I bothered the fucking shit out of Mike V when I was a little kid, probably 13 or 14, and he was cool as fuck. I mean he made a bunch of claims that he didn't live up to, like how he was never going to quit Black Label and Etnies and Accel wheels, but whatever. He also told me he invented that tail slide, never bothered to fact check it though. Well, some kid ended up breaking his fucking back at the demo because he tried to show off & Mike V visited that kid in the hospital. The kid quit skating a couple of years later and eventually died of a heroin overdose in later years, but whatever.
I also talked to Gino on the crailtap phone while they had it up on the website. Chico answered, and he passed the phone to Daniel Castillo but I wasn't really trying to talk to him. Luckily Gino was in their van, and he was really cool about shit. He pretty much told me about his Nike deal, his jail stints, and shared every single skate spot on Long Island with me. Dude chopped it up with me for almost an hour, and then I had to go because my early 2000's prepaid cell phone was about to run out of minutes. Thanks for the convo Gino, I didn't take any of your advice about not going wild with partying or anything but I appreciated your diverse knowledge of Long Island skateboarding.