Photo: Kyle Seidler

Mapping the long career of Matt Militano makes me think of Dr. Seuss’s classic “Oh The Places You’ll Go.” Turning and swerving through skateboarding, he’s taken detours at companies you’d never guess and has seen the highs and lows similar to someone 20 years his senior.

Matt recently joined the Sci-Fi Fantasy team, bringing his nimble-footed ledge combos to a crew that we hope will bring something truly special in the next few years. Since we live down the street from each other, we linked up for a conversation over coffee and cigarettes. Enjoy the talks of ABDs, prank shows and VX love.

You kinda look like Stefan Janoski, Have you ever been mistaken for him?
People tell me I look like him all the time. I’ve shown him to girlfriends I’ve had over the years and they’d be like, “You don’t look like this guy!” And I’m like, “What the fuck?” I think I do look pretty similar to him, but I’ve gotten a mixed review. He’s definitely one of my favorite skaters, so I guess I’ll take it as a compliment.

You’ve been in the game for 10+ years, but from a magazine cover to getting on Sci-fi recently, it seems like people are finally noticing. How does it feel to be getting so much recognition?
It feels great. Over the past couple years there were times where I just wanted to take a step back from skating. It’s never that I stopped skating, I just had periods of time where I wanted to focus on vintage or focus on myself and not care so much about skating because it’s consumed me for so long. This opportunity with Sci-Fi has pushed me to keep caring about skating and want to do more and film more.

What have you done for work through the years when skating wasn’t paying the bills?
When I first moved to Philly I worked at Whole Foods for almost five years. It was really cool at first and then Amazon bought it and turned this really mellow job into an intense grind. All of a sudden the managers were more serious and I just really started to hate it. Since then I’ve been selling vintage clothing, working for myself.

I’ll go to farmer’s markets and sell there and do stuff at bars and restaurants and shit. I just go find old shit and sell it and it’s paid me better than any job has and I have all the freedom I want. I get to base my work schedule around if people can skate or not. I do have specific days where I sell in person, so I’ll miss out on skate sessions sometimes, but I can pretty much hit up Zach [videographer / filmer] and be like, “Hey, what days are you getting out this week?” and then I’ll work the days he’s not out or when it rains and shit like that.

Photo: Graham Tait

Have you found any holy grail skate clothing that you don’t want to sell?
Definitely. I found a mosaic tee, which I got for like a dollar. That’s probably my favorite skate piece I’ve found. I also found a This Is Skateboarding tee that I’ve held onto because it’s so sick. A couple of 90s shirts from the beginning of Alien Workshop and a Dinosaur Jr/Workshop too, which I was really stoked on. I’m starting to get a decent skate collection. The stuff’s out there.

Have you ruined any rare shirts just from skating in it?
100% My parents went to shows for like 10 years straight. That’s what they did before they had me, they would just go see live music. So they gave me like twenty 80s and 90s era concert shirts that I’ve definitely kind of destroyed a bit [Laughs].

I’ll still wear them forever, and my dad actually told me that I had to film clips in all of them. He’s like, “I want to see these in your videos.”

Is there an art to lowballing on Depop?
[Laughs] For sure. You get lowball offers every single day on Depop and it’s a fucking headache. And it’s always a well-known vintage shop that’s trying to give you like $20 for an $80 item. I started blocking people. If someone gives me a crazy offer, I just block them so I never have to deal with them again. I’ve found myself in a few cases where I’m like talking shit to lowballers and I’m like, I need to chill. I’m not trying to get banned from Depop, but it’s really fun to talk shit to a stranger on the internet.

“Moving out to California was a big realization about how cutthroat the skate industry is.”

How’d you end up back on the East Coast and living in NYC?
I lived in LA from like 19 to 23, so just under four years I was out there. I wanted to skate and film, but moving out there was a big realization about how cutthroat the skate industry is. So I kind of just did my thing with my friends. I worked at the Huf warehouse for some years and that was really cool. It was a great thing to do in my late teens and early 20s because we would just pack as many fucking dudes in a skate house as we could. We were living so rugged, full skate house vibes the whole time I was out there. When I started to get a little bit older I would visit Philly and I had a lot of friends there already so it was kind of an easy transition where I was like, “I’m over LA I want to be back on the East Coast.”

What do you mean by cutthroat?
I don’t mean that in a bad way, but everyone is so hungry to be a sponsored skater in California that I didn’t really feel like I could be banking on doing anything with skating by any means. I always wanted to try hard to film and do my thing.

You’ve had an insane sponsor history, could you walk me through it a little?
My first sponsor was Think. The dude that hooked me up at Think ended up going to Skate Mental, so in the very beginning of Skate Mental I got boards. I only talked to Brad Staba once and he was really short and emailed me in all capital letters [laughs].

From there I got on this company Stacks. It was Brian Lotti’s company. That was pretty short lived. Then I got Enjoi boards for a while. Eventually I ended up living with Blake Carpenter and I got a random call out of the blue from Mike Sinclair that they were gonna start a new board company. This is probably when I was like 21 years old. He asked me if I wanted to ride for that, and I was so down, but it never happened. That led to them asking me if I wanted to get on Foundation. And I was like, “Uhh, yeah,” pretty hesitant but I did it.

I knew Foundation wasn’t gonna work out though. I couldn’t film with them. They’d go to like 15-star handrails [laughs]. Tum Yeto ended up picking up Habitat for like six months or something, and through that I got in contact with them and I got Habitat boards for probably five years. Never really got on though. Then my good friend Neil Herrick hooked me up with 5BORO. I rode for them for like two or three years. And now Sci-Fi. There might be a few I missed [laughs]. It’s a lot.

Damn, yeah I can’t imagine you with the Foundation team.
I couldn’t hang. I used to skate handrails a lot when I was like 18, but they would go to like a 20 stair, or a 12 stair you’d have to flip into. Blake Carpenter’s doing a nollie flip crook and I’m like “I don’t belong here.” One time I sacked an out rail so bad I had to get like 20 stitches in my asscheek and it turned me off of them. I’ll selectively skate chill handrails nowadays.

Photo: Graham Tait

Through all those sponsors, do you have one you regret riding for?
RipnDip 100%. Like 10 years ago I skated for them and I wish I could clear that from my slate. I rode for them when all the original WKND guys were a part of it, like Grant Yansura was still making the videos. They all left, and I continued to ride for it for like a year, so I do regret that. I did get to go on a three week road trip with Heath Kirchart though.

Woah, how was traveling with Heath Kirchart?
He was super intimidating at first, but a couple days in he started to crack jokes. He had two black eyes on the trip because he had been working the door for Black Bar, the bar he owns part of. I guess some dudes jumped him, so he was wearing sunglasses the whole time. He had his bicycle with him, because we were in an RV, and he would bike off and be gone for like two days camping, then meet back up with us. It was a trip. He was actually really fucking nice, which was cool.

“One time I sacked an out rail so bad I had to get like 20 stitches in my asscheek.”

What’s the story behind the pizza guy video?
Oh, the prank show that I was in? I was delivering pizzas in Hollywood and I was on a prank show, and I didn’t know it. I knock on the door and this beautiful woman answers the door and immediately drops her towel, tits out. She’s in a thong, and she’s like, “Ah, I’m so sorry, do you want to come inside.”

I’m probably like 19 years old, so I’m like yeah, for sure I want to come inside. It was like a weird, surreal dream. I get inside and there’s three other girls who are in their underwear, basically naked, and they’re like “Oh hey, want to have a pillow fight?” Obviously I was skeptical, but it never occurred to me that I could be on a prank show. I’m just in it, and I start hitting them with the pillows, they hit me back, and then they go “Oh, is there anything we can do for you so we don’t have to pay for this pizza.” They wanted me to be like “Yeah, suck my dick,” or something, but I was like “Nah, I kinda need this $55. I’m at work.” After that a bunch of dudes pop out of the closet and shit with cameras and microphones like “Ah, you’re on a prank show.”

I thought no one would see it, and it got millions of views. The prank show was on break.com. So many people still ask me about it.

How much do you care about ABDs in NYC?
I definitely care, and I’ve had a few ABDs in video parts that I battled and had no idea. One of them was Mark Suciu so I was like fuck it I’ll use it. Someone called me out on that one. Another time I did a trick that Pete Eldrige did like 15 years ago, and I was like “ehh, whatever,” but I try not to do ABDs.

You’ve had a lot of viral IG clips over the years. Can you tell me about the back 180 switch 5-0 big heel out?
I’d been doing the back 180 nosegrind all the way around, like a back 360 for so long. Then I would do a switch front big spin out of the trick too. Half the time it would flip halfway, so one day I was at Cecil [Philly spot] and one flipped fully and I realized that I just needed to flip my foot to the side. The first day I actually tried that trick I did it. It didn’t even take me long, but when I went back to film it at Muni it definitely took me like three hours.

I found it crazy that it’s just thrown in the middle of your part. It’s not even towards the end or anything.
We thought it’d be cool to just throw it in there rather than have it be a first or last trick. Big thanks to Zach who filmed all that. He’s one of my best friends and I really appreciate him and love the videos he makes, so I’m stoked to be a part of them.

“I’m definitely late to the game with HD. Maybe it held me back, but I have this big love for VX and love the way that it looks.”

Is it funny going from filming with Zach all these years with the VX-1000 to then going out to LA and filming like HD or whatever?
I actually started filming HD over the past year. As soon as I started getting stuff from Sci-fi, I was like, “I’ll probably film HD now.” I’m definitely late to the game with HD. Maybe it held me back, but I have this big love for VX and love the way that it looks. But it’s been cool to switch over, Zach has an extreme fisheye, which is cool. A friend of ours is letting him rent it for $20 a month, which is insane. It’s like a $10,000 dollar lens and he’s just paying this dude $20 a month. It’s a blessing.

Photo: Graham Tait

You know you’re kind of a cult figure on SLAP?
I guess people are into my skating, so that feels good. I appreciate anyone on Slap for the kind words, but I also know there’s a few people in there talking shit [Laughs]. They’re fucking ruthless on there man. It’s hilarious. I try to stay away from the Slap forums, but sometimes when something happens that I actually care about in the skate world, I’ll go read.

You were in the last year of SLAP’s One In a Million, right?
Yeah, I met a bunch of cool people but it really fucking sucked. They didn’t tell us what we were getting ourselves into until we got to New York, so I had no idea how wack it was going to be. Before I was on it you would just go skate and film and they would pick a winner. My year they tried to make it like a reality tv show and they dramatized it. It didn’t fucking work. It was really bad. It was kinda embarrassing. The year before was sick because it had Chris Milic and Nik Stain. It was cool when I was like 19 to watch that shit, so I signed up. I was hyped to be on it and it just flopped, and then they never did it again.

Have you ever talked to Lurker Lou about him snapping your board?
Yeah, I actually just did one of those Village Psychic “Lurking with Lou” segments. That got brought up in there for sure. I was planning on focusing his board to be honest with you, but he was skating this weird Andy Anderson shaped board. I would have felt bad focusing it. Jerry texted me the other day a photo of Lurker Lou’s board and he’s like, “Dude you definitely should have focused this”[Laughs].

It’s destined to happen.
I love that guy though. He gets portrayed as this demon, but he’s really just a fucking sweetheart. I’ll focus his board one day and everyone will see it and it’ll be fucking hilarious.

Last question because I need to know. Have you ever played Arin [Lester] in a game of ledge skate?
[Laughs] No, but she would probably smoke me. She’s so fucking good at skating ledges. She’s got frontside flip nosegrinds. She can just do that trick easy, and that’s so crazy to me. It’s a trip watching Arin skate ledges, because there’s certain things she can do so easily.

Lets throw some money on it. We’ll see who wins.
Jenkem Ledge SKATE. I’m sure she will be in. That’d be hilarious.

Interview by: Ben Komins and Larry Lanza
Photos Courtesy of: Graham Tait and Kyle Seidler
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