A skater drops into the deepest bowl at a 20,000-square-foot skate park in Santa Monica and rises from the other side to execute a round of flawless 50-50s, gearing up to catch air and not giving up until she lands it. The sound of the board grinding against concrete erupts with each try, heard all the way to the beach.
This O.C.-based skater is Michelle Yoon, and she basically grew up at The Cove Skatepark, shredding as a little girl alongside her dad.
At around eight years old, Yoon found her father’s old skateboard while they were cleaning out their storage room. Noticeably in awe of the board, Yoon’s dad gifted her one of her own soon after.
The family was living in Koreatown at the time, and Yoon first learned how to skate when her dad brought her out to Venice Beach, like so many of SoCal’s greats. But she really came into her own as a skater at The Cove, the park where she’d practice tricks for hours and eventually meet longtime friends.
“I always make this joke with my friends who don't skate, where like, you go to the skate park, and then my best friend is going to be some 60-year-old guy, and then my other friend is gonna be some eight-year-old kid,” Yoon tells us.
At 23, Yoon is currently working at a physical therapy clinic but tries to skate at least three times per week. Adorned with a helmet and kneepads, Yoon doesn’t bring much to the skatepark, often forgetting snacks and leaving her Spider-Man elbow pads at home. Since she is a glasses-wearer, she stores her lenses in a case while she shreds (which actually makes her abilities even more impressive, considering her vision is impaired).
Yoon has been on the radar of icons like Tony Hawk, having modeled with him for a promotional campaign. She said her biggest skate flex is the fact that Hawk follows her on Instagram.
Her skater friends, 35-year-old Jessie Frietze-Armenta and 50-year-old Cheryl Milstien, believe that Yoon has a good chance at competing on an Olympic level if she tries to pursue it.
Frietze-Armenta reminded L.A. TACO that that opportunity wasn’t around during her youth, since the sport only made its Olympic debut six years ago.
That’s partially why the annual Exposure Skate competition, which includes various contests evaluating women’s skateboarding, has been crucial to establishing credibility within the world of skate. Exposure also provides classes, clinics, and scholarships to skaters, “empowering women, girls and nonbinary individuals through skateboarding.”
Milstien, who is originally from Chicago and now lives in Sawtelle, placed second on the “Golden” division’s podium last year at Exposure. She is seemingly always on the move, working as a veterinary assistant for a mobile internal medicine specialist when she isn’t venturing out to skateparks or surfing at beaches.
She tells L.A. TACO that she started skating “rather late” at about 26 years old, a testament to the skate world’s diverse pool of hobbyists and pros. She says that she basically saw Yoon grow up at The Cove.
Like Yoon, Milstien skates at other parks, but The Cove is a sort of homebase for her. Milstien and her husband even got married in the skatepark, attendees cheering them on from inside the bottom of a transition.
“[Skating is] harder because, you know, as a woman of 50, I'm going through perimenopause, so a lot of women have dealt with the low energy. We go through joint pain, you go through mood swings, you go through a lot of different symptoms,” Milstien says.
Once Milstien gets the motivation to go outside on her board on a day like this, she might tell her husband that she’ll just take it easy and cruise . . . but will probably still be skating two hours later with a smile on her face.
Originally from Encinitas, Frietze-Armenta has an especially deep tie to Exposure. She calls it the “largest women’s contest in the world” and explains that it is more competition-oriented than the other events on her roster.
In the Bay Area and the PNW, Skate Like a Girl hosts Wheels of Fortune, which is “basically just like a giant party where everyone comes to see each other and celebrate” while competing, Frietze-Armenta tells us.
“There's, like, smaller events around the country that are more focused on social justice, things like this event called Slow Impact in Phoenix, where people come and talk about their projects or their academic writings on things centered around skateboarding, and that one's a little bit more nerdy, but super fun,” Frietze-Armenta says of another event she frequents.
Frietze-Armenta taps into that “nerdy” side of skating through her business, Shred Cycle, a sustainable brand “closing the loop on waste” by repurposing “scrap plastic into circular materials.”
“We recycle old skateboarding wheels, and we transform this plastic waste into faux leather,” she tells us. With the option to either mail out or drop off old wheels at skate shops throughout the U.S., she has developed a system that makes going green easier for all skaters.
Environmentalism doesn’t stop at wheels for Frietze-Armenta; she is also the Director of Sustainability at GotSneakers, “another circular economy company” focused on shoe recycling.
(We also can’t write about Frietze-Armenta without mentioning that she is a SAG stunt performer, but that work is mainly on pause while she works to prevent Earth from further burning.)
In June, Yoon, Milstien, and Frietze-Armenta were featured in Thrasher for their participation in a skateboarding event called “Women of Washington Street.”
“It didn't matter what your level was—everybody was pumped just to get whatever it is they were working on, and that's what's great when you bring that many [women] into one setting,” Milstien tells us.
Skateboarding doesn’t just bring together people belonging to different generations; competitors travel internationally to cities like L.A. and San Diego to rank among the best skaters in the world.
The vibe can be so chill and friendly that you might forget the women landing extreme vert tricks and airs alongside you are world-class athletes, and that may be the most beautiful thing about this community.
