Item is brand new, but has gold coming through a section of the graphic. Please see photos.

History of Mike McGill

In the early 1980's professional skating and competitive skating was all about vertical; ramps and pools. No other form of skateboarding could compete with the allure of vertical and by 1983 many of today's vertical maneuvers had already been invented.

But then something groundbreaking happened in early 1984. Bones Brigade skater Mike McGill started poking close attention to two vertical roller skaters who had successfully infiltrated the skateboard scene. Duke Rennie and Fred Blood, both huge talents who performed incredibly well on vertical. Fred Blood in particular started doing 540 aerial spins out of the pool at Marina Del Rey. It was a super advanced maneuver but it was invented by a roller skater so few skateboarders thought much of it, except Mike McGill.

Mike saw in this new roller skate trick the possibility and the potential of how it could impact skateboarding. It was then that he began formulating how he could go about performing this same 540 spin maneuver on a skateboard, a move that up until that time had been considered impossible if not downright ridiculous. It would take Mike months of thinking about it, considering it and working out the mental gymnastics of how a trick like this could be done.

He would finally get a chance to try it in the summer of 1984 in Sweden, while teaching at the Eurocana Skateboard Summer Camp. He'd been thinking about it and working it out in his head when finally one afternoon he decided it was time. He padded up, limped onto the ramp and started working himself and psyching himself up in order to bring this impossible thing to life. What he quickly discovered is that this trick required him to be so many feet above the ramp in order for him to pull it. It was not something he could pull off below the coping and this only added to the danger and difficulty of doing it. But, undaunted and pulling it off, that he stayed on it and during that very first session he pulled the first 540 anyone had ever seen done.

To those there it was a milestone in skateboarding, a demarcation point and the beginning of the next step in vertical skateboarding. What's so weird is Mike didn't spin so fast the way Fred Blood had done which was more like a corkscrew motion. He did it as a complete rotation where his body and head went upside down and stalled for a moment before he brought the entire rotation to its natural conclusion.

To put it simply, the skater who invented the 540 did it perfectly and he set the template for how all other skaters would and should do it in the future. McGill nailed this impossible trick and it is so scary that even Tony Hawk said it's the first trick he's ever done where his eyes left the board and he saw only the sky as he completed it. The trick so dangerous and so disorienting, because as Tony said: "you can lose your sense of place during the rotation."

McGill had done what no skater had done before and in doing so he helped usher in the next generation of vertical skateboard maneuvers.

- Stacy Peralta

About the Skull & Snake Artwork

Just as Mike McGill was perfecting the 540 McTwist in the summer of 1984 at Swedish summer camp, V.C.J. was working on a new deck graphic for him. Since the "Skull & Bones" theme was proving to be popular, that was the direction chosen for McGill's new deck. Mike's input was to add the snake and lightning bolts since there is an abundance of both in his home state of Florida. McGill's Skull & Snake is truly a classic skateboard icon.

Originally Released: 1984

Artwork by: Vernon Courtlandt Johnson

About Powell-Peralta Decks

Powell Peralta® decks are made in the USA at our skateboard manufacturing facility in Santa Barbara, CA. Our graphics are created in-house using non-solvent based inks and paints to keep our atmosphere cleaner.

Designed for: 
Street | Park | Pool | Wall Art | Old School

Specifications:

• Truck Mounting - Top Mount
• Length - 30.125"
• Width - 10.0"
• Wheelbase - 16.625"
• Shape - 160

Construction: 7 Plies of Maple

Concave: SP3