Every so often, certain people pass through this town — most probably go unnoticed — that have some level of fame or importance beyond the city limits. Mörizen Föche is one of those people. Having arrived a few years ago, he only recently made himself known. MoFo, or simply Mo, as he is known, had a lot to do with the development of the skateboarding industry. Not as a particularly great skater, but as a photographer and designer who worked for skateboarding bible Thrasher Magazine in that publication's early stages (circa early 80s), Mo helped set the standard for skate photography, and as Thrasher publisher recently related to Local iQ, "He actually created his own persona, became a person of stature within the industry, someone everyone knew, or at least the name; a fixture within the industry; a celebrity of sorts."
MoFo, whom I got to know on a small level in the last few months, was
scheduled to have an exhibit of his photographs of legendary
skateboarders such as Neil Blender, Tony Alva, Lance Mountain, Stacy
Peralta and many others at Tangerine Café. It was to be timed with the
opening of the West Side Skate Park Environment and he was planning on
bringing out many of his friends for the event.
PHOTO: MOFO
"I just talked to
Tony Hawk a couple of days ago," he said to me prior
to the epic snowfall that postponed the skate park's opening, "but he
said he probably couldn't make it. Something to do with a baby on the
way."
Mo's exhibit has been cancelled as we were preparing to go to press due
to personal reasons. Reasons that will see him moving out of state and
likely never returning. Luckily,
Local iQ had the chance to speak with
Mo at length and have him grace our pages (including the cover of this
issue) with his photography. He had a lot to say about the early days
of skateboarding, the new, world-class skate park being built on the
West Side, his time spent in our town and those early days working at
Thrasher for Riggins and the recently deceased Fausto Vitello, whom Mo
wrote a 19,000 word memorial, dubbed by Mo as the "Ghost Truck Tour,"
to in the December issue of Concrete Wave Magazine.
"Mofo brought irreverence and humor to our stories," Fausto's widow
Gwynn Vitello wrote in a recent email to Local iQ. "He wrote as an
insider, as a voice of authority, but made the reader feel as if they
were part of an insider’s club."
You just published a 19,000 word tribute in Conrete Wave to your late
father and Fausto Vitello, the co-publisher of Thrasher Magazine who
also passed recently. Can you tell us about that?
I was at Thrasher a few days after (Fausto) passed away. He passed on
Saturday, and I was supposed to meet with him on Wednesday. An so I
just asked if there was going to be anything in the magazine honoring
him or memorializing him and if they would need any help. And his son
was there and he goes, 'No, we're not goning to do anything.' And I was
like, 'Why?' And he says, 'Well, if my dad were here today, he would
say 'why waste any pages on a dead guy?' And I thought about it and I
agreed. He was right. But that doesn't mean you can't put it somewhere
else.
PHOTO: MOFO
And so I was setting up to do a road trip that I had already been
planning and I decided I was going to dedicate the trip to my father
and Fausto, and just do the journey with that in mind. And so I have a
friend that has a website, skatedaily.net. And he posted this on his
site asking people to email me if they have anything to add or spots to
shoot (photos). So people knew I was on my way. The guy from Concrete
Wave saw the posting and emailed me and said he would give me 20 pages,
total artistic control.
Was it still strange to have it published in something other than Thrasher?
Yeah, it was. But I enjoy doing things that are a bit twisted. You
know, here I am writing a story in one magazine talking about another
magazine. And the thing is, the story had to expand to 28 pages. And
they never would have let that go in Thrasher. They would have had me
edit it down.
So I submitted the story, and Concrete Wave took out a small part,
about 200 words, and then the guy calls me a says, I can't take
anything else out. It's all important.
The story and the trip for you, are obviously important with the deaths
of these two people in your life that were very important. What do you
think others took from it?
The story was meant to honor them, but also honor the spirit of those kinds of people in others lives.
What made you stop working for Thrasher. Sounds like a pretty good gig.
I had been there for 10 years. Things started shifting to the hip hop,
tiny wheels, baggy pants, attitude and lifestyle. I couldn't relate to
it. I couldn't understand it. Thought it was stupid. I thought it was
retarding the creativity of skating. It was kind of like a bunch of
frat boys deciding they wanted to be punk rock, so they wear skinny
ties, spike up their hair and go pogo and bop around and tell each
other how punk rock they are; and then they go back to class the next
day and not really be a part of it. And I was burned out too. It had
been 10 years. I needed o get out.
PHOTO: MOFO
Yeah, when kids are carrying their boards and the wheels started
getting really tiny, it was as if all the other aspects of skating
ceased to exist.
So what did you do post-Thrasher?
Went to Santa Cruz. Did some design and photography for ads. But the
industry had a sort of recession around the early 90s. So work was hard
to come by. It was my first excursion of living off my wits.
Went to junior college, lived by the beach, stared at the ocean a whole
bunch and drank a lot of beer. Tried to figure out what to do next. And
that's when I decided I needed to learn how to use a computer. So I
stole an education by going to Kinko's and putting in a fake name and
logging in and trying find out which computer works and then leaving
without paying.
When you were at Thrasher, you were much more than a photographer though right?
I was a photojournalist, but I developed all the film. I would make the
prints, shoot the halftones. I would do the paste up and layout of my
own articles. Everything was manual paste up before computers. When
computers showed up I didn't thin they would last.
When the first few issues came out using computers, I thought they sucked. It looked fake.
You eventually got involved with Fausto again though right?
Yeah, the old magazine company tapped me on the shoulder. By then they
had several titles, Juxtapoz Magazine, Erotica, and others. They had
complaints about the production schedule and wth some of their
designers doing what they were telling them to do. Fausto said "They're
telling me they can't do certain things on the computer." So I said,
'Bullshit. You can do anything you want. You're the boss, you sign the
checks." So they brought me in again as general manager and I went
through and fired all kinds of people.
You know, I went over and said, 'Hey the boss wants the log to be this
color.' And they would say they couldn't do that. So I said, 'I don't
think you heard me. The boss wants this logo, this color.' Some of
those people just had so much attitude.
So you were back in the fold?
I was going through a custody battle and raising my son at the same
time I was managing five publications, designing and producing two of
them and being everything for one of them. So I was getting wiped out.
I burned out again after about two years and we parted ways.
