The hippie behind Hope's indoor skatepark

Three and a half years ago, Mike Faux turned a small town’s abandoned hardware store into an indoor skatepark.

The park’s ramps and rails, smack in the centre of Hope, quickly became a beacon not only for local skateboarders, but also newcomers of all ages to the sport. Within a year, the skateboarding population in the town went from around a dozen to about 200, Faux estimates. 

As more people learned to skate and took their boards outside to keep practicing, friends and neighbours saw them ripping around Hope’s quiet streets—and then realized they wanted to learn, too.

“It's something that people see, and they go, ‘I want to try that,’” Faux said. 

It’s not easy to sustain an indoor skatepark in a town of 6,600, but those difficulties aren’t quelling his hopes for the future of HMI.

Hippie Mike

Faux was christened “Hippie Mike” 25 years ago at a skatepark in Burnaby. The name stuck. 

Over the next quarter-century, Faux built a reputation as a key player in the Lower Mainland’s skateboarding renaissance. By the time he took a job teaching skateboarding for the City of Surrey in 2003, he was a veteran rider and sponsored by a local skate shop, while working a day job making custom cabinetry. Eventually, Faux started working with youth in other capacities for the city, too. He had a way with angry teenagers.  

“I just have a good bond automatically with certain types of people and kids,” Faux said. Those kids—the ones who don’t like authority or who wanted to stay in the background—latched on to him pretty quickly.

Over the next 10 years, Faux helped reshape Surrey’s skateboarding community. (One newspaper story called him “Surrey’s skateboarding guru.”) 

The number of parks doubled, and Faux helped run different events, tournaments, and competitions that welcomed skaters from throughout the Fraser Valley and Metro Vancouver areas.

“I found before that there was a little bit more animosity,” Faux said. “If you showed up at someone else's skate park, they're like, ‘Why are you at our park?’” But after a few years of bringing skateboarders together to compete, Faux saw that hostility start to transform into camaraderie. Riders from different neighbourhoods started to hang out, learn, and ride together. 

“I think that was a big shift in the way people treat each other,” he said. 

But Faux didn’t get the opportunity to find out if the shift was permanent. 

Health troubles knocked him off his feet, out of his busy, active life and away from the community he had helped build. After three surgeries on his leg within four years, Faux and his family moved to the Sunshine Valley to get away from the “busyness” of the city and help him recover. 

Once his leg healed after the final surgery, the now-45-year-old Faux realized he wasn’t ready to retire. He took to wondering what form his next steps would take.

“The thing that always made me the happiest was making other people happy—really giving them opportunities where they could progress, learn and have fun,” Faux said. A plan for an indoor skatepark had started to take shape.

The Skatepark

The “Hippie Mike Industries Skatepark” lives in Hope’s old Rona building across from an empty lot, next door to a shuttered restaurant, and across from a line of brand new homes. He got the keys to the building in October 2020 and started building—fast. Some of the rails and other features came from an old park; Faux had kept them in storage for just such an occasion after a park he had worked at was dismantled.  The skatepark opened that December. 

Faux wasn’t in it alone. 

“The speed of opening and building came from the community,” he said. Donations and community support made the building process happen far faster—and better—than it otherwise could have. A Hope local donated an unlimited supply of two-by-fours, which allowed Faux to be creative and build whatever ramps and features he could imagine, without worrying about wood costs. The park was the talk of the town for the first year after it opened, Faux said, and kids—and their parents—flocked to the new centre.

Hippie Mike Industries’ skatepark offers lessons, camps, and drop-in sessions for all ages and skill levels. There’s a pro shop that sells skateboards, parts, and gear. Dozens of sponsors, both local businesses and skate shops from elsewhere in the province, also support the park. 

Today, drop-in sessions are $20, and lessons start at $50. (You can also get a yearly pass.) HMI provides some gear for learners just starting out who don’t have their own equipment and offers lessons and competitions for all skill levels and all ages. 

One of the biggest surprises Faux had as the park got up and running was how many adults wanted to learn. From dads who hadn’t skated since they were teenagers to moms who decided they wanted in on the fun after dropping their kids off, the park has a whole generation of 30- and 40-somethings learning, too. Sometimes the adults like it more than the kids do.

“It's funny,” Faux said, “because a lot of those kids don't come anymore, but the moms still do.”

Running the place

While the skatepark concept took shape after Faux moved to Hope, Hippie Mike had been kicking around the idea for a while—even if he never quite believed it would be possible.

“I've always had the idea of running an indoor [facility],” he said. “It's a great central place to put everything that I do. But knowing how difficult it is to sustain financially, it was something I never wanted to do.”

Those expectations were not far off. Finding the money is the trickiest part of his job, he said. It’s a balancing act between how accessible HMI can make the park and how it can pay the rent. 

Faux recently formed an official non-profit for the park that he says will provide more funding opportunities: as a society, HMI is more eligible for various outside funding and grants, and can run more fundraisers. 

The park is currently being renovated thanks to grant money from Fraser Health. The reno is adding several new elements, including a bigger ramp for more ambitious skaters who want to “start air.” When The Current visited recently, Faux was drilling together two-by-fours to create the skeletal remains of the large new feature. The building is also getting a youth lounge and with it, more potential for other, non-skateboarding activities and programming like arts and crafts. 

Faux has even thought about creating similar community centre-style indoor skateparks farther afield. While there are no concrete plans yet, Faux has his eye on Langley and other cities in the Fraser Valley for new indoor parks. “We know the demographic is huge there,” he said.

Last month, Faux’s work was honoured with a regional cultural diversity award. Faux said the team at HMI was very grateful to be recognized for their work with Hope’s young (and not so young) people, and was glad members of the wider community could see the value in HMI’s work, too.

The trick, Faux said, is getting the word out, often to those same people that the park, as great as it is, also needs help—and that they should help it. 

“That's kind of our biggest thing: how do we get more people aware of how to help us? This is a community center for everybody of all ages. And we need more of these.”

Learning 

In the old hardware-store-turned-skatepark, students haven’t just been learning ollies and kickflips. Skateboarding is, among other things, about learning to get back up again after you fall. 

“We teach life skills,” Faux says. “I might be teaching them to you while you're skateboarding without you knowing. But that is what I’m teaching.”

Kids, many of whom are still learning to read and write, learn to set their own goals and figure out how to achieve them. They have help from coaches—and from older kids who take time out from their own practice to help a newcomer learn. What they learn from trying, falling, and trying again, Faux says, is applicable to the real world.

“Skateboarders are probably the strongest-minded people,” he said. “We have to smash ourselves into the ground to learn something new.”