Last month, my girlfriend and I flew to Detroit to attend her college roommate’s wedding. We touched down on a rainy Friday morning, unpacked our skateboards and formal wear, realized I’d forgotten a necktie, then passed the blustery afternoon walking around downtown until I found one at Hot Sam’s Haberdashery that I wore to drinks at the Ford Piquette factory that evening. From a Sprinter van carrying us back to our hotel, I Twitter DMed @BifWiffle to explain my presence in his city and said our hotel was near the downtown train station bank. We had never met but followed each other’s accounts for some time. He responded, suggested I watch Something Old, Something New and said Sunday sounded good for a session. Saturday was the wedding day, when a concierge helped me learn how to tie my bow tie before the afternoon church wedding, then drinking, dining and dancing beneath Rivera murals in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Sunday dawned grey but dry, so Claire and I skated the mile to Eastern Market for breakfast. This was her first time really skating on city sidewalks, as New York’s are typically narrower and more crowded with pedestrians. We made our way past stadiums, parking lots and over an interstate before we turned left to reach our destination district. Eastern Market’s protected areas for outdoor stalls were empty in this season as we cruised cloverleafs on smooth concrete, grabbed Greek coffee from Mitsos and a meal at Farmer Frank’s. Bif messaged to say he was heading downtown with a friend, finding wallrides on the way.
Claire and I retraced pushes toward our quarter where we saw a couple of grown men skating the train station bank so rolled up to say hi. I didn’t know what Bif looked like, but he recognized us and introduced himself as Derrick. He and Corey here had just bondo’d a spare sign pole into the nook between the top of this bank and the flat concrete deck to add a grinding lip to this landmark spot that has been a downtown classic for decades since its inception.
During our introductions, a streetwalking elderly man ambled over and began telling us about his younger summers on Belle Isle where he on roller skates would jump over picnic tables as a stunt. Roller skates in those days required a certain key to use and he suggested we listen to a popular song from that era, Brand New Key, for added context. He wore short shorts back then and sometimes his balls would flap out. Claire showed him women can skateboard and headed back to our hotel, leaving me to enjoy the day with Derrick and Corey.
I followed their lead to Hart Plaza, where Derrick filmed me frontside rock on the Transcending sculpture that symbolizes the ongoing struggle of the labor movement then wallride to fakie on Noguchi’s Dodge Fountain. I considered a tall noseslide on a white rail down a brick path under a blossoming tree but lacked confidence, so we continued along the Detroit River to a backwater barrier ledge that had become a drive-through testing site during covid but was only occupied by pooping birds these days. We looped back through downtown when a couple skaters they knew passed in a car. Corey needed to split but was down to sell Dollar Stories in Dunwell so I handed him a stocked stand with thanks.
Derrick suggested we meet the guys from the car in Harmonie Park, where photographer Daniel Stelly and a mustachioed skater had propped up a grate toward a trash can. We watched the skater crooked grind over the can’s arcing metal rain bonnet and begin attempting back smith grind for Stelly to photograph. Derrick suggested he and I grab some drinks on the way to a slappy curb, so a six pack of Grolsch bottles lubricated our few grinds in Hockeytown until the end of a Fox Theatre comedy show released a heavy pedestrian flow so we returned to Harmonie Park where the skater had just landed his back smith.
I cracked my second beer and saw Claire’s text that she was borrowing a hotel bicycle and ready to meet so I dropped my pin as some other skaters pulled up, one with a bottle of nitrous. I introduced myself and distributed Dollar Stories as we talked about happenings. Spring officially started next weekend with a Bishop DIY clean up, the Flower Festival, plus the premiere of a new local video, Minted. A few more skaters arrived, including this videomaker Justin Bohl and the bearded, shaved-head skater who I recognized from Something Old, Something New as Adam Mueller. I told them I wouldn’t be in town for the premiere but would be watching when opportunity presented itself. Claire wheeled up on her bicycle and I said my goodbyes, thanking Derrick again for his hospitality as the fellows pointed our zigzag path toward the waterfront.
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Minted is a 40-minute feature with 11 full parts filmed fully in Detroit. Plenty of crusty spots receive treatments by local luminaries and Bohl also manages to include clips from visiting professionals including Karl Watson, Mark Suciu, Nyle Lovett and Cody Cepeda from Battle at the Berrics. Derrick contributes a couple well-dressed bangers and Mike Kwok heelflip back 50-50s a hubba for his ender, which means Adam Mueller’s part begins at 32:30:
Adam’s wearing a Rattlesnake Dave Smith Murder or Die tee as he laughs with a couple friends after landing a trick. “Thanks, buddy,” he says to Justin in slo-mo.
“My transistor radio comes from far away / When it’s night over there over here it’s breaking day.” Buck Owens’s “Made in Japan” is the twangy country song from 1972 that enters with Adam’s nollie lipslide on a low blue ledge then he pushes to hit a second blue planter ledge with back bigspin front boardslide popped to regular passing parked pickup trucks toward grandstands in the background. Ben Tesner gives Adam a hug then slappy boardslides up a bent yellow pole jam. Adam rubs wax on a yellow ledge so Stelly and Eric Kata can stack their clips, then takes his turn with wallie back tailslide kickflip to fakie. Adam’s wearing a Willie Nelson t-shirt, then vaulting himself up with a grunt over a parking garage wall with his beard banded into two ponytails so he can return and nollie shove it over the wall to drop.
“Like cherry blossoms blooming in the mountain in the early spring,” rolling camera passes chain links until they cut out and here’s Adam reaching the top of a bank wafflegripping front 5-0 slash wearing a coonskin cap.
“The beauty of her face was beyond my wildest dreams,” declares Duke Austenberry in the midst of a slappy front 50-50 on a ground-level yellow flatbar into nose manual through the lot into front 5-0 on the yellow flatbar that has returned before transfer popping over onto what had been the filmer’s adjacent lot. Sunglassed Duke slappy front 50-50s the same embedded yellow rail and this time no comply shifties his dismount, then Adam rocket-rides slappy front 50-50 onto this banana-pole and pops over the parking space-sized gap in the railing to grind more 50-50 on the resuming rail then dismounts back to his approachment side. Adam executes the same grind to gap to grind again with his eyes on transfer dismount toward the filmer until wheelbite says otherwise and he falls as the fisheye sky swirls overhead while his thoughts remain with a girl made in Japan.
Two lanes of double-lined blacktop show no oncoming traffic well into the distance past this underpass as moving view from left-hand lane travels under the bridge while Adam Mueller’s name shows in white on black below in Minted’s graphic style.
Adam’s wearing Murder or Die’s Menace 2 Society tee. “Right here, dog.”
Motors hum and wheels whisper as five lanes of Gratiot Street traffic go both ways while Adam stands alone in the center left turn lane wearing a big black and grey flannel over his grey hoodie, baggy tan pants and longneck olive/black Vans. His long beard blows below shaved head and he holds his strip of Bacon skateboard in his right hand as he adjusts his pants while scanning and anticipating. Upon a pause in the flow he runs across the street holding Scottie Englund’s Toads cartoon board graphic of a human figure upside down for his switch mount to hop up the sidewalk in switch manual on two OJ wheels stretching switch over three long stairs into the red statue courtyard below Harmonie Park. Courtney Love’s vocals enter Hole softer, softest; Live through this Doll Parts homage to Really Sorry Appleyard as Adam’s further stomping flatground fakie flip prompts an appreciative “yeah” from the filmer who shifts his focus to the skateboarding kittens and airbrushed stars covering the beanie of a friend who viewed the balancing act now clapping his hands as he rises from seated vantage.
“I tell you everything and I hope that you won’t tell on me.”
Overhead angle shows spitting snow and slick ground while Adam 360 flips over two grassy levels of terraced corners off a stage. Next clip Adam switch 360 flips the same gap, filmed from landing this time as he rolls away before a large black and white mural showing a character doing a handstand within a circus pagoda.
Switch back 180 over a concrete block reveals Adam in black tee shirt and orange beanie regular-stance pushing toward the showcase ledge surrounding Wayne State’s green and gold W emblem for frontside flip nosegrind off the end.
Adam exits Grand Circus via his ollie onto the marble monument base grounding the bronze statue of former Detroit mayor and champion to the poor Hazen Pingree overlooking his pop-shove beyond a busted lighting bollard to sidewalk with Central United Methodist’s church spire looming in fisheye. “I’d give you anything and I know that you won’t tell on me.”
Green grass backgrounds one friend sitting on the far Custer Street curb while another stands behind with hand on hip as Adam holding Toads’ graphic head up throws down in olive Thrasher tee and Skate-Hi’s with halves of his beard blowing behind both shoulders to front smith grind across a dirt gap made from multiple missing sidewalk sections beside a vacant lot shown twice. Max Garson front noseslid here earlier in the vid.
School’s out as Bohl’s camera zooms between two pillars in the covered foyer of Northwestern College Preparatory High School to catch Adam’s ollie over a bicycle rack, shown again as follow-filming line includes nollie front crooks on a ledge, then pushes into the open air toward the medium-sized bank where he backside kickflips then hits the next frontside bank with a carve on beat. “All your milk is so sour, and I can only cry” echoes the mindset Adam explores through his @bornwashedup Instagram handle and acknowledges the concerns of generations born into post-industrial environmental disgrace. “And I can only cower, and I can only cry.”
Bearded brother Alex Mueller grinds frontside 5-0 in a cut-off tee across a second-level curb planter embedded onto a median then Adam front noseblunts across this shared spot.
“I've got a blister from touching everything I see” as an abandoned factory suite begins under GERMO throw-up for Adam’s switch nose manual across a DIY ledge then flatground half-cab flip exiting one vast room into the next lifting over a trench drain wearing black longsleeve Lowcard shirt to find a mid-sized watercraft beached in this empty room so he grinds the starboard gunwale like Lurker Lou and ollies through a doorframe into a dark room while camera passes along further graffiti and “the abyss opens up, it steals everything from me.” Elsewhere in the skeletal structure Adam pops through a doorway to front 5-0 on an interior windowsill ledge and quickly ollies his rollaway over a rail track that expedited an assembly line and lands on plywood banking down over the far half.
Back outside under white Detroit skies, Adam switch crooks a black metal bench someone noseblunted earlier with pop-out over further sidewalk to land past curb on street level.
Tucked below the pyramid in Hart Plaza, a lower amphitheater counterbalances where Adam switch nose manuals in frontside horseshoe carve around a seating pad to reach the edge where he fakie lifts into switch front 5-0 across a siding ledge before orchestra pit landing.
Adam switch ollies onto one concrete ledge’s beginning as two further levels appear higher in front of him. Pee-girl gets the belt while Adam gaps where three cut stairs interrupt each of these three blocks to land in switch lipslide where the base level resumes and dismounts switch before skatestoppers.
Rustic portrait footage highlights Adam’s Cannibal Corpse t-shirt worn kickflipping a skinny flat gap under the shredded roof of an open-air abandoned tetanus trap where Maxxi Poo had a line, too.
Graffiti covers curvaceous terrain formed from a collapsed second story as cloudy skies show through tattered ceilings on this abandoned site where Adam 360 flips to fakie in the grey Murder or Die Detroit Tigers graphic, then bearded Khaled Al-Ousi kickflips to fakie on the same transition.
The crumbling courtyard of a brick institutional building is the setting where Adam wallrides over five stairs then front crooks the third level of a Philly step with beads in his beard. He switch crooks the same third step as a single clip.
In Harmonie Park where I last said goodbye to the crew, Adam places half of a metal drainage grate atop two bonneted trash cans so he can take a sandbag-propped pop off the other grounded half-drain and front nosegrind its temporarily elevated counterpart at night. Next cherrytopping clip in same spot sequence shows Adam’s front nosegrind 180 out.
Detroit Institute of Art’s white marble columns overlook Adam’s frontside flip into tailslide on a ledge out front at night. Around the corner, he frontside ollies the gap between two retractable curved yellow prongs that currently block vehicular access with a white skull on the back of his black Murder or Die WWF tee shown twice.
Fox Theatre sits 5000 inside, while the neon winged lions on its Woodward Avenue marquee showcase Adam lifting noseslide into crooked grind on far-side median ledge at night and 360 flips on flat to celebrate.
Wearing a grey Dunwell collegiate crewneck with custom rose embroidery around yellow letters, Adam’s progress report shows a sprawling spider slide then board break on attempts preceding his successful fakie flip down nine weathered stairs. People don’t really skate straight stairs in videos like these anymore, so the clip hits with a proper pomp of sonic climax. “Burn the witch, the witch is dead. Burn the witch, just bring me back her head.”
Ducking backside along brick buildingside Adam shoots his ollie over a tight and mellow pyramid grass gap that shows twice through side-by then stationary shots.
Camera flash captures catchpoint as Adam kickflips a backside diagonal rail over six stairs, then feeble grinds the same rail he just vaulted through its silver kink. Chainlink fencing bows out from a lot where Adam polejams up a tilting support post exiting over to percussive landing on laid sign that covers choppy sidewalk. He prop-pops switch heelflip over a gap to rusted yellow hydrant and curb cut to street.
Lighter concrete patchwork around baluster placement points on this black rectangle handrail down eight stairs indicates the maintenance Detroit skaters undertake to facilitate their trickery, as Adam front blunt shoves the handrail then follows up by bigspinning front boardslide to regular in his coonskin cap before another bearded skater, Shane Rogers, appears to jump front 180 fakie 5-0 down this trick rail shown twice.
Back in the black Lowcard longsleeve that he wore in Something Old, Something New as well, Adam rides patched runway before front nosegrinding a ten-stair round rail. He nollie front 180s a five-block that equates to more than two handfuls in unbuttoned flannel under the fisheye specter of Motor City skyline. He front lipslides down a barrier wall burrowing into the lower level of a parking garage and rolls over the island edging on his dismount to fakie.
White winter skies overlook a large pile of snow shoveled into the center of an otherwise plowed parking lot onto which Adam has placed a big square light pole. Two sheets of wood cover Adam’s initial ride up the snowbank to slappy grind the ascending pole over the rest of the snowpatch to drop into the parking lot. When Adam tries the same grind switch wearing a tan Carhartt vest over his grey sweatshirt, he ends up belly flopping onto his board still somewhat vertical underneath him for a painful cowpoke that doesn’t deter him from trying again through the lot with a handful of smooth switch pushes up the wooden sheets into switch 5050 grind with camera flash at cuspid apex over and down as last notes of song fade and snowcaps background brick rubble.
Feedback echoes though a parking garage under washed halogen light as progress angle shows Adam pop onto a thin bricktopped concrete block then angle cuts to filmer crouched below the elevated flatgap Adam 360 flips to land on the next thin bricktopped block as piano keys segue into elegant second song hammer section.
On the multicubic black ledge at Hart Plaza, Adam back 50-50s, pops up to higher back 50-50, then pops up to highest level back nosegrind pop out shown side and back facing. Dusty shirting shoulders indicate previous struggle as Adam waves at an enchanted child during his passage around the top of the basin ring, then back hurricanes a less treated Hart Plaza ledge and steadies himself through rough pushing toward the big pyramid where he noseslides for some distance on the bottom ledge and nollie flips out to regular facing Windsor, Canada across the river.
His Cannibal Corpse tee appears again for kickflip noseslide across the third lengthy top level of a Philly step behind a brick building to fakie as the piano sounds like “So Far Away” in instrumental. He props a tree planter to lift his second try front 5-0 across the back of a black streetside bench that almost tangles him with a passing bicyclist on first go.
Before, during and after, the second stair set in this forthcoming line causes Adam multiple manners of difficulties until an extended approach shot indicates this line will be the special ride where he ollies the first diagonal seven-set then back bigspins the second nine-stair with a comfortable finesse to fakie landing like skipping stones. So many skaters justifiably ease out of high-impact stair skating that the sight of an adult sending it hard with a graphic skull on the back of his black Murder or Die hoodie resonates as he wheel whips himself with release into grass pasture.
Bare trees line both sides of a rutted sidewalk leading toward ten forested stairs which Adam kickflips in a sizable white tee shirt, shown three times. Viewers recognize the adult skaters cheering Adam’s success as a traincar blows its whistle and the conductors in the locomotive make sure the skaters know they too are grateful they saw this stunt go down.
With this part, Adam stakes his claim to join the pantheon of long-bearded shaved-head contemporaries Jeff Carlyle, Taylor Nawrocki and Chandler Burton. Adam’s particular contributions bespeak the twinkling eyes under a contrary initial gruffness that chisel along upstream tracing their way through neglected destinations with a dash of panache that indicates the original idealistic intents in both subject and object where they meet on Detroit streets built along a template that hastens our own destruction. Credits give names to the faceless and a few more brief clips play. Adam stands beside the frozen Detroit River then returns to the snow-shoveled parking lot one last time to ride up his DIY snowbank and ollie over two stacked orange Triton barriers then curtain.