Inside Chicago Fingerboarding | @Mitchdeeesb on Index & Community | S4 E157

On this week’s episode of the USAFBL Fingerboard Podcast, we welcome Miami Mitch on the mic live from Index Fingerboarding Shop!

We dive into Mitch’s journey from Florida to Chicago, how COVID pulled him deeper into fingerboarding, and why living close to a fingerboard shop can completely change your progression. We talk about Florida’s untapped scene, the importance of local organizers, shop culture in Chicago, and how skating with better people levels you up fast. Mitch also shares stories from late-night Miami sessions, helping run the Index shop, and what community really looks like when everyone puts their hands in the pot.

If you’re into fingerboarding progression, local scenes, shop culture, and raw community energy, this one’s for you.

If you enjoy the show, please like, follow, and share!

If you haven’t been keeping track, we have weekly episodes! Audio versions out on Wednesday and video version out on Thursdays!

⚑CONNECT WITH MITCHDEEESB⚑ 

 Instagram ➜ https://www.instagram.com/mitchdeeesb

Transcript

speaker-0 (00:04)
Welcome to USAFBL Fingerboard Podcast. I'm your host, Levine Cunningham. Today I've got Mitch here on the mic. You are forever Miami Mitch to me, but tell people what your new handle is. ⁓

speaker-1 (00:11)
How you doing?

⁓

Well, originally it was Mitch DSB because before like my finger boarding I would post like iPhone skateboarding video game tricks and then like skater XL so it was always Mitch DSB for skateboarding not finger boarding and then I started posting finger boarding more and then ⁓ Indy came up with this crazy idea from yuck and he was like yo You've got to change your name Miami bitch. You have like the perfect name and you need to use it I was like, I don't want to do that

and he just bugged me everytime i saw him and was like i fuck with indy so was like alright i see the vision let me fuck let me do this so i changed the name and then i ended up moving to chicago so i switched it back not that i have anything against miami it's just i don't want people to be like hey what you have been? i'm like oh miami miss oh you live in miami? actually i live in chicago and then it's a whole story and i gotta go through it and i'm not trying to

speaker-0 (01:24)
the fifth the

speaker-1 (01:39)
the the ⁓

speaker-0 (01:53)
already put the crown on.

speaker-1 (02:07)
Jacksonville, Florida, Nashville, Tennessee, Tampa, Florida, Orlando, Miami, and now Chicago. I've been all over. Yeah, dude, I'm everywhere.

speaker-0 (02:18)
You're a skater, obviously, right? So you grew up skateboarding. us that and then tell us how that transition on the fingerboard.

speaker-1 (02:22)
Dope.

I almost want to say fingerboarding may have been first, but not necessarily fingerboarding, just like having a tech deck. Like as a toy when I was a kid, I always had a tech deck. I feel like I don't know what came first. dude, my memory is so shot. Like I'm scared for when I'm older because I'm only 33 now and it's so bad. Yeah. Fingerboarding and skateboarding, it just kind of went hand in hand with me. was like, cause like I said, was like living in a house, I was 14. So when it's cold and snowy,

speaker-0 (03:07)
Okay, okay. So you started your finger board training how long ago?

speaker-1 (03:12)
Taking fingerboarding seriously? I would say COVID. Okay. Yeah. Like I said, I've played with Tech Decks. I've had wooden like P-reps. Shout out P-rep for, you know, being the entry level. Yeah. P-rep. I had a P-rep, but it was nothing serious. I didn't buy a Black River complete until I say 2019, late 2018.

And then I had that and I was just toying with it and then COVID hit, I was stuck in the house and I don't know if I still have it on my Instagram, but you can scroll back really far and see the little park I built out of tech, tech ramps and cardboard. Like I didn't own any black river obstacles then. So I would say COVID like 2020.

No. It's everywhere.

the

speaker-0 (04:22)
⁓ the

the

speaker-1 (05:00)
the

the ⁓

speaker-0 (05:18)
I didn't get a chance to make it out that far south. go roughly to about a lane on that's kind of like the cutoff point, but I really need to make some stops down on Florida for sure.

speaker-1 (05:27)
Yeah, it was tight.

speaker-0 (05:29)
So the Fortisene is actually pretty big, but the problem is there's no ringleaders.

speaker-1 (05:36)
There's nothing we had before yuck. think the only person putting on events to my knowledge. I don't want to like discredit anybody if I, if I didn't know about it, I apologize. But I think it was Casey fingerboard connoisseur put on a few events and then yuck came along and we had the store on I drive, which is international drive right by universal in Orlando. And that store was booming, but you can imagine in actual Orlando ⁓ rent probably wasn't that cheap.

speaker-0 (06:06)
Yeah, probably.

speaker-1 (06:07)
⁓ you know fingerboard margins, they're not the greatest ⁓ So that shop had to pack it up But we got a lot of people from Orlando to drive to miniola check out the new shop It was just it was like a 40-minute drive from Orlando Just to get to miniola. Yeah, so it that hurt a lot, but you know, it is what it is

speaker-0 (06:30)
why not there's a work a C shout out to the consular sewer first came in with your mom's favorite fingerboarder shout out to show you the game and higher up in your board shout out louise

got a few ringleaders out but there's like a whole community in South Florida like Miami ish

speaker-1 (06:53)
Yeah, we got some rippers dude. I know, we some sleepers

speaker-0 (07:13)
There's monsters down there

speaker-1 (07:23)
the like RC playground is like a old Walgreens they turned in like a drift track and we have a park down there over in the corner and it's cool the homie lets us keep it there we bring our ramps and people donate like rails and kickers and kind of like build our own thing

but that's all we got going for us. There's no official parks, there's no official shops, nobody's doing anything except for the homies in their crib that are skating, but there's so many.

speaker-0 (07:52)
the

⁓ the ⁓

speaker-1 (08:14)
I would love to see that.

speaker-0 (08:17)
how you ended up from warm Orlando, warm Miami, all the way up to like 10 feet of snow in Chicago.

speaker-1 (08:24)
Oh shit, alright. So I was working at a store in Miami. The store closed, unfortunately. And then my girl was like, yo, what do you think about getting out of Florida? We've been down there, I think like 12 years now. Something like that, 10, 11, whatever. Like I said, I'm so bad with numbers. And she was like, let's look into getting out of here. And I was like, alright, cool. My only thing was I needed to stay in a major city because I don't know if you know this about me, but I work like high end.

speaker-0 (09:15)
the ⁓

speaker-1 (09:22)
All right, Atlanta still too far south. New York way more expensive than Miami. LA West coast was cool, but too far away from my family. Our family's on the East coast and I was like, mean Chicago, it just made sense to stay in a major city up North. That's how we ended up.

speaker-0 (09:39)
the

I don't know. It's been like 15 years since I've been out.

speaker-1 (09:54)
the

⁓

Like if you go out on the, can't even say a holiday because that's where everybody goes on holidays. But if you catch one of those days where like there's nobody outside, you can get anywhere like that. It's not big.

speaker-0 (10:20)
He bumped all kinds of stuff. he's not big always says Miami is like huge.

speaker-1 (10:25)
Logan Square is almost bigger than Miami. Miami's tiny,

speaker-0 (10:30)
Man, all right, so then Chicago then to me is definitely a super city. It's got here public transport, multiple different it's like its own ecosystem here. Like you can theoretically never need to leave Chicago. That's how crazy this place is.

speaker-1 (10:35)
man, I'm still figuring shit out

it's mad funny you say that because Nash lives like down the road here and I always make fun of him because he does not leave his block he's like I have my grocery store here I leave my car parked here I go to this restaurant every day I go to this bar at night I have this place to go he's like four spots

does it leave the block you know they are not so tough and is it really is to go as next is afraid to leave the stoop so I drive my car everywhere and I'm we just adventure the city together because he's new on new we're just fine shit out there

speaker-0 (11:19)
that's kind crazy. feel kind of nerdish because I'm like, yeah, I'm in Chicago for the day and people are gonna be like, what you do in Chicago? Like I literally visit a finger boarding store and they're be like, you went to this big ass city and that's the only thing he did. I'm like, that's the only thing I knew.

speaker-1 (11:45)
the ⁓ the ⁓

speaker-0 (11:50)
My girl went just like yellow

So I the two o'clock rain.

speaker-1 (12:14)
But yeah, that's every day. Jacksonville, when I lived in Jacksonville, like Atlantic beach area, every day, two o'clock, three o'clock, rain, 15 minutes, gone, It's weird, Florida's weird.

speaker-0 (12:27)
It's crazy. Man, all right, so living up here in Chicago, you're literally 10 minutes from the index shot.

speaker-1 (12:33)
⁓

speaker-0 (12:36)
I am.

speaker-1 (12:36)
the

speaker-0 (12:41)
Wild. All right. So how are you, ⁓ guess integrated into like what's going on here in the scene? Like kind of tell me what's going on with the Chicago scene, the index store.

speaker-1 (12:51)
I'm really just kind of lending a hand. Like I'm still in between jobs. I'm kind of picky. Like I have a good enough savings and I, you know, I'm doing well for myself. So I can kind of sit back and choose and wait for like the right job rather than just like jump in and do some dumb shit that I would hate to be at.

speaker-0 (13:10)
No, I mean you're talking about life and you don't want to make the wrong there's a right choice a wrong choice and a better choice

speaker-1 (13:16)
Exactly

and it's like I'm not pressured to do that at this moment not yet So I'm still kind of figuring out the city figure out what I want to do Hopefully hear back from some stores stuff like that. But ⁓ yeah, I just have nothing but time right now so I Just come hang out of the shop and you know Andy I mean you've seen what Andy does for the fingerboard community for his company for just finger boarding in general. He's busy non-stop Nash

building parks, shaking hands, kissing babies, know, that, signing autographs. So me, Teddy and Andy Cole kind of just worked the shop and helped them out. ⁓ You know, we don't really get, you know, payment out of it. We're homies. So we just helped them out, run the store. They're like, check in. Yo, you good? Yeah. All right, cool. You just hold the store down there. If you got to leave, you just be like, hey, I'm leaving. And then, you know, it's their business. So they run the store.

It's sick. We got a nice community out here. hands in the pot.

speaker-0 (14:17)
the ⁓

speaker-1 (14:28)
It is,

it's really good. The community out here is actually insane.

speaker-0 (14:32)
I know when I had my shop, my finger boarding skills went like the progression was so fast. Tell me about the progression of being able to be local to a shop like this, meeting people and be able to like pick their brains as to how they're doing stuff and just your finger boarding skill journey.

speaker-1 (14:39)
Yeah.

It's actually pretty scary how good you get when you have a shop near you. I'm not even speaking on my personal skills, I'm talking about the locals. The Black River opening, I've seen some of these people and I'm like, these dudes fingerboard, you know what mean? And then I see them now and I'm like, ⁓ shit, these dudes fucking fingerboard. It's like night and day. It's just, you have the parks and it's available to you. You come, you use it, and then

love it

speaker-0 (15:27)
⁓ the

⁓

just tricks, new fundamentals of just finger boarding in general.

speaker-1 (16:14)
the and it's like I gotta I almost feel like you gotta get used to your board every day like I don't know it's just weird like I'll pick it up and I'm like my hands are stiff and then you lock into a few tricks that I got I'm good to go

good. Yeah, so like 30 minutes I feel like it's not even I don't even want to fingerboard for 30 minutes.

speaker-0 (16:36)
the the ⁓

speaker-1 (16:55)
for I mean, you definitely gotta do what you gotta do. For 30 minutes sessions is you can get. Hey, take it

speaker-0 (17:00)
the

⁓

speaker-1 (17:04)
100 %

I'm jobless right now and I'm at the shop. If it's open nine times out of ten, I'm probably here. And I'm not talking like I'll pull up for three hours. I'm talking like the store opens at 12. I'm probably here at about 1130. Sometimes we leave by 839.

speaker-0 (17:30)
I don't know why you even have an apartment. just literally just stay here.

speaker-1 (17:33)
⁓

the

speaker-0 (17:39)
So you got any ⁓ any projects, anything you're working on, anything you want to leak to the public?

speaker-1 (17:45)
the ⁓

speaker-0 (17:47)
I like this dude

speaker-1 (18:05)
Shout out Indy at Yuck, man. I really, really loved what he had going in Orlando for us. He was putting the homies on. If you supported the shop, he supported you. Shout out Nash, sorry, finger boards. Shout out Andy, knife finger boards. Shout out all the knife riders, sorry riders, Chicago locals, all the Miami dudes. The fucking, the Miami dudes, they know about the sessions in the 17th floor apartment. We would pull up to my house at like,

I don't know, like 8.30, and we would sesh till like midnight. it was, dude, I wish I had a photo to send you to put like in the video because dude, it was like this makeshift desk. So I had the playground, the little one, not the XL. And then I had a makeshift computer desk that was like held up by like a Marvel Legends Galactus giant figurine box, which was held on top of like a plank of wood like this.

and then I would add like, cause the playground was a little lower, I would add like a kicker to that and then we would just have this long ass park and it'd just be hella heads in my apartment just trying to skate this little ass. It wasn't that wide either. So you had to stand on either side and it was built for me. So I'm, I'm pretty tall dude. ⁓ so some of the other homies is a little rougher for them to skate the tall part, but they can skate the little part. But yeah, all the Miami homies, man.

speaker-0 (19:34)
on ⁓

speaker-1 (19:38)
⁓

Instagram Mitch D 3e's SB Miami Mitch is dead. He's alive, but he's

speaker-0 (19:45)
⁓

speaker-1 (19:52)
Yeah, man.

speaker-0 (19:53)
the

speaker-1 (19:58)
yeah, appreciate you having me.

Later,

ya'll.

Take tight, I'm soaring like a bird Every trick or story, every slide or word Grinding on the edge, I'm breaking the mold Fingerboarded dreams worth their weight in gold Hear the wheels as they scream, let's think of

as they scream in this finger-boding dream