0:00:00.208,0:00:20.346
(Music)

0:00:20.346,0:01:05.731
(Skateboard sounds) (Music)

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(Applause)

0:01:12.411,0:01:16.105
So, that's what I've done with my life. (Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Thank you. (Applause)

0:01:25.382,0:01:27.833
As a kid, I grew up on a farm in Florida,

0:01:27.833,0:01:29.788
and I did what most little kids do.

0:01:29.788,0:01:33.524
I played a little baseball, did a few other things like that,

0:01:33.524,0:01:35.804
but I always had the sense of being an outsider,

0:01:35.804,0:01:38.699
and it wasn't until I saw pictures in the magazines

0:01:38.699,0:01:40.757
that a couple other guys skate, I thought,

0:01:40.757,0:01:42.520
"Wow, that's for me," you know?

0:01:42.520,0:01:44.956
Because there was no coach standing directly over you,

0:01:44.956,0:01:46.858
and these guys, they were just being themselves.

0:01:46.858,0:01:49.253
There was no opponent directly across from you.

0:01:49.253,0:01:52.962
And I loved that sense, so I started skating

0:01:52.962,0:01:56.235
when I was about 10 years old, in 1977,

0:01:56.235,0:01:58.925
and when I did, I picked it up pretty quickly.

0:01:58.925,0:02:02.829
In fact, here's some footage from about 1984.

0:02:02.829,0:02:08.124
It wasn't until '79 I won my first amateur championship,

0:02:08.124,0:02:11.280
and then, by '81, I was 14, and I won

0:02:11.280,0:02:13.805
my first world championship,

0:02:13.805,0:02:16.213
which was amazing to me,

0:02:16.213,0:02:19.410
and in a very real sense, that was the first real victory I had.

0:02:19.410,0:02:20.234
Oh, watch this.

0:02:20.234,0:02:22.732
This is a casper slide, where the board's upside down.

0:02:22.732,0:02:26.099
Mental note on that one. (Laughs)

0:02:26.099,0:02:30.700
And this one here? An ollie.

0:02:30.700,0:02:34.899
So, as she mentioned, that is overstated for sure,

0:02:34.899,0:02:36.885
but that's why they called me the godfather

0:02:36.885,0:02:38.788
of modern street skating.

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Here's some images of that.

0:02:45.748,0:02:49.487
Now, I was about halfway through my pro career in,

0:02:49.487,0:02:52.439
I would say, the mid-'80s.

0:02:52.439,0:02:54.852
Freestyle itself, we developed all these flat ground tricks

0:02:54.852,0:02:57.752
as you saw, but there was evolving

0:02:57.752,0:03:00.267
a new kind of skateboarding, where guys were taking it

0:03:00.267,0:03:04.115
to the streets, and they were using that ollie,

0:03:04.115,0:03:07.071
like I showed you? They were using it to get up onto stuff

0:03:07.071,0:03:09.975
like bleachers and handrails and over stairwells

0:03:09.975,0:03:11.905
and all kinds of cool stuff.

0:03:11.905,0:03:14.178
So it was evolving upwards.

0:03:14.178,0:03:16.523
In fact, when someone tells you they're a skater today,

0:03:16.523,0:03:18.756
they pretty much mean a street skater,

0:03:18.756,0:03:22.071
because freestyle, it took about five years for it to die,

0:03:22.071,0:03:25.032
and at that stage, I'd been a "champion" champion

0:03:25.032,0:03:29.526
for 11 years, which, phew!

0:03:29.526,0:03:32.487
And suddenly it was over for me. That's it.

0:03:32.487,0:03:35.587
It was gone. They took my pro model off the shelf,

0:03:35.587,0:03:38.732
which was essentially pronouncing you dead publicly.

0:03:38.732,0:03:39.843
That's how you make your money, you know?

0:03:39.843,0:03:43.566
You have a signature board and wheels and shoes

0:03:43.566,0:03:47.108
and clothes. I had all that stuff, and it's gone.

0:03:47.108,0:03:49.026
The crazy thing was, there was a really

0:03:49.026,0:03:53.484
liberating sense about it, because I no longer had to protect

0:03:53.484,0:03:55.698
my record as a champion. "Champion," again.

0:03:55.698,0:03:58.334
Champion sounds so goofy, but it's what it was, right?

0:03:58.334,0:04:02.237
And I got to -- What drew me to skateboarding, the freedom

0:04:02.237,0:04:05.078
was now restored, where I could just create things,

0:04:05.078,0:04:07.278
because that's where the joy was for me, always,

0:04:07.278,0:04:09.935
was creating new stuff.

0:04:09.935,0:04:13.048
The other thing that I had was a deep well of tricks

0:04:13.048,0:04:15.792
to draw from that were rooted in these flat ground tricks.

0:04:15.792,0:04:18.850
Stuff the normal guys were doing was very much different.

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So, as humbling and rotten as it was —

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And believe me, it was rotten. I would go to skate spots,

0:04:24.151,0:04:26.926
and I was already, like, "famous guy," right?

0:04:26.926,0:04:30.015
And everyone thought I was good. But in this new terrain,

0:04:30.015,0:04:32.924
I was horrible. So people would go, "Oh, he's all --

0:04:32.924,0:04:37.245
Oh, what happened to Mullen?" (Laughter) (Laughs)

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So, humbling as it was, I began again.

0:04:39.909,0:04:42.639
Here are some tricks that I started to bring

0:04:42.639,0:04:44.263
to that new terrain. (Skateboard noises)

0:04:44.263,0:04:49.079
And again, there's this undergirding layer of influence of freestyle

0:04:49.079,0:04:50.570
that made me — Oh, that one?

0:04:50.570,0:04:53.611
That's, like, the hardest thing I've ever done.

0:04:53.611,0:04:55.656
Okay, look at that. It's a darkslide.

0:04:55.656,0:04:59.194
See how it's sliding on the backside?

0:04:59.194,0:05:02.200
Those are super-fun. (Laughter) And, actually, not that hard.

0:05:02.200,0:05:04.816
You know, at the very root of that, see, caspers,

0:05:04.816,0:05:07.512
see how you throw it? (Skateboard noises)

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Simple as that, right? No biggie. (Laughter)

0:05:10.015,0:05:14.012
And your front foot, the way it grabs it, is --

0:05:14.012,0:05:16.659
I'd seen someone slide on the back of the board like that,

0:05:16.659,0:05:18.260
and I was like, "How can I get it over?"

0:05:18.260,0:05:20.889
Because that had not yet been done. And then it dawned

0:05:20.889,0:05:22.273
on me, and here's part of what I'm saying.

0:05:22.273,0:05:26.087
I had an infrastructure. I had this deep layer, where

0:05:26.087,0:05:28.254
it was like, oh my gosh, it's just your foot.

0:05:28.254,0:05:30.474
It's just the way you throw your board over.

0:05:30.474,0:05:32.520
Just let the ledge do that, and it's easy,

0:05:32.520,0:05:34.440
and the next thing you know, there's 20 more tricks

0:05:34.440,0:05:36.361
based out of the variations.

0:05:36.361,0:05:38.714
So that's the kind of thing that, here, check this out,

0:05:38.714,0:05:40.884
here's another way, and I won't overdo this.

0:05:40.884,0:05:43.107
A little indulgent, I understand.

0:05:43.107,0:05:45.576
There's something called a primo slide.

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(Skateboard noises)

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It is the funnest trick ever to do.

0:05:50.192,0:05:53.307
(Skateboard noises)

0:05:53.307,0:05:56.179
It's like skinboarding.

0:05:56.179,0:05:59.060
And this one, look how it slides sideways, every which way?

0:05:59.060,0:06:01.837
Okay, so when you're skating, and you take a fall,

0:06:01.837,0:06:04.988
the board slips that way or that way. It's kind of predictable.

0:06:04.988,0:06:08.006
This? It goes every which way. It's like a cartoon, the falls,

0:06:08.006,0:06:10.118
and that's what I love the most about it.

0:06:10.118,0:06:13.518
It's so much fun to do. In fact, when I started doing them,

0:06:13.518,0:06:16.318
I remember, because I got hurt. I had to get a knee surgery,

0:06:16.318,0:06:19.236
right? So there were a couple of days where, actually

0:06:19.236,0:06:21.305
a couple of weeks, where I couldn't skate at all.

0:06:21.305,0:06:23.298
It would give out on me. And I would watch the guys,

0:06:23.298,0:06:25.131
I'd go to this warehouse where a lot of the guys

0:06:25.131,0:06:27.756
were skating, my friends, and I was like,

0:06:27.756,0:06:29.675
"Man I gotta do something new. I want to do something new.

0:06:29.675,0:06:31.515
I want to start fresh. I want to start fresh."

0:06:31.515,0:06:33.589
And so the night before my surgery, I'd watched,

0:06:33.589,0:06:34.984
and I was like, "How am I going to do this?"

0:06:34.984,0:06:37.716
So I ran up, and I jumped on my board,

0:06:37.716,0:06:39.818
and I cavemanned, and I flipped it down,

0:06:39.818,0:06:42.894
and I remember thinking, I landed so light-footed, thinking,

0:06:42.894,0:06:45.883
if my knee gives, they'll just have more work to do in the morning.

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(Laughs) (Laughter)

0:06:47.524,0:06:49.982
And so, when it was the crazy thing.

0:06:49.982,0:06:51.947
I don't know how many of you guys have had surgery,

0:06:51.947,0:06:55.309
but -- (Laughter) -- you are so helpless, right?

0:06:55.309,0:06:57.660
You're on this gurney and you're watching the ceiling go by,

0:06:57.660,0:07:00.046
every time it's always that, and right when they're putting

0:07:00.046,0:07:02.204
the mask on you before you go to sleep,

0:07:02.204,0:07:06.251
all I was thinking is, "Man, when I wake up and I get better,

0:07:06.251,0:07:09.228
the first thing I'm going to do is film that trick." (Laughter)

0:07:09.228,0:07:11.724
And indeed I did. It was the very first thing I filmed,

0:07:11.724,0:07:13.962
which was awesome.

0:07:13.962,0:07:16.508
Now, let me -- I told you a little bit about the evolution

0:07:16.508,0:07:19.869
of the tricks. Consider that content, in a sense.

0:07:19.869,0:07:23.038
What we do as street skaters is,

0:07:23.038,0:07:25.284
you have these tricks. Say I'm working on darkslides,

0:07:25.284,0:07:29.294
or a primo, that you guys know this stuff now. (Laughter) (Laughs)

0:07:29.294,0:07:31.550
What you do is you cruise around the same streets that

0:07:31.550,0:07:35.063
you've seen a hundred times, but suddenly, because you

0:07:35.063,0:07:38.794
already have something in this fixed domain of this target,

0:07:38.794,0:07:42.130
it's like, what will match this trick?

0:07:42.130,0:07:45.091
How can I expand, how can the context, how can

0:07:45.091,0:07:47.904
the environment change the very nature of what I do?

0:07:47.904,0:07:51.666
So you drive and drive and drive, and, actually I gotta admit,

0:07:51.666,0:07:54.361
just because I was struggling with this because I'm here,

0:07:54.361,0:07:57.767
but I'll just say it, is, I cannot tell you, not only to be here

0:07:57.767,0:08:01.461
in front of you, but what a privilege it is to be at USC campus,

0:08:01.461,0:08:05.815
because I have been escorted off of this campus so many times. (Laughter)

0:08:05.815,0:08:10.483
(Applause)

0:08:10.483,0:08:13.373
So let me give you another example of how

0:08:13.373,0:08:16.243
context shapes content.

0:08:16.243,0:08:18.636
This is a place not that far from here.

0:08:18.636,0:08:20.922
It's a rotten neighborhood. Your first consideration is,

0:08:20.922,0:08:24.004
am I gonna get beat up? You go out and -- See this wall?

0:08:24.004,0:08:30.282
It's fairly mellow, and it's beckoning to do bank tricks, right?

0:08:30.282,0:08:33.082
But there's this other aspect of it for wheelies,

0:08:33.082,0:08:36.450
so check this out. There's a few tricks, again,

0:08:36.450,0:08:39.203
how environment changes the nature of your tricks.

0:08:39.203,0:08:42.625
Freestyle oriented, manual down -- wheelie down.

0:08:42.625,0:08:45.261
Watch, this one? Oh, I love this. It's like surfing, this one,

0:08:45.261,0:08:47.052
the way you catch it.

0:08:47.052,0:08:50.354
This one, a little sketchy going backwards,

0:08:50.354,0:08:53.115
and watch the back foot, watch the back foot.

0:08:53.115,0:09:00.049
Oop. (Laughs) Mental note right there. Again, we'll get back to that.

0:09:00.049,0:09:03.028
Here. Back foot, back foot. Okay, up there?

0:09:03.028,0:09:05.645
That was called a 360 flip. Notice how the board flipped

0:09:05.645,0:09:09.422
and spun this way, both axes.

0:09:09.423,0:09:14.053
And another example of how the context changed,

0:09:14.053,0:09:17.980
and the creative process for me and for most skaters,

0:09:17.980,0:09:21.317
is, you go, you get out of the car, you check for security,

0:09:21.317,0:09:23.502
you check for stuff. (Laughter)

0:09:23.502,0:09:25.573
It's funny, you get to know their rhythms, you know,

0:09:25.573,0:09:27.527
the guys that cruise around, and

0:09:27.527,0:09:30.632
skateboarding is such a humbling thing, man.

0:09:30.632,0:09:33.166
No matter how good you are, right, you still gotta deal with —

0:09:33.166,0:09:37.078
So you hit this wall, and when I hit it, the first thing you do is

0:09:37.078,0:09:39.485
you fall forward, and I'm like, all right, all right.

0:09:39.485,0:09:43.105
As you adjust,

0:09:43.105,0:09:45.464
you punch it up, and then when I would do that,

0:09:45.464,0:09:48.261
it was throwing my shoulder this way, which

0:09:48.261,0:09:51.714
as I was doing it, I was like, "Oh wow, that's begging

0:09:51.714,0:09:55.626
for a 360 flip," because that's how you load up for a 360 flip.

0:09:55.626,0:09:57.966
And so this is what I want to emphasize that,

0:09:57.966,0:10:02.171
as you can imagine, all of these tricks are made of

0:10:02.171,0:10:05.478
sub-movements, executive motor functions, more granular

0:10:05.478,0:10:07.638
to the degree to which I can't quite tell you, but one thing

0:10:07.638,0:10:11.071
I do know is, every trick is made of combining two or three

0:10:11.071,0:10:14.239
or four or five movements. And so, as I'm going up,

0:10:14.239,0:10:16.927
these things are floating around, and you have to sort of

0:10:16.927,0:10:19.674
let the cognitive mind, like, rest back, pull it back a little bit,

0:10:19.674,0:10:22.463
and let your intuition go as you feel these things.

0:10:22.463,0:10:24.951
And these sub-movements are just kind of floating around,

0:10:24.951,0:10:27.663
and as the wall hits you, they connect themselves

0:10:27.663,0:10:29.518
to an extent, and that's when the cognitive mind, you think,

0:10:29.518,0:10:31.653
"Oh, 360 flip, I'm going to make that."

0:10:31.653,0:10:34.053
So that's how that works to me, the creative process,

0:10:34.053,0:10:35.936
the process itself of street skating.

0:10:35.936,0:10:39.705
So, next — Oh, mind you. (Laughs) Those are the community.

0:10:39.705,0:10:42.363
These are some of the best skaters in the world.

0:10:42.363,0:10:46.080
These are my friends. Oh my gosh, they're such good people.

0:10:46.080,0:10:48.615
And the beauty of skateboarding is that,

0:10:48.615,0:10:52.197
no one guy is the best. In fact, I know this is rotten to say,

0:10:52.197,0:10:55.120
they're my friends, but a couple of them actually

0:10:55.120,0:10:57.607
don't look that comfortable on their board.

0:10:57.607,0:11:00.487
What makes them great is the degree to which

0:11:00.487,0:11:03.681
they use their skateboarding to individuate themselves.

0:11:03.681,0:11:05.832
Every single one of these guys, you look at them,

0:11:05.832,0:11:08.489
you can see a silhouette of them, and you realize, like,

0:11:08.489,0:11:11.009
"Oh, that's him, that's Haslam, that's Koston,

0:11:11.009,0:11:14.001
there's these guys, these are the guys.

0:11:14.001,0:11:18.291
And skaters, I think they tend to be outsiders

0:11:18.291,0:11:21.766
who seek a sense of belonging,

0:11:21.766,0:11:24.497
but belonging on their own terms,

0:11:24.497,0:11:28.544
and real respect is given by how much we take what

0:11:28.544,0:11:31.665
other guys do, these basic tricks, 360 flips,

0:11:31.665,0:11:35.185
we take that, we make it our own, and then we contribute

0:11:35.185,0:11:36.827
back to the community the inner way

0:11:36.827,0:11:39.804
that edifies the community itself.

0:11:39.804,0:11:43.622
The greater the contribution, the more we express and form

0:11:43.622,0:11:47.571
our individuality, which is so important to a lot of us

0:11:47.571,0:11:50.699
who feel like rejects to begin with.

0:11:50.699,0:11:53.738
The summation of that gives us

0:11:53.738,0:11:57.491
something we could never achieve as an individual.

0:11:57.491,0:12:00.873
I should say this. There's some sort of beautiful symmetry

0:12:00.873,0:12:03.704
that the degree to which we connect to a community

0:12:03.704,0:12:06.929
is in proportion to our individuality, which we are expressing

0:12:06.929,0:12:09.194
by what we do.

0:12:09.194,0:12:12.174
Next. These guys. Very similar community

0:12:12.174,0:12:15.150
that's extremely conducive to innovation.

0:12:15.150,0:12:20.164
Notice a couple of these shots from the Police Department.

0:12:20.164,0:12:22.139
But it is quite similar. I mean, what is it to hack, right?

0:12:22.139,0:12:25.640
It's knowing a technology so well that you can manipulate it

0:12:25.640,0:12:29.969
and steer it to do things it was never intended to do, right?

0:12:29.969,0:12:31.357
And they're not all bad.

0:12:31.357,0:12:35.649
You can be a Linux kernel hacker, make it more stable, right?

0:12:35.649,0:12:38.353
More safe, more secure. You can be an iOS hacker,

0:12:38.353,0:12:42.159
make your iPhone do stuff it wasn't supposed to.

0:12:42.159,0:12:44.728
Not authorized, but not illegal.

0:12:44.728,0:12:46.526
And then you've got some of these guys, right?

0:12:46.526,0:12:49.092
What they do is very similar to our creative process.

0:12:49.092,0:12:52.229
They connect disparate information,

0:12:52.229,0:12:55.986
and they bring it together in a way that

0:12:55.986,0:12:58.345
a security analyst doesn't expect. Right?

0:12:58.345,0:13:00.387
It doesn't make them good people,

0:13:00.387,0:13:04.077
but it's at the heart of engineering, at the heart of

0:13:04.077,0:13:07.581
a creative community, an innovative community,

0:13:07.581,0:13:10.192
and the open source community, the basic ethos of it

0:13:10.192,0:13:14.077
is, take what other people do, make it better,

0:13:14.077,0:13:16.470
give it back so we all rise further.

0:13:16.470,0:13:18.678
Very similar communities, very similar.

0:13:18.678,0:13:23.534
We have our edgier sides, too. It's funny, my dad was right.

0:13:23.534,0:13:26.028
These are my peers.

0:13:26.028,0:13:28.438
But I respect what they do, and they respect what I do,

0:13:28.438,0:13:30.929
because they can do things. It's amazing what they can do.

0:13:30.929,0:13:34.678
In fact, one of them, he was Ernst & Young's

0:13:34.678,0:13:36.799
Entrepreneur of the Year for San Diego County,

0:13:36.799,0:13:41.228
so they're not, you never know who you're dealing with.

0:13:41.228,0:13:43.551
We've all had some degree of fame.

0:13:43.551,0:13:47.182
In fact, I've had so much success that I

0:13:47.182,0:13:48.719
strangely always feel unworthy of.

0:13:48.719,0:13:50.904
I've had a patent, and that was cool, and we started

0:13:50.904,0:13:54.104
a company, and it grew, and it became the biggest, and then

0:13:54.104,0:13:55.701
it went down, and then it became the biggest again,

0:13:55.701,0:13:58.760
which is harder than the first time, and then we sold it,

0:13:58.760,0:14:01.160
and then we sold it again.

0:14:01.160,0:14:03.633
So I've had some success. And in the end,

0:14:03.633,0:14:06.425
when you've had all of these things, what is it that continues to

0:14:06.425,0:14:09.447
drive you? As I mentioned, the knee stuff and these things,

0:14:09.447,0:14:11.057
what is it that will punch you?

0:14:11.057,0:14:12.697
Because it's not just the mind.

0:14:12.697,0:14:16.192
What is it that will punch you and make you do something

0:14:16.192,0:14:19.234
and bring it to another level, and when you've had it all,

0:14:19.234,0:14:22.903
sometimes, guys, they die on the vine with all of that talent,

0:14:22.903,0:14:26.184
and one of the things we've had, all of us, is fame,

0:14:26.184,0:14:28.496
I think the best kind of fame, because you can take it off.

0:14:28.496,0:14:31.088
I've been all around the world,

0:14:31.088,0:14:33.556
and there will be a thousand kids crying out your name,

0:14:33.556,0:14:35.119
and it's such a weird, visceral experience.

0:14:35.119,0:14:37.297
It's like, it's disorienting.

0:14:37.297,0:14:39.192
And you get in a car, and you drive away,

0:14:39.192,0:14:42.431
and 10-minute drive, and you get out,

0:14:42.431,0:14:45.656
and no one gives a rat's who you are. (Laughs)

0:14:45.656,0:14:48.319
And it gives you that clarity of perspective of, man,

0:14:48.319,0:14:50.018
I'm just me, and popularity, what does

0:14:50.018,0:14:53.140
that really mean again? Not much.

0:14:53.140,0:14:55.983
It's peer respect that drives us. That's the one thing that

0:14:55.983,0:14:58.074
makes us do what we do. I've had over a dozen bones,

0:14:58.074,0:15:01.773
these guys, this guy, over, what, eight, 10 concussions,

0:15:01.773,0:15:04.128
to the point where it's comedy, right?

0:15:04.128,0:15:08.504
It is actually comedy. They mess with him.

0:15:08.504,0:15:13.943
Next. And this is something deeper, and this is where I'm —

0:15:13.943,0:15:16.633
I think I was on tour when I, I was reading one of the

0:15:16.633,0:15:19.833
Feynman biographies. It was the red one or the blue one.

0:15:19.833,0:15:27.101
And he made this statement that was so profound to me.

0:15:27.101,0:15:28.831
It was that the Nobel Prize

0:15:28.831,0:15:32.086
was the tombstone on all great work,

0:15:32.086,0:15:35.429
and it resonated because I had won 35 out of 36 contests

0:15:35.429,0:15:39.310
that I'd entered over 11 years, and it made me bananas.

0:15:39.310,0:15:41.580
In fact, winning isn't the word. I won it once.

0:15:41.580,0:15:42.887
The rest of the time, you're just defending,

0:15:42.887,0:15:46.163
and you get into this, like, turtle posture, you know?

0:15:46.163,0:15:49.087
Where you're not doing. It usurped the joy of what I loved

0:15:49.087,0:15:52.309
to do because I was no longer doing it to create and have fun,

0:15:52.309,0:15:54.560
and when it died out from under me, that was one of

0:15:54.560,0:15:57.654
the most liberating things because I could create.

0:15:57.654,0:16:01.587
And look, I understand that I am on the very edge

0:16:01.587,0:16:03.727
of preachy, right here. I'm not here to do that.

0:16:03.727,0:16:06.192
It's just that I'm in front of a very privileged audience.

0:16:06.192,0:16:09.119
If you guys aren't already leaders in your community,

0:16:09.119,0:16:12.350
you probably will be, and if there's anything I can give you

0:16:12.350,0:16:15.863
that will transcend what I've gotten from skateboarding,

0:16:15.863,0:16:19.019
the only things of meaning, I think, and of permanence,

0:16:19.019,0:16:22.218
it's not fame, it's not all these things. What it is

0:16:22.218,0:16:24.705
is that there's an intrinsic value in creating something

0:16:24.705,0:16:28.311
for the sake of creating it, and better than that,

0:16:28.311,0:16:30.938
because, man, I'm 46 years old, or I'll be 46, and how

0:16:30.938,0:16:33.230
pathetic is that I'm still skateboarding, but there is —

0:16:33.230,0:16:37.839
(Laughter) -- there is this beauty in dropping it into

0:16:37.839,0:16:42.185
a community of your own making, and seeing it dispersed,

0:16:42.185,0:16:44.897
and seeing younger, more talented, just different talent,

0:16:44.897,0:16:47.303
take it to levels you can never imagine,

0:16:47.303,0:16:50.393
because that lives on. So thank you for your time.

0:16:50.393,0:17:00.616
(Applause)

0:17:00.616,0:17:03.945
Krisztina Holly: I have a question for you.

0:17:03.945,0:17:09.175
So you've really reinvented yourself in the past from

0:17:09.175,0:17:12.294
freestyle to street, and, I think it was about four years ago

0:17:12.294,0:17:16.216
you officially retired. Is that it? What's next?

0:17:16.216,0:17:18.573
Rodney Mullen: That's a good question.

0:17:18.573,0:17:19.884
KH: Something tells me it's not the end.

0:17:19.884,0:17:24.197
RM: Yeah. I, every time you think you've chased something

0:17:24.197,0:17:25.671
down, it's funny, no matter how good you are,

0:17:25.671,0:17:28.499
and I know guys like this, it feels like you're polishing a turd.

0:17:28.499,0:17:32.989
You know? (Laughter)

0:17:32.989,0:17:35.640
And I thought, the only way I can extend this

0:17:35.640,0:17:38.880
is to change something infrastructural,

0:17:38.880,0:17:42.142
and so that's what I proceeded to do, through a long story,

0:17:42.142,0:17:46.427
one of desperation, so if I do it, rather than talk about it,

0:17:46.427,0:17:48.272
if I do it, you'll be the first to know. KH: All right, we won't ask you any more.

0:17:48.272,0:17:49.468
RM: You'll get a text.

0:17:49.468,0:17:52.862
KH: (Laughs) Right. Thank you. Good job. (Applause)[br]RM: Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)

0:17:52.862,0:17:58.734
(Applause)