Flynn was able to hook Montoya up with boot and clothing sponsors, earning another $200 a month or so from each company.
After making a trip to Utah in 1999, Montoya decided to move there permanently. "It's so much better than Colorado for snowboarding," he says. "They get so much snow, and it's always nice weather, and it's really steep." He'd met his future wife, E'lala, at a snowboard-industry trade show in Las Vegas, where she was working as a dancer in a casino's Polynesian dance troop. Eventually she moved to Utah, too, and she and Montoya had a son, D'angelo. They got married in 2002, after the birth of their daughter, Sarynah-Lalelei.
John Johnston
John Johnston
At the Denver Skatepark, Marc Frank Montoya shows
off the skills that took him from the mean streets to
snowboard stardom.
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By now, Montoya's notoriety had established him so firmly in the snowboard industry that he could have his pick of sponsors and demand top dollar. He'd been riding for Sims Snowboards and a slew of other companies, but he chose the ones he felt worked best with his image. "I never liked how skiers always hated us, but these skier companies would start these snowboard companies, and then they would make millions off us," he says. "And the owners are skiers who don't even like snowboarders. So I never rode for no skier-owned company."
Back when World Industries asked Montoya to come up with a design for a pro model, he got some stickers from a machine at the Chubby's in his old neighborhood and sent them to the artist. What that artist came up with for the board is what Montoya eventually got tattooed on his right bicep. It's the eagle from the Mexican flag, except instead of clutching cactus and a snake in its talons, the eagle's claws are pulling at shackles attached to a pair of wrists, with the chains being broken away. "Skateboarding and snowboarding saved my life," Montoya says.
A month after Montoya returned to Colorado a hometown hero for the Tech Nine video, he's over at the Denver Skatepark. There was a light, icy drizzle earlier in the evening, but not enough to get the concrete wet. So now about three dozen skaters are riding around the park, attempting tricks on the pyramids, banks and bowls.
For the eighth time, Montoya is trying a difficult transfer from a steep divot known as the "Fish Ladder" into the street course. He sprained his foot a couple of weeks ago, and his attempts are tentative but still done with a significant amount of speed and flow. He drops into the mini-bowl and pops his tail off the lip, floating easily through the air toward the decline. His wheels meet the slick concrete at a slight angle, causing his board to slip out. He slams against the flat bottom, expertly rolling into a tumble to reduce impact.
He's hurt his body a lot over the years. Torn tendons, blown-out knees, broken ribs, compacted vertebrae, separated shoulders, concussions, stress fractures and broken wrists; he dislocates fingers several times a year. He figures he has at least three more years of professional snowboarding in him. That's why he's getting involved in so many business ventures now. When his body is too blown out to compete at the top level, he'll still have a way to keep the cash rolling in.
"Is that Marc Frank Montoya?" a teenage skater asks his friend. Both have shaggy mops of jet-black hair and are Latinos from the north side. They watch with awe as Montoya skates around the park, banging his board up difficult wall rides. "Whoa," one says. "What the heck was that trick?"
Because of its central location in the Platte Valley, Denver's skatepark is one of the most ethnically diverse parks in the country. On any given day, it's not unusual to see African-American, Latino, Asian and white skateboarders. In October, Latino radio station Mega 95.7 ("Latino & Proud!") and Chubby's sponsored a skateboard contest at the park.
Marc is torn between the inner city and the still snow-white world of snowboarding. He didn't join a gang as a kid, but he still wore red. He wants to get his family away from gangs, but he still carries guns. He represents Denver at the same time that he wants to leave it behind.
Last year he bought a house for his mother at Federal and 50th Avenue; now he's trying to convince her to move to Utah. Just two months ago, a cousin was gunned down not four blocks from his mother's house.
"So many kids have talent down here in the city, but there's just no way out," Montoya says. "It's like a vice. Some of my homies are just getting out of jail, and I'm linking back up with them. Some of them have been in jail for, like, the last eight years because of the crazy shit they were in. I just wish they would've gone with me. Because when I go on all these crazy trips, going to China and Japan, and I see the world, making money, I wish my homies could be there with me.
"All these kids think there's just no way out of the city. If they could just see how good it is, out there on the mountains, they'd be out there, too."
