatever reason back then. Did you feel like it was ahead of its time?

It’s hard to say because while we were a bit ahead of our time, we were also back in time a little as well. We were trying to set the future back to what it was before, which is kind of weird to think about. We were trying to steer it back from where it was heading, I guess. But was interesting to see the changes it brought. All of sudden, people were trying to catch their tricks over bigger things. Taking things from curbs to higher ledges. It was cool to see a bit of our influence motivate others to step it up a little.

No longer were tricks allowed to bounce off the ground. That always tripped us out when people would just fling their boards around and hope to land on it. That stuff didn’t make any sense to us. It barely even seemed like skateboarding.  

I remember Thrasher gave you a T-Eddy for Best Video Part of the Year but were you pleased with your part? And who had your favorite part in the video?

I liked my part. I would’ve probably cut out a few tricks here and there but I guess it went along with the flow and the timing of the song. I never brought it up but there were a few clips I would’ve left out. Maybe lost another ollie over something or perhaps a second angle of something already in there but they saw something in it as they were putting it together so I trusted Jason. He was always critical of everything so whatever he wanted to put in my part, he knew what he was doing.

As far as who had my personal favorite part, I’d have to say either Rodriguez or Jason. Just being able to see another Jason Lee video part was amazing. Even if I hadn’t been skating with him everyday and watched that part get filmed, seeing that part all together would’ve still been insane.

What’s your best Jason Lee story?

That’s a tricky one because we had so many good times together. Most Jason stories are fucked anyway. It’s impossible to explain his sense of humor and his skating was always so amazing. We’d be at a spot where nobody could do a trick and he’s backside flipping some insane thing that we couldn’t even understand. Doing tricks over something we couldn’t even ollie. I have so many stories like that with him. People couldn’t believe the things he would do at these spots. There is something different about that dude.

So I gotta ask, Mike… what happened? You have this amazing part in A Visual Sound, your skating is incredible, your getting all of this coverage and one of the top companies turns you pro… almost like George’s scenario, you’re set from a career point-of-view. But then you kinda disappeared. What was going on there? What happened with you and Stereo prior to Tincan Folklore?

It was honestly a combination of a lot of things really. Jason not being around so much anymore played into it. Him being gone for months at a time to make his first few movies, the company didn’t really feel the same anymore. Stereo didn’t feel like Stereo. Personally, Jason was always like our big brother and without him there, everything seemed different.

I started going in and graphics were already done for me, which never happened before. We were starting to be told where we could and couldn’t go on tour. A lot of those types of things. Putting people on the team without even asking us. That was a huge thing because that was really what made the team what it was up until that time. It was always so tight because we’d hang out for a while to make sure everyone was super down. If anybody on the team was a little if-y, the person would get turned down. I’m not going to mention any names but we definitely turned down some amazing skaters due to a couple people not really feeling them. There was no hesitation allowed. That’s how the team was formed. But then to be told that certain people actually now ride for Stereo without the team even knowing about it? I wasn’t feeling it. I was over it.

I was starting to get into different things in my life, too. Entering a bit more of a spiritual mode in my life. Starting to look at things a little differently in my mid-20s. I had started to find different things taking interest and I was just kind of over it. It wasn’t the same anymore.

I just wanted to skate with my friends again. I was more stoked on jumping in a car with the dudes and going on skate trips than I was on anything else. Old-school style, I didn’t even care if I was gonna be broke. It might sound weird in the face of such an opportunity but I still didn’t give a shit. I had more fun that way.

Were you over skating in general at that point or did you just go back underground again without a sponsor. I know you popped up in an ad for Far East and Rasa Libre a few years later.

Actually at this point, I tried to do a little company with Jerry Fisher called Metal. Freddie Gall wasn’t exactly going to ride for it but he was going to be in the mix with us, too... which ended up being both a good and a bad thing. The problem was that once word got around about Freddie being involved, people started calling up Alien Workshop to ask why Freddie was quitting, which was never going to be the case. But that caused all these problems in the industry. All of a sudden, the dudes at Think are getting on Jerry’s case and we started hearing all these crazy rumors that we were trying to take all of Deluxe’s riders. People started to think that we had this crazy master plan that never even existed. We were just wanting to do something small, trying this or that with whatever we wanted to do. I didn’t have anything against Deluxe. If people weren’t happy with them, that was up to them. That had nothing to do with us.

Metal was never supposed to be anything like that. It was just dudes from Jersey. It was already our crew, it just had the option to more of a company there for a little bit. But it got made up to be this entire other thing. I stuck with them for a little while but it never really worked out. It was kinda whatever.

I was only on Far East for a little bit. They knew I wasn’t skating that much at the time but I was from the area and it made sense to have me on the team.

I wasn’t really skating all that much after Stereo. I felt like I had already peaked at my happiness level in skating and had accomplished what to do. I realized me being on company at that point was essentially just taking paychecks.  I didn’t even want them, to be honest. Some people can do that for a long time but I didn’t feel comfortable doing it.

What are your thoughts on the new Stereo? Were you ever contacted in regards to the Stereo Classics division? I know I’d love to see a reissue of that Bassett Hound graphic you had.

It’s funny because it seems like everytime somebody talks to Dune, he mentions it. If somebody asks him about it, he says he’s down to do it but he’s never asked me about it. I don’t know anything about it.  

The new Stereo is cool. I don’t really keep up with things too much but I know they have rad skaters. But I will say that with it now being 20 years later, it feels like just another company to me. It just so happens to have the same name and logo as Stereo. It’s all the same shit, just a different route to market. But good for them. They deserve it.

So what are you doing now, Mike? What are you up to these days?

I’m just hanging out with my dogs on the mountain. I skate when I can, whenever I have time. Just staying busy, doing things. West Coast things.

My ex-lady is super rich now (laughs)

(laughs) We won’t get into the many pitfalls you’ve experienced over the last year since I started bugging you to do this interview. But how does it feel to hear people still talking about how incredible your skating was and how ahead of your time you were? Looking back on everything, do you feel personally feel this way?

I honestly never thought about skating on some premeditated level. That I needed to do this or look like that. It was all spontaneous. Trying to do different stuff and someone happened to have the camera. Nothing was planned.

And as far as people still coming up to talk to me about my skating, I never felt like I was ahead of my time or anything close to that. When I hear those types of compliments, I think its cool and feels good. I guess I’ve started see over the years that maybe I maybe did have some small part in helping push skateboarding back in the right direction. That’s super awesome to hear… a chilling feeling, actually. When people come up to tell me that they would’ve quit skating had it not been for A Visual Sound, it’s rad to know that you had an impact on people to some degree.

With the re-release a few years back, A Visual Sound has been able to achieve that classic status it deserves, but at the time, like we talked about, it was a little polarizing. Do you think had that video been received better at the time, you would have prolonged your career and possibly been more sparked to continue skating professionally?

No, I don’t think so. Maybe because I started skating when I was 10-years-old and had experienced a decade of being sponsored and dealing with all of that industry stuff. By the time I was pro, I realized that I probably wasn’t going to have the drive to go out and film anymore like I should. I felt like I had peaked as far as my own level of skating.

It was my personal understanding, not a headtrip or anything, I was just finding over stuff in my life that peaked my interest. Some people didn’t get it but oh well. It worked out.

Good to hear. Alright Mike, I can’t thank you enough for doing this. Sorry for hounding you for the last year. Anything else you’d like to add? Any parting words of wisdom?

“Focus Power!”

I’ll end it on that. Shout out to George! 

Special thanks to Nick Halkias, Mike Daher and Brother George.

=O