So last weekend I was down in LA for a wedding, and I ended up catching some of an amateur skate event with a friend, where there were some solid skaters, not street league level, but good nonetheless. Not sure why, but it got me thinking about what made me like skateboarding to begin with. It all has to go back to my first skateboard mancrush in Rodney Mullen. The guy has invented more street skating tricks than Tony Hawk, but he’s rarely talked about in the same light as the Hawk-man. The darkslide wouldn’ve never been invented, manuals may not have caught on, the underflip, and the all the impossible move may never have come around if not for him! Not sure why the video below says best of 2011, since all this footage is before 2004, and I distinctly remember when some of these clips came out back in the VHS skate video days, so some of it easily goes back to the mid-90’s, but as you can see, he was a huge innovator in a sport full of innovators.