SIDEBAR

SK8 IN PEACE BLACC MIKE

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May 10 2015

Remembering Michael K. Green’s life as one of Long Beach, California’s most promising skateboarders of his generation, did not quietly rest in peace. A movement began among a collection of diverse skateboarders who practiced the craft of skateboarding inside the safe zone of Ghetto Park. Despite the ever-present gang violence that pressured the youth to remain divided along racial lines they looked after each other’s needs. Moreover, ragtag bunches of teenagers were focused on their skateboarding lines without snaking across another skateboarder’s line.

There was cooperation and not collisions over, on, up, down and around the skateboard ramps and railings. The sharpies and paint sticks were not silenced on the coarse grip tape to write the name of their beloved friend who they dearly missed being on the skate plaza. T-shirts, hats and tattoos became mobile memoirs of how they’d like to remember “Blacc Mike”. The permanence of death caused family members, friends and the whole community to celebrate the life he lived by being the best skateboarder he/she could be. The apparel took on the form of fighting for justice with fashion. It was a call to do what’s right. Everyone had these shirts, hats, bandanas, and jewelry in the city and around the country. The global sport of skateboarding exposed Mike to skateboarders from around the world.

In this photograph, Mike’s younger brother William wears a black t-shirt with his hero, brother and best friend, Mike. William’s friend Meezy holds up his light grey sweatshirt that displays the marble text, “SK8 IN PEACE BLACC MIKE”. A red pinstriped ball cap adorned his head with “Blacc Mike 05” sown into the lower portion of the hat. The screen prints became an act of bereavement and empowerment for the youth who were left to carry the heavy weight. Meezy’s Ice Cream sneakers catch the eye as much as his sweatshirt. They are bright colors of pink and green with fresh white shoelaces.

There’s a visible irony here in details of Blacc Mike’s story. The Ice Cream shoes represent where he was going with his skateboard career. Shortly before Mike died, he was with Terry Kennedy, Cato and Pharrell Williams in Virginia skateboarding on Pharrell’s ramp.

In 2005, the Billionaire Boys Club Ice Cream Skate Team at the time was a dream team of the most skilled skateboarders wearing fashionable clothing that nobody else at the time was thinking about or even manufacturing. Skateboard culture was changing the common held ideas about the identity of the black male. Slowly more minorities became invested into the sport of skateboarding because it was something they could do well. The wood and wheels could take you anywhere you wanted to go in any cement poured city. It was exercise. It was social. It made you tough.