Declaration of Independence

IT’S A SUN-SCORCHED MORNING IN NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Mikey Alfred has cheerfully flipped his phone camera to show me the bright, bleached front drive of his family home – a setting that couldn’t feel further removed from the cold, bleak surroundings outside my flat window. “I haven’t been there in two or three years but I like London a lot,” he says, almost sympathetically.

The 26-year-old filmmaker and skateboarding mogul is dressed smartly today in a black buttoned-up polo shirt that features the branding of Illegal Civ – the company he founded 14 years ago. A few times throughout our conversation, his dad strides past in the background – in one instance briefly wishing his son good morning, in another carrying a skateboard under his arm. Though it’s only just turned 10am in California, Mikey is already well into his day. “I wake up mad early,” he says. “I played water polo as a kid and we’d have to be at the pool at 6am, so that meant waking up at 4:45am. That