Mike Kepper – Think Partners in crime (1991)

Simple is usually best.

The first time I saw Mike Kepper he was fully padded up blasting cabellarial one foots over a skate park hip in Not The New H-Street Video. Not the most impressionable skater when he was preceded by Sal Barbier and proceeded by Alfonzo Rawls, two of H-Street’s most stylish riders of the early Nineties.

Skip a couple years forward and Mike resurfaces in Think’s Partners In Crime minus the pads and pre-fab skatepark. This time he’s a regular looking street skater doing simple but perfect tricks and lines around San Francisco. The simple nature of Mike’s skating makes this part timeless.

Ollies, nose manuals, lipslides, a backside disaster on the mini ramp… These are the ingredients for classic efficiency and optimal appreciation. I had to double check the name because I didn’t recognise Mike. There are a couple of kickflips in there too and probably the most stylish backside tailslide on the Embarcadero C-Block second to the Mike Carroll’s.