BB: So after Toy Machine where did you go, over to Element?
BM: Well, I didn't really want to leave Toy Machine, but Tod Swank was ripping me off for the CKY video, So I was just like 'Ed, what am I supposed to do? I wanna be involved with Toy Machine, but I don't wanna be involved with Tum Yeto" and Ed didn't do anything about it, so I'm like, All right, I'm gone then, see ya. Then Maldonado left, and then Kerry left, and it's just like fuck Tod Swank you know. Now I'm on Element. It was the best move I ever made because what I was making over there at Tum Yeto was a complete joke
According to Toy Machine founder/pro skater/now a famous artist in the art world Ed Templeton:
(During a discussion regarding many of his riders who went on become great pros had quit his team early in their careers in circumstances that had nothing to do with him)
Even when the whole team quit? I can’t imagine you not taking that personally.
But it was never “Ed’s a dick” or “Toy Machine sucks”.
The whole Kerry/Bam/Mike thing was largely over Bam’s feud with Swank and the CKY videos. Bam and Tod essentially had a bad side deal over the distribution of that video. I feel like Bam had a warped sense of how successful those videos were at the time… that if Fairman’s sold 5 copies, every shop around the country must’ve sold 5 copies and therefore, he should be rich. Never mind that Fairman’s was Bam’s local shop. So there was a discrepancy over money and Swank tends to get combatant whenever he feels attacked, which is no good.
So as things escalated, Swank told everyone at Tum Yeto to cut off Bam’s packages, which ended up pissing off Maldonado. Mike actually called Tum Yeto pretending to be Bam, asking for a package. And whenever they said no, Mike quit in solidarity with Bam.
…Mike actually told me later that he regretted the decision. But again, that had nothing to do with me. I even remember talking to those guys.
“What? Don’t quit! Over Tod!?! I’ll figure this out!”
But those guys leave and Kerry just happens to get an offer from Habitat at that same time.
According to Mike Maldonado:
Did you get the sense that the team was about to implode like it did or was it more of a momentum thing? Like one person leaves then another and so on?
Well, Kerry left first for Habitat. I don’t know how the hell he got that offer but that was a big blow. It definitely felt like he had broken the whole crew up and we were pretty fucked up over that one. That’s when things really started to spiral out. You could tell that certain people were already on their way and it started to feel like it was going downhill. The reason I left was a little different though.
Bam and Tod Swank had been having some serious problems over the ownership of the CKY video. I was siding more with Bam in the thing because he was my homie and that ended up being kind of a bad thing for me. I basically quit because I thought he was getting fucked over but I didn’t know that he already had a plan in the works for what he was doing next. Bam was already quitting but had thought it through a little more. I didn’t know this. I didn’t have a plan when I quit, I was just trying to stand up for him. It was stupid and I kinda ended up shooting myself in the foot for doing so.
Baker Skateboards was in the near future and was definitely something to contemplate but that wasn’t for a little while yet. They were still getting everything together at that point. Baker didn’t happen for another six months after I had quit.
So you had no plan at all when you left? I know you were unsponsored there for a minute but I always presumed you and Bam had something in the mix that must’ve fallen through.
Not at all. It was an instant decision I made while caught up in the moment.
What had happened was that things had gotten so bad between Bam and Tod that Bam wasn’t even allowed to call Tum Yeto anymore. He’d been calling so much about contracts or whatever that they had actually banned him from calling. He had to go through Ed directly to even get boards.
So Bam calls me up to bitch about everything and I can’t even believe it. Fuck that, I’ll see about this myself. I end up calling them pretending to be Bam and I hear it firsthand, “No, we’re not allowed to talk to you.”
“Fuck that. You tell those motherfuckers that you just lost one. I’m not Bam, this is Mike Maldonado and I was calling to see what was up with all this. Y’all fucked up. I quit.”
Like I said, I was just caught up in the moment… and right after that, I came to the realization of what the fuck am I doing? I just wasn’t thinking, man. Young and stubborn. Ed was like my big brother. I should’ve just listened to him and stayed where I was. None of the teams I rode for ever felt the same after that. They were cool but Toy Machine was a family.
I kept thinking how Bam was my homie… where’s my homie now? Where’s all the people I was fighting for? Nobody’s out there fighting for me. That’s life, I guess. That’s what you gotta learn when you grow up, if you grow up.
How come you never did the CKY thing?
It just wasn’t me. When it started, I was always down for helping Bam out if there was something he wanted to do. I thought it was funny at the time, too. But once it got big, that shit just got too drawn out. For a while, they were even giving me shit for going out filming skating instead of filming their stuff. That shit wasn’t my scene.
There were times when I’d be at Bam’s while they were filming for
Viva La Bam and I’d have to tell’ em to get those cameras out of my face, that I wasn’t going to be doing that kinda shit for them. Don’t film me. I’m not signing some fucking form. I don’t give a fuck about being on TV.
