Homage to the Clit Crew

Mike Davis Back in the Day from Andy Maguire on Vimeo.

I recently found my buddy Mike Davis on facebook the other day, and needless to say, I was stoked. I think I first talked to him in a BMX chat room (remember those!) that was so over-run by barnies, we had to make our own one, mainly dealing with riding street. This is well before I graduated high school, so my mind is a little hazy for details. Either way, we eventually met at the Vans skatepark like so many people from the Bay Area did back in the day. I don't really remember any details from the session, but Mike would always roll with his cousin Brandon, probably about 3-4 other heads, and this dude named Chipper who crammed them all in a gangster looking car. They were all from Vallejo, which seemed like a pretty gnarly drive for a 2 hour, $14 session. They would also take Clif Bar stickers and alter them to say "Clit," thus the infamous CLIT CREW was born.

The first time I met up with Mike to ride street was a pretty epic day. During that time, I was riding with a lot of dudes from Santa Rosa, including Thomas Re, Bryan Porter, Chad Smith, and Garrett Ennis. I'm pretty sure we all mashed up there and met up with Mike and the Clit Crew. We rode this gnarly curved wallride that I would love to go back to if it's still there, some random street spots downtown, and the once great rail banger spot of all time - Glenn Cove.

Back then, around 2003 or 2004, handrails were my thing. It was almost like a right of passage. To this day, a rail will still make me stoked, whether it's 5 stairs, kinked, up, down, backwards, upside down, inside out, you name it. This school in Vallejo, I think it was a rich kid high school or elementary school, had it all. A basic 6 stair, 4 stair, double kinked, long, short, and a triple kinker that took me hella tries to finally do (probably one of the longest rails i've done to date). I can recount details about tricks and stuff, but now, what stands out the most is Mike's willingness to take us to such a dope spot. You really don't get that anymore. Times have changed, and people worry about a spot getting blown up, shut down, snake lines, and other really pointless drama. But Mike knew we liked doing rails, and he was all the more psyched to feed our cravings. I remember Mike was kind of known for not grinding rails, but he watched us, filmed us, and chilled us for the entire time we were there, like 4 hours or something. The spot was unfortunately capped, but to this day, it still was one of the best places I've ridden ever.

In the meantime, I found this video of him riding back in the day and got his permission to upload it. I have a bunch more Clit Crew videos that I will be gradually uploading too, but since he was kind of the early Godfather of editing, filming, and making efforts to blow up the Bay Area street scene, it's only appropriate to start with the real OG. Thanks Mike!