Thrasher Magazine

Maurice's new part is a stunning display of high-risk, adrenaline-spiking skateboarding. Every trick requires pure dedication. So would it surprise you if we said he quit his job to get that unreal ender? That's just one piece of this harrowing story. From childhood homeless shelters to sessions with Nyjah, Mo's journey is an unforgettable ride. —Ted Schmitz


Every clip's a banger! Watch Maruice's Victory Lap one more time just to confirm you weren't dreamin'

Yo, Maurice! You go by Maurice or you go by Mo?
Friends call me Mo, but either or.

So stoked to talk today. The new part is so good. How old are you?
I’m 28, gettin’ old now.

Yeah right, dude. Where you from?
I'm from LA. I was born in LA County Hospital. I grew up in the West Lake District, MacArthur Park area—so right there by Downtown LA.

So you’re 28 and you’ve got chops like you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe. What’s your skate life been like? Were you sponsored from a young age?
From the beginning I was just skating with my brother. He taught me how to skate when I was five years old. We were actually staying at my grandma’s house in Fontana. But my mom's sister and brother, they sold the house, so that made us become homeless. We were bouncing around shelter to shelter, and then we ended up back in LA. Then my mom started getting on her responsibilities, because she got my brothers and sisters taken away in foster care. So once we were together again, my brother taught me how to skate when I was five and I've been doing that since. We bounced around so much going from school to school that I didn't end up going to high school. I started doing online school and just kept skating. So my first sponsor was Collective Skateshop—a little shop in Koreatown, right there by Lafayette Skatepark. They hooked me up with skateboards and stuff.

Damn! You never shot ads or were hooked up by a big company?
Yeah, so Karl Watson actually put me on Organika. I never had a sponsor, so once I started receiving boards in the mail, even my mom was like, What the hell? Did you buy these? Because it was a big box of boards and clothes. I was like, No, I'm sponsored now. She thought that was so cool. He took me out to SF and I skated on a trip out there. So that was my first sponsor. I had a Kayo ad in the mag; I did a tréflip nose down the Hollywood 12.

Puttin' a little extra on it after his Kayo days. NAC in LA

Jesus christ, dude. You’ve been good! Who’s hookin’ you up now?
Ryan Decenzo is hooking me up with 2 Cents.

That’s a beast-ass team.
Yeah, I’m so hyped that he picked me up. I was riding for Primitive at the time, but I ended up breaking my leg after I was done filming the part.

Shit, how did that happen?
I ended up going back to that Franklin 18 just to watch Nyjah; he was doing the nollie back board at the time. Spencer who filmed my part was there. Nyjah does it, so I walk up to it after, like, Hey, has anyone back Smithed this? Nobody really said anything, so I was like, Alright, I’ll try it. I really wasn't warmed up, and I was doing it like a flat bar. I kinda overshot it and went to back lip and I snapped my leg—the bone came out. And this is a week after I switch front boarded the rail in my part. I had no business skating it that day.

Take this job and shove it! I got an ender to film! Well-rested switch front board

I heard you had kind of a crazy process for that switch front board ender. What was that like?
So the process for that took four weekends in a row. I had this job that I was working. I would have to wake up at like five in the morning and work till like 2PM. I got the majority of the clips already done. I wanted that as the ender. I ended up having to quit this job because my sleep schedule was so off. Every weekend I went there, I was still tired from waking up. It’s funny because the Bondo situation there. I would have Spencer Bondo it every weekend, further and further, because they replaced the ground with brick. He was like, Damn, you want me to Bondo it to the street?! I was like, Yeah, matter of fact.






That’s insane. You quit your job to get the trick?!
Yeah, I ended up quitting my job the third weekend and resting that whole week before trying the trick. I was like, I quit my job for this. I better do it. So the fourth weekend came up, and I ended up doing it second try. And then I called my job back and I was like, Hey, you guys think I can get my job back? And they're like, No. I was like, Damn, dude, I should have just kept my job.

Amazing. So you didn’t even try it the first three weekends? What were those sessions like?
Just rolling up for hours. Mason's in the tree, and I feel bad. I was just like, Damn, he’s sitting in the tree, all sideways, shooting the photo. And he's like, Don't worry about it. Just focus. Then I'll go where the basketball court is—where the roll up is. All I could see is the top of the rail, and I'm like, Damn, I'm rolling up to this thing? It doesn't feel real!

I heard you got a bluetooth speaker to help you get stoked to skate big shit? What’s the hype track?
It was a Nipsey Hussle song, “Seven Days a Week.”

Wasn’t that after you had something else playing?
At first, it was Jimi Hendrix’ “All Along the Watchtower.” That was playing for the first three weekends in a row. I played that song probably about 20 times. And there's a certain part of that song that I was like, Alright, this is the part where I'm gonna go for it. And then that part kept coming up, and I'm like, Damnit, I didn't go for it. And then I'll rewind it.

All along the 18 rail, Maurice grinds front feeble 

Jimi laid the groundwork. You did another insane hammer in a few tries. How tough was that front feeble?
I believe, was third try.

Was that one another lengthy process?
That day, too, I was listening to Jimi Hendrix.

How do you work up to that? Do you just hop right to it or do you cycle through easier tricks?
I was with my friend Jordan Mourning at the time, and he was letting me crash on his couch. He was like, As long as you're getting clips, you can stay here. So I get some coffee—he was getting me into these vanilla coffees. Then basically I get there and start 50’ing the rail. I can hold the front feeble on flat bars pretty good. But doing it down a big rail like that, if you happen to barely miss it, you have a lot of rail to deal with. So I ended up 50’ing it more than ten times before I actually went for the front feeble.

Did you miss any?
I probably jumped into a 50 and was leaning to the side and hopped out, but I landed most of them.

You grinded like 180 stairs before even trying your trick. And then you got another insane trick at the same spot?
Yeah! The heelflip crook is at the same school.

Is that two different missions?
Yeah, it’s two days. I did the front feeble first. Then I went over and looked at the other rail. Instead of the middle rail, I seen people started to skate bigger side. I was like, Oh, damn, someone did a Bondo job. I actually think Ty Evans did it, because when I was filming with him at the time, he has this certain way he Bondos. It’s funny; they would call him James Bondo. It’s really good, so I started throwing a heelflip at it. Everyone started setting up, so it’s like, Now I gotta really try it.

Online educated, but still street smart. Heelflip crooks around the corner from his first hit 

What’s your celebration like when you get those insane bangers?
Probably cooking hot dogs at the house, chilling at the jacuzzi. Probably have a few beers.

A modest party, we love it. If you look around, skating is going in these weird directions. It's getting split up into a bunch of different little schools. Some people are doing cutty alleyway stuff or dirt rides. Then you’ve got contest skaters who are on their own courses. And there’s skaters like you in the classic mold with ledges and stairs—very traditional LA. Is that what you grew up on and seek out? Or are you at the brick quarterpipes downtown and you just don’t film ’em?
When I grew up skating with my brother, we used to love watching Jamie Thomas grinding big rails. So that’s what got me into rails—Jamie Thomas. You would probably catch me at the brick quarterpipes too though. I’ll dabble with it, but I probably won’t get too far.

In any other phase, you would be on the vanguard of gnarly skating. But it seems like the way pro skating is, there’s a lot of people getting paid for less risky fare than what you're offering. Do you feel some sense of being not compensated for the risks you're taking?
Not at all. Honestly, it's all for the love.

You must really fuckin’ love it then.
I'll rather have that feeling of rolling away from the tricks that I’ve done than having a shitload of money. You just can't beat that.

The best feeling in the world that so few will ever know. Frontside 50-50

Good attitude.
That 34 rail that I grinded, that was the best feeling in the world. And when I rolled away from that and the switch front board, I was like, That was the best thing I've ever done in my life.

That’s great. That’s obscenely hard and honorable that you’re still pushing that school of skating forward. Who are you skating with? It's only Yuto, Nyjah, Midler, Foy and a few others who are skating on that level.
I'm just skating with friends, honestly. Everyone kind of skates differently. The people I skate with, everyone's just good at what they do. Jordan Mourning, he is doing more tech stuff. I have another friend who skates rails with me; he does nollie Smiths. But we’ll also end up at a bump over trashcan that we can all skate.

Switch blunt onto James Bondo's hard work 

I know the homie Spencer filmed a lot of this part. But you also had another friend who helped film, Nate Stout. I’m really sorry to hear about his passing. What was your relationship like with Nate?
Nate was from North Carolina and he’s the man. Nate was actually the first person that put me on the map. I ended up meeting Nate from a friend Anders Nordlow. He's the one that does all these crazy darkslides. We were in some random pool complex, and we met Nate because we snuck into this jacuzzi. Then they started talking, and we started exchanging footage. So that’s how we met Nate. But he was the first one that actually put me on YouTube. Before Instagram and all that, I remember people would come up to me and be like, Dude, I seen your YouTube video.

He didn’t get to see the part come out. I'm sure it was really hard without him. Did you feel some responsibility to try hard to finish it up strong for him?
Actually, I think that we got done with the part, and then a few months later it ended up happening. That whole week, I was just shocked, dazed. A lot of people reached out to me. It was hard to reach back out to them, and I'd apologize and tell them that I'm not ignoring them. It was a lot to take in.

Well, you guys did really, really good work together, man. People around the world are fucking stoked what you guys had made together.
Thanks. He was the man. He was so dedicated. Even when you wanted to give up, he was just like, Dude, you got it! He gave me so much motivation.

Back 180 nosegrind through a sea of gray

Sounds like a great guy. You certainly haven’t had it easy. You’re not a man of privilege. You might even have a future in motivational speaking. But you’re basically a success story for how good you can get at skating with very little given to you. Do you hope that your skating speaks to kids in your area, or that you show a good example for the people around you?
Sure, yeah. I always tell them to just have faith, even if it doesn’t seem like people are rocking with you. It’s hard nowadays to get on. I guess it was easier back then, but now that Instagram's out, everyone's kind of like professional, I guess. But for the underdog kids, I just wanna motivate them to keep going and really show them it’s all for the love. Don’t expect nothin’ out of it.

Yeah. You weren’t in the system, but your brother and sister were. Do you feel like skating was a good way to sort of bridge that separation with you guys? Did it keep you together or keep you moving in a positive direction?
So, yeah, my parents kind of went through it, doing drugs and stuff. And, definitely, skateboarding kept us out of that situation. I remember, we'd be homeless, staying in downtown—Skid Row at the Mission shelter—and we would skate Ghetto Park right there by City Hall. We would have to be back before eight, and there's this clock across the street. Because we didn't have no phones or anything, we would look at that while we skated there every day. Skateboarding definitely saved us, because I've seen other friends either dead or in jail or just lost it.



Man, that’s really fucking impressive. The fact that you're skating at your level, you're connected with your people, and you're working, I gotta commend you on that alone. Were you able to skate with your brother while he was in the system?
So he ended up going to group homes and foster parents and he would raise hell at their houses like, I want my mom. I just want to go home. So my mom started doing good with me, and then the court seen that, so they released him back to us. The first day we went to go pick him up, it was at a group home. He ended up having a board and then he was like, I want to stop at the skatepark. There's a skatepark down the street. I don't even know how he knew there was a skatepark down the street, because he was basically locked up. And then he started slowly teaching me. It was right there in Fontana at the skatepark. And he got me my first board too. We were walking to the store to go get some water—he’s walking with his board and I’m just on foot. He's seen this trash can with this envelope, and he just so happened to pick it up, and there's $400!

Flame Boy or Wet Willy? Is this nollie flip crooks fire or is it wet? Sometimes you don't have to choose

Jesus! That’s a fuckin’ drop!
Before that, he probably had two bucks for us to get water. So he got that, and then ended up buying me a Wet Willy board from Pharmacy. And that was my first board.

Shout out! My first board too. That’s like an angel came down and blessed you with a skateboard. So the part’s out. You’re killin’ it. What’s next?
I was talking to Ryan Decenzo, and he was already saying, “Hey, let's start working on the 2 Cents part.” So I think that's my next goal that I'm working towards.

Fuck yeah, can’t wait to see it.
Thanks, I appreciate this.

If you ever thought about complaining why you can't huck anymore, or that your job is holding you back from skating, just remember Maurice's example and then go get some. Salute to the ones that really love this shit. That's just our two cents