Why do people still push mongo? Everywhere I go, I encounter somebody pushing themselves forward with a looping front foot. It’s the most unsightly crime you could ever commit on a skateboard outside of a serious benni-hana. But for some reason it survives. It’s a lingering herpes sore for every right-minded skater around the globe.

Australia is one of the biggest havens for mongo pushers. Perhaps our geographical isolation is to blame, perhaps we need to be realistic and face that fact that our national gene pool has some seriously shallow areas. Who knows? All I know is that it’s disgusting to watch. Hey, even God hates it.

In America they call it ‘shit-foot’, and rightly so. However if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll do a little explaining. Basically, a ‘mongo-pusher’ is a skateboarder who uses their lead foot to push, leaving their back foot planted like tree trunk squarely over the back truck. In mid flight it looks like a fully spread eagle preying mantis flying horizontally across your path. It’s weird and fucked.

Like polio, leprosy, scabies and botulism, mongo pushing is a disease that somehow manages to defy all attempts at eradication. It needs some sort of telethon to raise research funds for a cure, like ‘Out with gout 88’.

If you do push mongo, you’re probably reading this searching for some sort of salvation from your shame. It’s not going to happen here. You’ve probably already googled it and found the other weirdo’s banding together in secret chat rooms telling each other “its ok“.

Right now I’m guessing that you feel that same sinking dread that evangelical preacher Ted Haggard felt when everyone found out he really preferred to smoke a lot of crystal meth while chilling with male prostitutes. Yeah…. Uncomfortable huh?

You need to face the fact that you are personally responsible for holding back the natural progression of skateboarding with your flat foot propulsion, early grabs and pressure flips.

You need to live in the now….. please.

Thankfully shit-footing is unseen in today’s professional ranks, there have been however, some pretty famous mongo’s in the past. 80’s legend Bill Danforth was one.

I’m pretty sure Bill’s contemporary Rob Roskopp pushed weird too. The funny thing is, Bill Danforth remains a bit of a cult hero among these marginalized lepers. A lot of guys still shave their heads and roll up their Levi’s just like Danforth, pushing mongo just like he did.

The problem is that back then Danforth was a really punk rock dude. I suspect most people were a little scared to tell him what he was doing wrong. Its like facing up to Philadelphia’s scariest skateboarder – Stevie Williams – on pushing mongo while skating switch. Corey Duffel crossed him once, and barely survived the encounter by the skin of his spray-on jeans.

Some mongo pushers try hiding their shame, but most learn the error of their ways and move on. One of my best friends is a reformed mongo pusher. Like a heroin junkie coursing the trials of methadone treatment, he gradually placed his foot further up the board every day until he could skate normally switch and regular!

There is hope. If you need to intervene with a friend who pushes mongo, help is out there if you seek it.

Lets all band together. Lets make mongo history.

Oh yeah, mongo is so entrenched in our modern psyche, that stupid kids posting their video game show reels on the net push mongo…. its serious everyone…