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Mike Ranquet Photo: Sean Sullivan
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In many ways Mike Ranquet is the kind of guy that every Mother hopes her
child will never become. He drives too fast, he smokes too much, and when
he gets to drinking, you definitely don't want to be anywhere within a ten
block radius.
But then there is that inevitable other side.
It's Saturday morning and Mike is more concerned with meeting up with his
mother than doing an interview. "I only have one hour," he says looking at
the clock. He's warming pizza in the microwave for breakfast in his
Crayola-yellow kitchen in West Seattle. He talks and eats, and I get caught
up in his story telling, which can go on for hours once he gets started.
Getting swept into the Ranquet squall is too tempting. The kids who worship
him on the pages of the magazines and at mountains throughout the Northwest
know this. That is what has kept him in the limelight as a progressive rider
the last ten years in spite of the fact that he only rides for the cameras
when he feels like it, and with whom he chooses.
I quickly find out that people around Ranquet know that his mythologised
character is about as real as his intentions to act upon the word "redrum"
which is painted on the blood red walls in the guest bathroom of his home.
While the word is there, you can't quite believe it because as numerous as
the bar brawl stories are, so are the tales of Ranquet helping out people
he hardly knows. And then there's the never ending flow of phone calls and
people stopping by his two story suburban palace that seem to discredit his
Johnny Rotten persona.
Born August 23, 1970 in Renton, Washington, Ranquet grew up in a stereotypical
Northwest tree-lined neighborhood where cul-de-sacs are plentiful and kids
can safely roam the streets late into the night. This is where he took me
for a drive down memory lane after leaving a little going away party Tim
Pogue, the former president of Ride Snowboards.
While cruising around his neighborhood it was easy to guide the conversation
toward his family. His father was what Ranquet described as a "do good" lawyer.
"I have a lot of respect for him," he says. "He really tried to always take
cases that were for a good cause. It gave me good values, but I don't really
think my parents understand what I do. If you asked my Dad what I do for
a living he couldn't tell you," he says trying not to sound too bummed at
this fact.
Mike drives his conspicuously red Audi into a neighborhood of neatly trimmed
lawns and comfortable two story homes. He's obviously negotiated these roads
a thousand times before. "We used to start pushing right here," he says slowing
down near a big bush. The neighborhood is quiet and Mike stops the car for
a second in front of two mailboxes. "Then we'd put a ramp right here and
I'd jump over both of my parents cars." We are in front of his parents house.
He points to the corner window of the house, "That was my room."
Everything I ever heard about Ranquet was bad. The most recent incident involved
his ejection from a bar in New Zealand a few days after he had broken his
foot. The bouncers apparently tossed him out so hard that his cast broke,
so Ranquet decided that must have meant he didn't really need it. The next
day he was seen skating full force on a ramp in Queenstown.
Then there was the infamous Jackson Hole Ride Demo last year. The night before
the media and Ride's top retailers arrived in Jackson Hole for a product
trial of the '96-'97 line Ranquet managed to start a bar brawl in one of
the two bars on the mountain resulting in Rocket Reaves getting decked pretty
good and the resort nearly canceling the gig. Ranquet was politely asked
to leave.
There is no shortage of these stories and Ranquet works hard to keep new
ones flowing, especially when eyes are on him. We drive too fast up a windy
road in Renton. I egg him on to see how fast the Quattro A4 will take us
around the corners. As the car slides uncomfortably near the edge of the
road, he lets off the gas, and the car neatly straightens up. "I love driving,"
he says, eyes glued to the road anticipating the next curve. "Skating driving,
and snowboarding. That's what I like to do."
"My friend once clocked me going 35 down this hill laying on my back on this
skateboard," he says as we start to descend down a brief straight stretch.
He's been talking nearly non-stop for the last hour with stories of teenage
delinquency. One look at Ranquet with his heavy-lidded eyes and bottle-blond
hair it's easy to believe the stories. The years of thrashing himself show
in everything from his riding style where he cocks one arm back as a result
of a broken arm he had for a year, to the chipped bottom tooth. He'll gladly
rattle off a list of broken body parts from wrists to ankles, adding in that
about the only thing he hasn't broken is his back.
The life of a snowboarder can get lonely, and as pathetically tiresome the
poor-little-rich-boy syndrome may sound, Ranquet is undeniably a direct result
of this life. He lives in the suburbs surrounded by nuclear family homes.
He's the anomaly on the block. While his place looks shiny and welcoming
on the outside, the inside is surprisingly devoid of any life: like a hotel.
One of the few pictures in his room is a snapshot of his teammate and old
friend Circe Wallace.
Downstairs some of the walls have been recently painted with vibrant rainbow
colors. The living room is an almost cartoonish blue, the TV room green,
the kitchen yellow, the bathroom sharp red. "I want to make it so that no
two walls are the same color no matter where you are sitting," he explains
while we are sitting in the living room.
The rooms are all veryand from where we are sitting we can see almost
every wall in the downstairs other than the bathroom. "I am still working
on this and haven't quite gotten to the upstairs. After the living room the
walls are white again and two of the three bedrooms upstairs are empty. He's
looking for roommates because he hates to be alone, but at the same time
he doesn't really like having anyone around too much because he wants his
space.
A few minutes later I’m in his kitchen pushing on him to tell me more
about the reported sightings of him and various musicians from the Seattle-area.
This more or less pisses him off and he halt quickly on the information flow,
getting a lot quiter than usual. "You've been seen hanging out with a lot
of people, you don't want to talk about it?" I say to him.
"No," he says uncomfortably.
"Why not. You're a rock star."
"No. I'm not."
"Yeah you are"
"No, I'm not," he says with finality.
"But don't you think that there are rocks stars in snowboarding," I ask him
realizing it's a word he is uncomfortable with.
"I think it's the magazines that are blowing all that stuff out," he says
making me see his logic. Touche Ranquet.
"You can make a rock star out of anyone and I'm not one. I don't take
snowboarding too seriously. I know I'm a legit snowboarder and my friends
are. But I see a lot of people who aren't that have way more status than
me or are cooler than me, and I just think, fuck that's how it is.
"How people look at me, I could care less about all of that shit. I just
love snowboarding and that's it. I like to do it. When I am snowboarding,
I just feel like that's what I should be doing. I'll shoot photos and whatever,
but the whole rock star thing that's just stupid sounding to me. A rock star
is music, we are not playing music. We're snowboarding. People try to tie
snowboarding and music together so hard but it's annoying. It's like Bio-hazard
snowboards and that's cool but who gives a fuck. The kid down the street
snowboards too and that's cool."
A few days later I am talking to Circe Wallace, and she reiterates what he
was saying. "Mike is one person that I can truly say loves the sport of
snowboarding. He's not someone who needs a camera on him to do it. He's just
as amped about it as he was five years ago--he does what he does. He upholds
the sport by not cheezing out--he's not gung ho to promote. He chooses to
progress beyond the show of it all."
On Saturday morning Ranquet is in his kitchen reminiscing about back in the
day, nearly thirteen years ago when he first discovered Mt. Baker with friends
like Craig Kelly, Jeff Fulton, and Dan Donnelly--names that now are linked
with the stuff of legends.
"I used to go there with Craig on weekends," he says. "He would go to school
during the week and then we'd drive up to his Dad's house at Mt. Vernon on
the weekend. We would get up super early. It used to trip out at how early
we'd get up, but after riding powder for like an hour it was great. We would
make the rounds when it was still dark out and go pick up Fulton and take
bong hits at like 6 am. Go pick up Dano and he was like 17 at the time and
I was like 14. It was ridiculous. And we would just drive up. Craig was the
most crazy driver. He was really good at it. I just don't understand how
he hasn't wrecked more cars. This little 79 Subaru 4x4 and it just evolved
into what it is now. It's pretty weird now and it kind of sucks."
"Why," I ask him.
"Just cause lines I've been doing for 12 seasons, the ones you could ride
for five days are done by noon now. They're still totally the shit. It just
gets frustrating. I get angry sometimes. I will say shit, and Craig will,
and Dan will about some kid who is saying like 'hey man, we should be able
to go anywhere.' But then they side-slip a whole chute and it's just wrecked
and we're more like pencil marks through it. You get one idiot in there and
the whole face is done. It's not like some big localism issue, it's just
bullshit. I wasn't in there riding that kind of stuff until I figured that
shit out."
In spite of his annoyance with what Baker has turned into he can still be
found there periodically throughout the season riding with the same guys
he rode with ten years ago. Why does he always come back to Baker regardless
of how blown out his secret spots get? It's the Northwest.
"I like the shitty weather," he says. "I like the clouds. I like the rain.
I don't know why I like it here so much. It's just where I grew up. When
it's nice here it's beautiful--it's crazy nice. I've been a lot of places
and I always come back here."
Ranquet looks around his kitchen with an amused gleam in his eyes. "You know
it's crazy where this has all taken me. Sometimes I look around my house
and just trip on where me and all my friends are because of snowboarding."
My hour is about up and Ranquet is now tooling around with his new computer.
He's showing one of his buddies the Charles Manson pages he found on the
Internet. He looks surprisingly like a high school kid in his parents house
for a minute, and I realize that in spite of the stories, when it comes to
Mike Ranquet you can take the boy out of the suburbs, but you can't take
the suburbs out of the boy. And regardless of the hype, Ranquet is just a
content rocker boy from Renton, Washington riding with style and living the
dream.
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