MIKEY SILVA CRUST FILES
An extended rough cut of Mikey's raw footage from the Jenkem Crust video. From dodging cars and pedestrians to finding concrete sewers in the jungle, watch the process Mikey took to skate some of the crustiest spots Hong Kong has to offer.
Read an interview with Mikey below where we discuss some of the missions gone through to get clips, having eggs and batteries thrown at him, the response to the Jenkem video, and his 'crusthk' Instagram blind skate date.
How would you describe a crusty spot?
Mikey: I guess it's a spot that you walk up to from far away and it looks cool. But then you get closer and realize it has a lot of fucked up bits about it. The texture of the concrete… I think Hong Kong has a lot of really quickly poured concrete elements in the city, so things are very rough and not smoothed over. It could even be when there's a lot of tile work, so when the tiles have a large gap in between, falling on that shit sucks. Spots that are just not really fun to skate.
Why might a crust spot seem more appealing than a smooth marble spot?
Mikey: Cause a lot less people go to those spots. Most people would wanna hang out at a pretty smooth area so when they fall, they don’t have to worry about getting scraped up and stuff. But I like that extra spiciness to it. It makes it a little more fun.
Mikey blasts one last f/s ollie before getting the boot
“Eggs are fine, but batteries are a little wild."
Were any challenges thrown at you when tryna film a clip for this video?
Mikey: Yeah, that one spot that we were skating in Sai Ying Pun, the barrier on the left side of the street. I wallie’d over it, did a couple of tricks and ollie’d back out into the road. I skated it earlier on in my stay in Hong Kong during the day. I had no problems, nobody kicked me out. And then with you we went there twice. First time it was eggs… but we had a big crew and it was at night so it was understandable, ppl were tryna go to bed. And then we went back again… it was batteries, size D batteries, and then at the end, it was a little child telling us to stop skating. But yeah we ended up getting the clip. Definitely something I wasn’t warned about haha. Eggs are fine, but batteries are a little wild.
Downhill pole jam, North Point
Tell me about the story behind the downhill pole jam clip?
Mikey: We went there kinda early on when we started filming. There was that pole jam, a bunch of chains and downhill stuff. The first time we went, I just tried to go for it one time, and I wasn’t really thinking about landing it, I was thinking about the next part of the line. And then I landed forward, my foot slid and my knee locked up. That shit sucked… yeah I think I wasn’t skating for a couple weeks to a month maybe? And then the redemption.. going back when I was all healed. I mean, it's just a pole jam.. not technically anything hard, but even being back there I was all skittish and uneasy about even hitting the pole jam. It’s such a weird thing, but yeah once you’re able to come through and get it at the end, it’s alright. The best part was the lady sitting in the booth, cause it was a parking area. She saw me fall, so she gave me some Chinese medicine to help my knee. And then when we came back, she recognized me. I think she said something about me being stupid haha.
Inside an old temple in Fan Ling
“All my friends would skate down the hills and I just picked it up and would go as fast as I could.”
Have you always had the simple but gnarly approach to skating or did you pick up this style from people around you?
Mikey: I think it just comes from not really being able to do technical stuff, or not having the patience to learn really technical things. I just remember when I was younger, growing up where there were a lot of hills, so all my friends would skate down the hills and I just picked it up and would go as fast as I could. I grew up in Connecticut, in the US which is outside New York. My city had a shit ton of hills, so it was kinda easy for us to learn how to bomb hills.
Ollie, Sheung Wan
Would you say you’re more of a night skater or day skater?
Mikey: I mean it's Hong Kong right... summer it sucks skating in the day, you have to bring a change of clothes, sweat towel, so you end up skating in the night more. It depends on whatever all my friends wanna do. It’s more fun to skate with people so whatever people are down to do. After work skating is always a little tougher cause your legs are all stiff from standing all day, but you get a couple beers in you, push around and get stoked. Tryna hype everyone up and get some more clips for CP3, but yeah with the weather change right now it's hard, everyone falls into other things when the summer hits, so I'm tryna hype up these night sessions and get some shit going.
Sniff sniff
What is Crust HK?
Mikey: It’s an Instagram account that I pretty much met everyone through somehow haha. It’s like an encyclopedia of crusty, unwanted spots. When I first got here I would just go through the list, cause you guys were posting the area of the spot too, I’d go through them and be like “oh I wanna skate that.” And I’d look it up and it’d be in a random part of Hong Kong and I’d hop on a train and head out there and try to skate it. So I’d be on solo missions for the first couple of months of living here. And then I ended up meeting all you guys through that. It’s funny it was like a blind skate date. I totally thought I was gonna meet Joe and Marty but I ended up meeting you and Nic, and I was like “oh you’re not a little white kid, this is weird?”
