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FREE 10

JAN FEBâ&#x20AC;&#x2030; 2017

CHARLES COLLET & FRIES TAILLIEU | THE EAGLE SG

Introducing Charles’ and Fries’ new guest colorways of David Gonzalez’s the Eagle SG. Globe’s Shogun cupsole adds greater support and flexibility with an added deep footbed for impact control.

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OLLIE FS WALLRIDE | PHOTO: KYLE SEIDLER

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Cover

Ph. DVL

Contents

Ph. Sam Ashley

Youness Amrani, frontside ollie, Hasselt, Belgium Mike Arnold, wallie to 50–50, London 14 Mortensen & Mortensen in Malmö

82 Gronzisland

30 The Others

88 Kevin Bækkel

40 Maxi Shaible

102 Endless Light

114 Niilo Nikkanen

64 Casper Brooker

Editorial by Will Harmon

Arthur (Derrien) was supposed to write this month’s editorial but lo and behold, at the very last minute, he let me down. So we’re about to go to print and there’s nothing for the editorial page. Arthur apologised profusely but he still kinda pissed me off, so I came up with an idea to get him back: I’d write the editorial as Arthur. So here goes… 2016 has been a rough one… Fucking Brexit, Donald Trump, Hôtel de Ville is under threat, Nike stopped making BAs, Cliché went under… And the list goes on. Basically 2016 sucks. But I can’t make it sound like it was all bad… And I mean, we did get a new Jason Caines part! Plus my mate Chris (Jones) went pro, I got to down more Champagne at CPH Pro in four days than I have in my whole life and FREE WIFI?! Not to mention

the shitloads (and I mean shitloads!) of pizza I got to stuff my face with! That being said by the time you read this 2016 will be a thing of the past, so the real question is: what’s 2017 gonna bring? Here are some of my predictions: Casper’s trousers become so big he starts tripping on them and decides to go back to jeggings; the flatground Instagram video trend goes too far and leads to a freestyle revival; Aurélien Giraud becomes the first kid with two energy drink sponsors, one for each hand; Donald Trump sends Luan Oliveira, Carlos Ribeiro and Tiago Lemos to Guantanamo to increase the USA’s chances of getting a gold in the 2020 Olympics; Lucas decides his shorts still aren’t short enough and films a video part in speedos. One thing’s for certain though, that fucking Palace video sure ain’t coming out.

Editor in Chief: Will Harmon Photo Editor: Sam Ashley Online Editor: Arthur Derrien Mr Tidy & Mr Neat: Ben Weaver & Seb Howell Mr Blobby: James Jarvis 12

Printed in the UK Free is published six times a year by FSM Publishing Ltd. freeskatemag.com @freeskatemag freeskatemag@gmail.com

Mortensen & Mortensen in Malmö

Interview Gustav Eden Photography Alexander Olivera

What happens when skateboarding culture becomes saturated with the elements that were originally what skaters rebelled against? When the beers, the bros and the burly elbow out the weird, the creative and the individual. Wouldn’t that mean skateboarding was replaceable and it was time to abandon the sinking ship? Well – we’re not quite there yet and this interview is a testament to that fact. Amandus and Sondre Mortensen are from the north of Sweden and have grown up isolated from any hub of skateboarding culture. Somehow, a skateboard found its way to a flea market in Luleå and from there to the Mortensen household. The brothers discovered skating on their own terms. Come the time for high school, their parents supported Amandus, three years Sondre’s senior, to move to Malmö to attend Bryggeriets Gymnasium. Three years later, Sondre joined him and they are now part of the fabric of the Malmö skate scene. They can be spotted in the oddest of circumstances at the oddest times, waxing something or just hanging out – a quirky duo out discovering new spots when everyone else has defaulted to the park. 14

As brothers, they are both intrigued by the things that stand out. To them, this seems like a departure from skating culture. To us, that’s about as wrong as you can be. If skateboarding needs anything right now, it’s more people like the Mortensen brothers. The following is an excerpt from chats during a garage-session in Malmö. A few stories below ground, we find ourselves in a dumping-zone for the local shopping mall. A loading dock leads to dumpsters and rows of discarded display-items line the walls. The opposing walls are raw stone. You expect Dr Evil’s henchmen to materialise any minute. It’s the perfect setting for a Mortensen session. The conversation drifts to filming… So why do you keep putting out short edits? Why don’t you save up for full sections anymore? Amandus Mortensen: Well, we don’t really have anyone to send footage to, so we just publish it ourselves. That’s whom we do it for anyways, really. The last full part I did with the powerslide down the Triangeln stairs – well that trick was filmed two years before we put it out. By that time it started to feel a bit shit. You had seen it so much on the computer that you were kind of over it. Then we put it out and I was of course still stoked, but you move on after such a long time. Sondre Mortensen: The important thing is to be happy with it yourself. You constantly progress as a skater, so it’s best to get it out before you move on. [Amandus is trying a drop-down boardslide pop-up. He has a go and slides out on the fresh wax.] Do you still wax as much as you used to? AM Hmm… Less making spots from wax now, but… Well, ‘It should slide.’ SM Amandus has stopped skating obstacles. (Laughs)

Is that a kind of principle for you guys? You invent spots as much as tricks? AM Well, we would never film a backtail flip out on some ledge. It’s more fun to see something different. [Amandus has his next shot.] (To Amandus) I saw you warm up at Svampen this summer and you were banging out thigh-high switch heels and the full flatland register. Yet your parts have less of that stuff these days. SM It’s really fun to skate that way too. AM Yes it’s fun. It’s just not something we would film. We would never film standard tricks. What qualifies as a standard trick? AM Well if you are going to film something it needs to have that ‘oooh-feeling’. I don’t know what to call it, but something that makes it worth it. SM ‘Oooh’ – Like it’s something intriguing. Something you yourself want to see. AM Sometimes we start skating a spot that’s not even a spot, just mucking about and then something will evolve and we’ll think ‘hey we could film that this way and it would be cool’. Right – so it’s spontaneous. But it seems like the filming decides the skating too. Just now you were saying you have eleven minutes of tape and should try and get something with that today, and five minutes later we have disassembled a wheel-cart and waxed the ground. AM Yes we often have an idea or an image of something we want to do. SM Right now we want to do a garage-edit of only quick clips. I’m injured now, so I’m mainly coming out with Amandus to film and get ideas. Like yesterday – I was just doing flatground manuals and was rolling over those metal sheets over there – ‘duh-duh-duh-duh-duh’ joking around. And that sparked an idea for a little clip that we filmed. So you go from brothers to filmers to skatechoreographers? AM We bounce a lot of ideas between each other. Like I’m not sure the front-board pop-up will work here with the line to the rail. I’m considering a lipslide shove-it. What do you think Sondre? SM The front board may be hard to film. [After some debate they settle on the frontside boardslide.] AM (Talking about filming) You usually have an idea in your head of how you want something to look. And we’re lucky that we more or less see things the same way. SM Always when I think of something, I see it from how it’s filmed – like either through the fisheye or long-lens, the angles and everything. Does that mean it’s hard for you to film with other people? AM We are pretty much always on the same side of how to film something. When you’re filming with someone else, though, you may not agree with how they want to do it. 15

SM Like ‘What are you up to there? You want to film that way?’ No, you don’t want to interfere with what they’re doing. They have their own ways and so on, but it gets harder to communicate and compromise. You know, you don’t necessarily agree. AM Filming with others can be good, but it’s a little harder than with each other. [Amandus is checking the spot out, waxing, and giving it a few tries. Sondre takes out a big bag of wine gums.] SM 13.90sek (€1.40) at Willys. Good stuff. Amandus doesn’t eat sweets anymore though. How long have you been off sweets? AM Since my last year of high school. I just think your body feels better without it really. How about your health, Sondre? You OK on the sweets programme. SM Yeah I feel pretty good. [Amandus is starting to have proper tries, sliding and popping back up, aiming for the dropdown rail.] Do you read much? SM Not really, but I just ordered a book, actually. I showed my friend Lulach at school my music and he was like ‘Oh – Orange Juice’. And I was like ’What?’ Well he is from Scotland and that’s an eighties post-punk kind of band from there. So he told me about the bands Orange Juice and Josef K. And as you may know, Josef K is the main character from Kafka’s book The Trial, and

they put references into their descriptions from that book. That’s why I ordered it. You’re into music, obviously? (Sondre makes some of the soundtracks to the brothers’ edits.)

a favourite; great things from one of my all time favourite humans. Much love!

[Amandus slams and nearly falls head-first down the drop. We all stop as we try to figure out what just happened. Amandus then gets up and tries to shake the adrenaline.]

SM Should I walk below? It’s hard to show how high the drop is. AM Filming from up here would be odd, though. Hmm. Sometimes when you start thinking about these things it gets more complicated. You have a clear idea and then it gets muddled. SM It’s a real downer when you have a certain thing in mind and come home and the footage doesn’t correspond to how you saw it in your head. We never watch the footage back when we are out because we don’t want the VX to chew the tape. So you always have to be prepared that it may not be what you had in mind. We have some Hi-8 cameras too, though. AM We would watch Hi-8 footage back – those cameras feel more reliable than the VX.

That looked really strange. [Amandus lands the next try, full focus.]

Maybe it’s time… SM You let me know when you want me to get the camera out, bro? Back to music… SM I suppose I always thought it was fun to see how other people made music. You know – behind the scenes in the studio. Then I kind of thought that if I make music myself, then it is I who is behind the scenes. My friend Joel is really into music and would learn loads of stuff. Everything he learned he would teach me. And you have built your own guitar? SM Well my dad used to work in Lund when I started the Bryggeriet high school. Loads of the people at his work were really into building guitars so they decided to start a workshop every Wednesday in guitar making. I just came along with dad to learn a bit more about guitars and how to build them. It wasn’t an official course, but more like a gathering. In the end I built a guitar with help from my dad and we used the wood from old skateboards to make it. And you use it to make the music for your edits? Do you have any fancy pickups and stuff? SM Yes these days it’s the only one I use, pretty much. I have some pretty mysterious pickups, actually. We bought them from a dude, Lloyd, who had the shop across the road from our house. He had some pickups that he said were Di Marcio pickups that were a bit older, but we later found out that those are usually marked in a certain way and these weren’t. They sound really good, though. Very low ohm. That means they have lower output than new ones and you need to turn the volume up. The dynamic and frequency changes too – it’s a whole science. I made a blog about it for school: skateboardingguitar.wordpress.com What music are you into right now? SM Right now on my phone I have… Actually, I should say it like this – John Maus, Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck – they make up a trifecta I always listen to. Right now though, I’m listening to, Orange Juice and Josef K. Also a band called ‘The Scientific Research Institute of Cosmetics’. That’s Google-translated from Russian. Hum La is also 16

[Amandus and Sondre discuss how to film.]

[The session is on. Amandus lands the line third try and then does three more in four goes. Mission accomplished. There are still a few minutes left on the tape.] How important is it to have fun when you’re skating? AM It’s pretty important. It usually doesn’t work out so well if you don’t. (Laughs) [Amandus and Sondre have found a box of empty water bottles. They decide to film a wallie, scattering them. Done. We pick up the bottles and wind the session up for the night.] How are you most similar? SM It feels like we are both, well it is hard to put into words, but perhaps we are a bit more open to other things. AM Yes like we both appreciate the odd and different. SM Yes like ‘strange is not bad’. That kind of goes into everything we do. Do you get bored by the predictable? AM Well bored may not be the word for it, but we value the things that stand out. SM Bored… Well I have a hard time thinking about myself as ever being bored. What inspires you in skateboarding then? SM Not skating. (Laughs) But seriously, when I don’t skate I get stoked when I skate. Before when I went to a school where no one skated, in a town without many skaters to hang with, I learned loads about skating and loved it. I progressed loads and it was really fun. It’s really fun now as well, but when you find yourself too deep in the scene… AM …it’s not as pure. SM Yes, like you are expected to try and fit in and people’s contribution can be about other things. You’re supposed to put all this other stuff into the skate equation so that it’s not skating anymore. It’s like ‘Skate Life’ or something. AM ‘Skate Image’ or perhaps not ‘skate’, but well… SM Well maybe that’s just that there is so much talk and vibes with school. Well not ’vibes’ but…

AM SM

…well the more you are away from skating… …the better it gets. It may sound extreme, but… Not at all. It seems like a pretty natural relationship. How do you handle it when you feel overexposed to skating? AM It’s not that it’s too much skating as such. It’s more that it’s too much stuff other than actual skating. Like Instagram is a good example: You’re expected to do the latest tricks and all that. It’s too much of that stuff. You have to watch the right videos, do the right tricks and wear the right clothes. SM Yeah when you’re in the skate-circles skating is not about actually skating. Skating becomes about watching the right videos, wearing the same clothes, using the right language. But isn’t that part of the whole skating world? The clothes and all the rest of it? Like fashion – how do you decide what to wear, for instance? SM Well I like shirts. That actually comes from a clip I saw of Raymond Molinar. He had two shirts on. From that I started liking shirts. That was in seventh grade. Now I don’t think I necessarily wear clothes that have that much to do with skating though. But there’s really cool things coming from the whole skating world thing too. And I’m glad to be a part of it. It’s funny because Pekka who works at Bryggeriet always says ’What’s up, Jeremy Klein’ because I wear big shirts. And I get somewhat happy cause I think Jeremy Klein is a cool dude – although I don’t really see myself as cool as Jeremy Klein. (Laughs) So what do you do to avoid too much skating? SM During our break, I prefer to talk to friends at school, there’s so much more than skating at Bryggeriet. And it’s interesting to talk to different people. There’s so much to learn from everyone and everything around you. But I always carry around my Game Boy in my backpack and right now a book of classic Swedish poetry. (Laughs) AM Well I do watch skate clips, but the good ones – the ones that present skating in a good way. When you go skating, how often do you go out just the two of you? AM Particularly in the autumn and winter we go out more on our own. It’s because we are not usually here in the summer, we go back home then, so when we are here we want to skate spots. Most people from here default to winter-mode and only skate the skatepark. So we go out just the two of us. So Sondre is eighteen and you are twenty-one Amandus. Stereotypically, that’s the age when partying and girls have a big part in competing with the focus on skating. Are you into all of that? AM Actually not really. The whole party scene is not that tempting for me personally. I have a better time when I don’t party then when I do. SM I just see myself more as the type of person that would rather play a game or hang out than party. I’m not that drawn to it. There’s nothing wrong with partying, and sometimes it’s fun, but I’m not that into it really. These days, that seems pretty rare. AM Well that’s one thing with norms. People don’t really question the things that are moulded into the culture. 17

SM Yeah it’s really funny about the whole normative culture. It’s so strange that this is even a question, you know – ‘Do we party?’ Exactly, and that’s the point, of course. What would you say your relationship with norms in general is? SM Hehe. Well if something doesn’t feel like it happens naturally or… AM …if you don’t feel like something, there’s no need to do it just because others do. Are you guys ‘comfortable in your own skin’? SM Yeah sure. Maybe being used to being the only skater in school makes you comfortable with being different. I don’t know. Well how does going from being the only skater in school to being in a school of only skaters work? SM Well, maybe I was never a real skater, if you understand what I mean. Because I’m really not one of those guys, and I really don’t want to be either, if that’s what it’s about. So…. Well… Maybe I was never a real skater. So is a skater to you someone who follows the norm or breaks it? AM Well these days, I would say it’s someone who follows, but also, these days there are many different types of skaters. It’s hard to categorise. One should just avoid trying to feel like you deserve something for whatever reasons. SM Well I feel like the more I think about all that stuff, the more blurry it gets. If I start thinking about ‘hmm… Am I confident?’ then perhaps some good thoughts will come from that after a lot of thinking, but also the other way around. It’s easy to over-think things.

So do you take seriously what you stand for and who you want to be, Amandus? AM Well I don’t believe in trying to be a way you are not, just to fit into a certain social group or situation. Everyone has a right to his or her own opinion. SM Yes that’s funny isn’t it... Whatever you do, someone will love it and someone else will hate it. Like music: some people like a band and others hate them. One time I asked you what your plan was for the day, Amandus, and you said ‘ Well first, we are going to make sure we are having a good time.’ Is that usually your day? AM Oooh… Well yes, actually. That is usually a pretty good start. Well what happens next? AM Well if you are not having a good time, you make changes so that you do have a good time. And if you are having a good time, you keep doing what you are doing so you keep having a good time. All right. That’s a good place to leave you then. Cheers. AM Cheers! SM Cheers!

Sondre, drop down boardslide 18

Amandus, layback backside smith grind

Sondre, ollie one foot

Sondre, frontside pivot to acid drop

Amandus, ollie

Amandus, ollie hippie jump. Ph. Daniel BernstĂĽl

Sondre, pole jam

Amandus, wallride nosegrind. Ph. Daniel BernstĂĽl

Amandus fastplants over a layback slappying Sondre

F E AT U R E P R E S E N TAT I O N

The Others Introduction by Will Harmon

Nine year-old Sven just wanted to fit in like all the rest of his schoolmates. So when the coolest kids in his class got Yo-yos Sven desperately wanted one as well. He begged and pleaded with his parents until they finally relented. On the last day of school before the summer break Sven’s mother dropped him off at school and handed him a small wrapped present. ‘Don’t lose it or get it taken away,’ she said. Sven unwrapped the present to find a new shiny orange Yo-yo. Sven was ecstatic! He showed all his friends at school and he finally felt like he was fitting in. All summer Sven played and practiced with his Yo-yo. He got quite good at it too learning loads of tricks. The Yo-yo was great because he could do it almost anywhere, but more importantly, he could do it all by himself – he didn’t need a team or other people to participate. Summer was drawing to an end and Sven was excited about the new school year ahead. ‘Wait until the others see my Yo-yo tricks. I’m really going to impress them!’ he thought. The first day back at school finally came and after the first few hellos Sven broke out his Yo-yo. He started doing his Yo-yo tricks and then suddenly: ‘Ha ha! Yo-yoing sucks dude!’ The kids in school started teasing him. ‘Yo-yoing is so not cool. No one does that anymore man, we’re into football now.’ But Sven didn’t want to play football; he hated football! Sven decided he just preferred playing with his Yo-yo. Sven stuck with it and he became quite famous in the underground, but tightly knit Yo-yo community. He was even flown to the States by a Yo-yo company to do a demo. The haters continued to hate, but Sven took it all in stride. Of course Sven had to do other jobs to make ends meet, but that didn’t bother him. He still had time to do what he loved: Yo-yoing. Sven’s story is similar to those that started skateboarding before the mid-nineties. Back then skateboarding was ‘not cool’. There was no Street League, no X-Games, hardly any corporate shoe sponsors and no big money energy drink companies, but still, there were millions of 30

skateboarders that skated for the love of it. Skateboarding was underground and people didn’t understand it, but that was just fine with us. There wasn’t that much money in it either back then. Fast forward to today and skateboarding has been thoroughly inserted into the mainstream. But somewhere along the way in skateboarding’s rise to popularity certain aspects of skateboarding trailed off. Not all types of skateboarding were invited to the big party. The Olympics in 2020 will have street and bowl events, but what about the other kinds of skateboarding? What about the others? We tracked down some of ‘the others’ to find out about their style of skateboarding and why they keep doing it with little recognition, slim to nil coverage and little to no money. They are the new Svens. Perhaps this will bring a better understanding of freestyling, longboarding, slalom and vert skating to the mainstream skateboard world. People often make fun of what they don’t understand, but lest we forget, we used to be Svens too.

The Freestyler Denham Hill – 25, Leeds, UK Will Harmon: How did you discover skateboarding and what was your first skateboard? Denham Hill: I discovered skateboarding in the early noughties, all my friends started doing it, and it was all big trousers, loud music and all the horrible fashion styles. My first deck was an old Toy Machine demon monster. Then I just took to it and all my mates quit, but I just kept progressing and progressing. At what point did you decide your focus would be freestyle skateboarding and how did you get into that exactly? So around the time I started skating Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was a big thing, but I was always more into hardcore and eighties skateboarding. I was all about bonelesses and I used to ride a lot of pool and bowl. And from that I researched into older types of skateboarding and things that weren’t quite the trend anymore. That’s when I came across freestyle and stumbled upon clips of (Rodney) Mullen on Tony Hawk’s. I liked the different approach and from there I was keen to explore it. So then I kind of sat on YouTube and typed as many links as I could. I started seeing Pierre Andre, Ray Meyer, Don Brown and all the other

Denham Hill, truckstand (or 50-50 in freestyle lingo), Leeds, UK. Ph. Reece Leung 31

freestylers of that time. And I just thought it’s constant movement, constant chances to develop tricks and constant ways to create new combos and lines and that’s just what got me into it – just the creativity I suppose. And then from there did you get a special freestyle board? How did you source that? Well I started off with standard street popsicle boards, and I’d get a lot as hand-me-downs when I first started out, so I’d try to kind of sand them down or try and plane them into a better shape. But then I got in touch with Yoyo Schultz over in Germany, a freestyler of old, and he sold boards from a company called Decomposed so I started riding those. They were all freestyle decks and freestyle wheels and trucks, because of course you need narrower trucks as well. And after a couple of years Tony Gale, who is another freestyler in the UK and a mate, got in touch with me and he said that Moonshine, who are a vert company, they were starting to make freestyle boards and wanted to put together a team. So I got sponsored by Moonshine, and I now get all my freestyle gear through those guys. Can you tell us a bit about the freestyle community? Does it have its own isolated culture? Isolated kind of… It’s almost a separate tangent. The way I’ve always seen it, if you are on four wheels and on a plank, then everyone should make the effort to support each other. Since the early nineties freestyle has gone really underground. The community around it now is super-tight. There’s never any beef and everyone’s just a decent human being. It’s a great little community, but I think some freestylers alienate themselves further by showing disrespect for street skateboarding by claiming ‘it’s all the same’ and all this. But in my opinion we’re all on boards and we should be able to bounce ideas off each other. Being a freestyler you do get the piss taken out of you a little bit by street skaters. But that’s the same with everything: it’s a different approach and sometimes people don’t get that. Freestyle has probably gotten more respect now than it has done previously particularly with Instagram and social media platforms. So do you pay attention to what goes on in the rest of skateboarding? The whole reason I skate is because I absolutely love skateboarding and I love it in every form it comes in. Freestyle is my passion, but I do like to catch up on what else is going on in the skateboard world because I work for a skateboard coaching company. I do like to keep on top of everything that’s going on purely because it’s a mutual respect thing as well. Who are some of your favourite skateboarders? Pierre Andre, Don Brown, Terry Synott and Keith Renna are my big freestyle influences. I suppose my favourite current freestyler is Tony 32

Gale from the UK, also Mike Osterman. In terms of modern or public eye skateboarding, Ben Raybourn I’m a big fan of. Also (Rodney) Mullen and Daewon Song. Can you make a living off freestyle skateboarding? One of the most frustrating things for freestylers is you could be the best pro freestyler in the world and you’ve got about the same status as a professional Yo-yoer. You see all the guys in Street League and whatever and of course they’re able to make good money off sponsorships just for doing what they love doing. And that’s mainly because of that scene of skateboarding now, that common facet, which most people relate to – whereas with freestyling, you can’t really make money off it, even if you’re a top pro. The only person that has these days is Killian Martin, who rides for Powell. I think the only way of doing it these days is combining freestyle with street. And what do you think about Rodney Mullen making that crossover decades ago? I think at that time I respected his decision to do that, because you do have to move on and progress with things. However I think, and I’m not trying to call anyone out on this, but one thing that I think a lot of the freestyle community are frustrated with is that Mullen made the crossover into more street skating and then didn’t really do anything to support freestyle for the subsequent twenty years. So I think a lot of people are kind of bitter about that. I don’t mind, people can skate how they want it doesn’t bother me, but it would be nice to get the same recognition and the same validity as any other skateboarder. Just ‘cause you skate freestyle, you shouldn’t be cast out like a social leper! (Laughs) Do you wish freestyling would be featured more in the big mainstream magazines? I think it would help out. Some of these guys are so talented, creative and miles ahead of anyone else in the scene that they deserve some press and recognition. It would be nice to see freestyle skateboarding written about a little more… On the flipside, the freestyle community is pretty tight. Everyone’s quite happy with the way it is, but I think people would prefer the opportunity to get out there a little more. How many freestylers are out there? The problem you have with freestyle is that every freestyler thinks that they’re the only one. There’s just not many around, but in the UK we’ve got a pretty good scene. Do you guys have events where you get to see each other? Yeah we do meet-ups and we have jams every now and then also we do demos at NASS festival every year. And then we go on road trips to comps in Europe and stuff. There’s maybe like nine or ten really common faces here in the UK, but for every one of those there’s probably another two or three that are kind of hidden away thinking that there’s no one else that does it so they won’t come forward. It’s still very underground. What about the rest of the world’s freestyle scene? You can probably get glimpses now via social media no? Is there anyone who is really pushing it out there? Yeah there’s a fella out there in Romania called Maris Constantin who needs to be far more recognised than he is. He’s basically built an entire freestyle community in

his country. He’s like a massive celebrity over there and no one else seems to have really heard of him. He pours everything into trying to get the kids out there to skate; he does fantastic work. So you see a lot of guys coming up in Romania at the moment. Guys in Japan have always had a pretty solid scene and in the US as well. In the US they do competitions a little differently over there, but they’ve got some really talented skaters. So what’s the biggest misconception about a freestyle skateboarder? There’s so many of them! (Laughs) Shin pads, headbands and really, really short shorts is a pretty common misconception. Also that we’re a bunch of anime-loving nerds who still live with our mums when we are like forty years old. Those are probably the biggest two, but at the end of the day most of us just completely love what we do and we just want to keep progressing and hopefully try and forge some kind of career out of it – whether that’s giving back to the community through coaching or through the merit of being a decent skateboarder.

How did this passion progress into you going to international competitions and stuff? When I first started going to longboard competitions I was never super focused. Like I didn’t really train or watch my diet or anything like that. I’d just be taking it easy, drinking, smoking… But then right after I finished University I placed fifth in one of the top races and thought to myself maybe I’ve got the right physique for this or something. So I decided to give it a proper shot and quit my job to just skate. I did a year of living off the money I’d saved up and focused everything on competitions. I was living off the money I’d make from the competitions, selling some product… It was tough; there was no partying or anything. In fact it was quite a sad year now that I think about it. But it ended up paying off. You live from your passion now right? Where exactly does the money you earn come from? Sponsors? Winning competitions? Well I receive a little salary from each brand and I get money from my government. How does that work? In Brazil if you’re in the top three of any international / global ranking then the following year the government will support you by giving you 500 dollars a month for a year. These competitions also have prize money right? Yeah some of them do but these days it’s never very much. Right now is probably the weakest the industry has Carlos Paixão – 28, Maringá, Brazil ever been… We’ve really reached the bottom, but at least the only way to go is up! Arthur Derrien: How did you discover Damn. skateboarding and at what stage did you decide to focus It makes me really sad… These days all companies on longboarding? care about is riders that don’t wear protections and film Carlos Paixão: The first time I stepped on edits with them from cars that are driven right behind them, a skateboard I was nine, but I stopped soon after it’s super dangerous… that when I broke my arm. Then I didn’t really get In traditional skateboarding ‘style’ is one of the things back into it until I turned eighteen and discovered people care about the most. Is it the same in longboarding? longboarding. Straight-away I loved being able to Yeah everyone has their own style and it is go super fast and do mad slides and stuff. something we look at. I’d say my style is an athlete’s style I So there hasn’t been a point in your life when guess. I can push harder than anyone, tuck faster and I’m you’ve focused on ‘traditional’ skateboarding? always clean. Brazilian style you know? Not really no. I’ve always done it a little bit Like it’s often generalised about Brazilian street but it’s never done the same thing for me as skating? longboarding. I mean I can kickflip and stuff but I Kind of yeah. There are three of us that are always think I just wasn’t made for street skating. I’m at the top at the moment, we call ourselves the Brazilian really tall, quite heavy and I have really bad knees storm. (I tore both my ligaments). All this makes it hard So in your eyes what’s a good style in longboarding? for me. I’m a racer. For me the best style is the one that And right now you’re currently considered the wins – the fastest style. It’s funny sometimes I feel like I’m fastest skateboarder in the world? an animal that being made to race on a track, I really give it Yes, in a competition in Canada I recently everything I’ve got. became the fastest rider in the world. Can you tell us a little bit about the culture there is How fast is that? around longboarding? Are there many magazines, videos, etc.? 137km/h. I’d like to add that there’s a guy Magazines that only focus on longboarding? We in the United States who claims to be the fastest. don’t have many, no… Although in Brazil we have a cruiser He made a video where he’s supposed to be going magazine that’s probably the number one source for 143km/h but it’s not in the context of a downhill skateboarding in South America right now. But competition. I think he was trying to send his data that’s about it. A lot of the time when I tell people outside of for the Guinness Book of records; we’ll see what Brazil that I’m the world champion of downhill they say… skateboarding they’re a bit like ‘downhill what?!’

The Longboarder

So is Brazil the place where this kind of skateboarding is the most popular? Yeah I think it is. Do you pay attention to what goes on in the ‘traditional’ skateboarding world? Yeah a bit… I watch Street League. But I’m more into bowl and stuff, like I love watching Pedro Barros. I think I prefer that to street skating just because you can really feel the speed. In fact, I’m actually going to skate a bowl myself tomorrow. Really? Do you go in there with the longboard or do you have a normal board for that? No I use a normal one. It feels a bit small for my feet but I can use it. In a lot of places, like in England for instance, being a longboarder is seen as ‘uncool’ by a lot of traditional skaters. Is that something you’ve ever felt? It’s because they don’t have real hills in England. If you see a longboarder there of course you’re going to think the shit he’s doing is super boring. Like ‘this guy thinks he’s going fast?’ Where I live there are huge hills everywhere and being a longboarder is like being the pilot of a race car or something. When people ask us what we’re doing with all this equipment and we explain that

we’re going over 100 km/h down hills they’re shocked. Sometimes they even ask to follow us in their cars and realise they can’t keep up. It’s very different. The adrenalin rush I get from this kind of skateboarding is so much more intense than when I ride street. If I can’t go down a hill, it just gets boring… Do you have a pro board? Yeah it just came out, it’s called the black mamba. It’s a good name because if you’re in a race with me you don’t want to get bit. Do you ever wish downhill longboarding wasn’t so underground? That the industry was bigger, that more people would do it, buy more boards… I just wish it could get into the Olympics. If street skating and bowl skating is getting in there I can’t see why this couldn’t. It’s so easy to enjoy and the rules are really clear: you’re not allowed to touch each other on the way down and it’s the first one that gets past the finish line that wins. I guess the main difference with bowl skating / street skating is that you can’t just put us in a stadium, you need a 4000-foot mountain. We often hear people say that street skating shouldn’t be in the Olympics because it can’t be reduced to a bunch of obstacles in a skatepark/stadium. It’s funny that your kind of skateboarding REALLY can’t fit into that format.

Carlos Paixão, São Paulo, Brazil. Ph. Luciano Lima Jr. 34

What’s the biggest hill you’ve bombed? I’ve just come back from a 16km race, which was probably the longest race I’ve done. That’s a long time without stopping when you’re going that fast… What happens when you get to the bottom? Really long powerslides? What’s a powerslide? You know when you try to brake by turning ninety degrees to slow yourself down with the friction of the wheels. What you mean a drift? Yeah we just drift when we get to the bottom. We use our hands and slide until we slow down.

The Slalom Skateboarder Olivier Noël – 52, Paris, France Thibault Le Nours: Can you tell us how long you’ve been skateboarding? Olivier Noël: I got my first set-up in the seventies for Christmas. It was a Rollet… How did you discover slalom skateboarding? I’ve been slaloming since 2007, when I joined an association called RIDERZ. I was getting old and I could feel that skating transition and parks was getting too hard for me… Slalom skateboarding felt more accessible, less dangerous. Do you follow what goes on in current skateboarding at all? I regularly watch videos… I’m also a collector; I’ve got over 170 boards dating from the seventies until now! Who are your favourite skaters? I don’t have any single favourite skaters. I never have… I do have favourite teams though. I always loved the Alva team and the Dogtown team. Is style as important in slaloming as it is in traditional skating? No. There are a lot of dudes that don’t have great styles but are able to go really, really fast. That’s what counts. A great style is always a treat for the eyes but at the end of the day it’s all about the stopwatch. Are there still slalom pros? There have been slalom pros since the seventies and yes, there are still some to this day. How many people do you reckon slalom in Europe? I’d say about 350 in the Europe and 700 in the world? We’re probably between eighty and ninety in France. A few French dudes are killing it actually! Like Vincent Tanguy, he came second at 35

the Giant Slalom world championships this summer and turned pro. What exactly do you mean by turning pro? Can they make a living from slaloming? Not really no… Even the ones with pro-models all have regular jobs on the side. They just get free gear from their sponsors and a bit of budget to go to comps. Are you happy that this subcategory of skateboarding is relatively niche at the moment or do you wish it was more developed and received more media attention? I’d like it if slaloming got a bit more attention to be honest… It all revolves around competing but we still manage to keep it really friendly and have a great time! Plus it’s always an amazing feeling when you do a good time because you know that your results will be passed on to the international federation of slaloming who then update the rankings on the site. Regularly checking each other’s rankings is super fun. The only downside is how expensive the gear is. Like a complete is between 350 / 400 euros because the precision trucks we used are finished by hand and can cost up to 250 euros. It’s probably also because the front truck and the back truck aren’t the same… To you what’s one of the main misconceptions people have about skateboarders? That skaters are rebels! Those days are long gone! Some skaters even think they’re rebels themselves but they get their board, their trips and everything paid for by shops or big companies. In the eighties it was not the same I can tell you that! Skaters used to be alcoholics, drug addicts, etc. You don’t see those personalities in the magazines anymore; they’re all squeaky clean. That’s probably linked to the influence their sponsors have on the media more than anything don’t you think? Because

Ph. Thibault Le Nours

I know a lot of skaters that could fit into what you described above… Nah it’s changed, now they’re all wearing super tight jeans and spend most of their time taking selfies and showing off their brand new Vans. Skateboarding’s lost its rebelliousness. Half the kids in Paris just walk around with skateboards under their arms because it’s trendy again here…

The Vert Skater Rich Lopez – 47, San Diego, USA Will Harmon: How did you discover skateboarding and what was your first board? Rich Lopez: I discovered skateboarding at fourteen with my twin brother Sanford. Our older brother came home with a skateboard so we wanted one. My first board was a Sims Lonnie Toft board, but I didn’t really take to it at first. It wasn’t until 1986 and seeing the Bones Brigade videos that I really got hooked. We built our own quarterpipes and learned to skate that way and then finally a few vert ramps popped up where we could get to within an hour or two’s drive. At Cheap Skates in Pennsylvania is where we met Sean Miller, Tom Boyle, Barker Barrett and Bam Margera. That really opened up skateboarding for us and we realised it wasn’t just us that were doing it. So was it fairly early on that you decided vert skating would be your main focus? Yeah it was always vert. I’m not really good at street so I’m not drawn to it. I do like watching Street League, even over pool skating, which I don’t enjoy doing or watching. I’d rather watch street skating, but I really suck at it. Who are some of your favourite skateboarders and why? One of the first guys I ever watched on a vert ramp was Jay Henry; he stood out. Watching him I realised that’s what I really wanted to do, even if it takes my whole life of struggling, I thought ‘I wanna do what that guy’s doing!’ And of course from the videos there’s Christian Hosoi, Steve Caballero, Tony Hawk, Grosso and all those guys. Then there was Jeff Jones from the East Coast. What’s more important to you in vert skating: style (like Christian Hosoi) or technical ability (like Tony Hawk)? I personally like watching the style and amplitude guys and that’s what I try to do. I like to pick up as much speed as possible and go as high as I can. Foot down to the pedal and just go and see what happens! Vert skating isn’t covered that often in mainstream skate magazines. Do you guys have your own magazines or is there a separate forum where people go to talk about vert skating? There’s all kind of groups on Facebook and that’s the main way I stay connected. Magazines are few and far

between and hard to find. Facebook and Instagram I’d say are the main ways to stay connected. Is there a main dude at the moment? Like some vert skater everyone is talking about? Not really. Every now and then someone pops up out of nowhere… For example this kid Clay Kreiner freaked everyone out at the last Vert Attack as he was killing it with no pads. He came onto the scene hot. Back in the day most skate teams always had a vert guy, but maybe not so much anymore. Are there special skate teams now that hook up a lot of vert skaters? There are a handful of teams that do. I think Moonshine and Green Issue are really standing out because they give vert skaters pro models. I thought it would be cool to do a video like ‘Moonshine versus Green Issue’. They are the two really strong vert teams. Who are your sponsors now Rich? I hope I can get all of them in there… OK I skate for Moonshine Skateboards, Independent Trucks, Bones Wheels, Randoms Hardware… I just recently started riding Steve Steadham’s shoes… Um, 187 pads and no clothing sponsor or anything. Can you solely make a living on being a vert skater? Yeah it’s possible, but it’s weird. It depends… Some guys do and some guys are on the other side of the fence thinking: ‘Why am I not making tons of money or any money at all?’ Contests definitely have a lot to do with it and for the past number of years the energy drink companies have been interested and are throwing money at it. Other companies see that and they latch on to that. I don’t want to call it luck, because it’s not, it’s a lot of hard work, but there is luck involved. It’s kinda like being a real good guitar player and if you don’t go to the right spots you might be just stuck in your basement the whole time. It’s where you go, who you know and all of that, which really does help. Do you think there are a lot of underground vert skaters? There are, but I don’t think too many. It would be cool if everyone could somehow be involved in a way where you don’t need a side job or thirteen roommates. Realistically there’s a handful of guys that are super comfortable and then there are guys who skate their asses off that gotta go an do another job, but that’s how that works. How about yourself, do you make enough money off skating or do you have a side job as well? For me it comes and goes in waves. For a moment I was super comfortable; my plans for when I was done with skating were to kick my feet up and smoke cigars and just chill. Then the money stopped coming in and I spent all my money I had

Rich Lopez, backside air, San Diego, USA. Ph. Dan Sparagna 36

in savings and I was like: ‘Holy cow!’ As a hobby, which helped spend a lot of my skateboard money, I got into RC helicopters. That helped burn a hole in my skateboard money, but then I actually got fairly good at it and I was able to do demos and stuff like that. So I was able to get an RC helicopter sponsor who helps me out with all the parts and stuff. There are demos, kind of like skateboarding, called ‘fun fly’ events and I get paid to do those as well. That’s sick! Double sponsored! Yeah the skateboarding demos are rare for me these days. I rarely get that phone call these days; it’s all the younger guys that do it now. I did that for eight or nine years straight, so I wasn’t that upset to accept that the younger guys were coming through. That’s real life right there. Yeah that’s the reality. The other thing I’m stoked about is that I feel like, when I pad up and skate, I still feel like I’m nineteen or twenty years old. I’ve never felt like ‘OK I’m almost fifty years old, no more 540s…’ or something like that. I feel the opposite: ‘I’m almost fifty, time to learn a new 540!’ I’m almost fifty years old so maybe I’m thinking I could have a second wind like maybe some kind of, I don’t know some kind of Viagara drug where it’s like: ‘hey this guy’s almost fifty, maybe we should hook him up!’ Do you wish vert skating would be featured more in the mainstream skateboarding magazines? Yeah I think they should. I thought about ‘hey why don’t I just do my own magazine… It can’t be that hard,’ and just do one all vert. I think someone should do it; I would definitely buy it. Just every page a full-page picture of just vert; not even half pages, just straight up full pages because it’s so fun to look at. OK Sam Beckett told me this story, and he said one time you guys went to a vert ramp and you said it was too small, it was an eleven-foot, and you refused to skate it. Sam said you love a thirteen-foot vert ramp. Is this story true? Yep. It trips me out that guys like him (Sam Beckett) are good on any ramp and are able to adapt. I think to myself ‘how do they do it?’ But I think the way that I do airs I would seriously get hurt. I don’t know; it’s weird. What’s the biggest misconception about vert skaters? You all push mongo? Ha. There is one for sure… I bet everyone assumes that if you ride vert or even skateboard then you listen to Slayer and Metallica. I think Slayer and Metallica are a bit too old and soft. Some of my friends listen to really mellow stuff. When I hear it I’m like: ‘how do you… Even I thought you guys listen to Slayer and Metallica!’ (Laughs)

«AT TRAP E R AU VOL» A P H OTOGR A P H Y B OOK B Y E L E M E NT A DVO CATE FR ED MO R TAG N E AVA IL A BL E N OW O N : E L E M EN TBR A N D. CO M

Maxi Schaible Interview Torsten Frank Photography Florian Hopfensperger

Maxi – it’s hard not to have a good time around him. I’ve hardly ever seen him in a bad mood. You could lock him in a room with some stranger and chances are pretty high that they’ll end up being buddies after a couple of minutes. Next thing you know is that he is crashing on the guy’s couch somewhere in the southern hemisphere. He will never say no to a journey and somehow always makes it happen no matter how broke or busy he may be. If life gives you lemonade, trade it for last minute tickets to Mexico – the Schaible principle. – Johannes Schön When did you tell your football coach that you’ll quit because all you want to do is skateboard? At first I didn’t have the guts to tell my coach that I wanted to quit and just skated after practice, even after the games we had on Saturdays or Sundays. And at one point I realised that football just isn’t as much fun and the people were a bit weird, while skating was so sick. Was there one key moment where you thought: ‘Fuck soccer, I’m a skater!’? Not really. There was no key moment. I come from Pfalzgrafenweiler, which is a really small town close to the Black Forest and I always felt like an outsider when I went skating after practice, but after some time I decided to quit. All I wanted to do was skate. What was the first skate video you saw and was there one skater that had a really big impact on you? The first one I’ saw was Yeah Right! I was so stoked on Brandon Biebel, but at the same time I really liked Jamie Thomas and people like that. I just soaked up everything. Every skater was sick to me, even all the guys from Stuttgart that were in the Hall 11 video. So messed up, it was sick. And what triggered you to leave that small town as a skater and what was the first big skate crew you got involved in? At first I only skated with all the guys from neighbouring villages and from time to time my parents took me to Stuttgart where I bought the Hall 11 video and realised how rad the spots and the people were over there. Later I went there with a couple of friends as well, but the first people I really got in touch with here were Daniel (Wagner, photographer) and Fabi (Gering) who Daniel lived with. And the photographer kind of took you by the hand? 40

Yeah, that kind of came along with it. I was always skating with his roommate and then he asked me if I wanted to go shoot a photo and it all took off from there. Patrick Zentgraf: Hi Maxi, I have a question for you too: What about skating and travelling is special to you? When I think about travelling I always have to think of this one moment where I was at the airport in Frankfurt and thought: ‘Man, one day I just want to grab my board and fly somewhere to skate there.’ That really stuck with me and every time I’m at some airport I remember this. It’s just really appealing to move around apart from only looking at spots. I always like to look at the cities and taste the food. The wish of travelling somewhere with my board has been there from the beginning. Can you name five places you went that made a big impression on you? Going to Barcelona for the first time made a huge impression on me, but I’m sure that’s the same for everyone who goes there. Mexico was just as exciting. Everything in Asia is always interesting too, even when you go to the same cities twice. Myanmar was really rad because the people are concerned with other things than skateboarding over there. What’s really ordinary to us is very special to them. The most important thing is to have fresh water and survive, which is standard for us. But I can’t really pin it down to one destination because every place I went had its own fascinating sides that made me want to discover it. You also have a job and went to university. How often do you skate a week and how do you manage it to go on two or three big trips a year? That’s what’s really cool about people like Patrick (Zentgraf). We always try to push each other and just went to Barcelona together for example. And we try to go skate every day. Sure, some days you’re really tired but then we motivate each other. Back in the day I always went to the indoor skatepark on my own, which took me two hours and I think it was the same for Paddy (Patrick Zentgraf) in Krefeld. Maybe that’s why we appreciate the skateparks we have right in front of our doorstep now. When both sides are down and we push each other to learn new tricks it works perfectly. Concerning the trips I just wanted to do them and wasn’t some geek who did everything in the usual six semesters. I took my time but there were situations where I came home from a trip and had to take an exam the next day. But I tried hard and put a lot of effort into it. Before I was going on trips I’d do as much as possible to clear my head and when I got back I had to gun it again. I guess it’s a combination of discipline and good planning. Oliver Merkelbach: Oliver here, I’m the head 41

of Beast Distribution and Maxi’s employer. I can only say that Maxi is really on time and very disciplined. I’m still a student actually because I have to re-write one exam but I’m already helping Olli. Thanks to him I’m able to earn some money next to skating and have some freedom, which I wouldn’t have if I was working at a supermarket checkout. When I’m on trips I still have my laptop with me and try to help out as much as I can though. Since we just talked about travelling and working – what do you have planned for next year? Um, at the moment I don’t really plan too far ahead. The next trip I’ll go on will probably be to LA in December. I’ll meet some people there, maybe Denny Pham. I have some places in the back of my mind though. Paddy and I were thinking about going to Sicily again and we would really like to film a clip together. Are you working on any projects right now? We are working on the Arrow & Beast promo and we also thought about doing some clips for Spitfire or Thunder because we both ride for them. But that’s not for sure. Basically I have no plan further than January. Patrick Zentgraf: Does your body still feel all right after all these years of skateboarding? Yeah, it’s all right. I mean stretching and to look after one’s self is super important. I’m not getting fucked up five times a week. But I still feel fine. DVS went through a big change in the past couple of years. How long have you been with them and how’s your status there? The support is still super good. The communication works perfectly which is super important to me. Everything is on time and the shoes are good so I can’t really complain. It’s not one of the major players but I don’t really care. I also heard that Kerry Getz wants to do some fresh things as team manager. Most of the people only have the big corporate brands in their mind because they have the highest budget and so on, however I can’t complain. Going on all these trips would be impossible without DVS. When I’m in LA I’ll probably stop by at their office and meet some people too. Patrick Zentgraf: Who knows, maybe I’ll also come to LA. Yes please! You mainly skate in Stuttgart. What are the advantages and disadvantages? The city itself is fairly small but the scene is really big. Arrow & Beast is really close, which is cool for Patrick and me. Kamil or you are always down to film and there’s always something going on. And we have the new indoor park called Stuttpark; it’s so perfect. I think people in other cities would cut their hands off to have this park close by. And when it comes to spots? Sure, I’m always down to skate spots in other cities but it could be worse in Stuttgart as well. We have a bunch of downhills, all kinds of spots and it’s a cool city. And what other German cities are your favourite? For this interview I went to Munich a lot because Burny (Florian Hopfensperger) lives there as well. It’s really underrated that city; they have so many good things there. And Frankfurt was also a big surprise to me. They have sick spots as well. When one thinks of Germany you 42

always have Berlin or Hamburg in mind, but Frankfurt has a lot to offer too. The cities in southern Germany are really close to each other. I mean Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich are all only a two-hour-drive apart. So you can do a one-day trip to other cities, which is basically impossible in the States where you have to drive two hours from one spot to another. For sure. Burny and I did a one-day trip to Frankfurt, shot three things there and went back. Speaking of el rojo loco. How was it like to shoot with him? The interview came about kind of spontaneously because I shot three things with him and he sent them to Will (Harmon). But I think it’s cool when you shoot an interview with one photographer so the different styles don’t mix up. I was lucky to work with him because I dig his photography. What do you like about his photography? He’s a good photographer on one side but also a big skate rat. He’s always sending me pictures of spots where we could go and this motivates me. It’s the third interview I shot with him and he’s always pumped. When I look at his photos they look like he has learned from Helge Tscharn. They are technically and perfectly executed and they’re really sharp. He’s also not afraid to use the fisheye. He’s open for every kind of photography and always down with new people. He always says that raw skateboarding is the most important thing to him. Meanwhile we have become really good friends. Patrick Zentgraf: Have you filmed all the tricks you shot with him as well? Some of them we just filmed with an iPhone, you know how it is, but most of it will be in upcoming clips. These days everyone has a crew – what’s yours? My crew? I don’t know… Paddy, Sandro, Olli, all the guys from Arrow & Beast. I’m openminded though.

Backside tailslide, Nuremberg

Wallride gap out, Frankfurt

Frontside bluntslide pop-out, Munich

Backsdie Heelflip, Los Angeles

Backside overcrooks, Glessen

Fakie 5-0 grind, Long Beach, USA

Ollie, Mannheim

Pupecki grind, Frankfurt

Ollie up, gap to backside lipslide, Wetzlar

Backside 180 fakie nosegrind, Munich

Ph. Reece Leung

Hiroki Muraoka, hippie ollie, Tokyo

Ph. Esteban Velarde

Andrew Verde, fakie 50-50, Alcobendas, Spain

Ph. Davy Van Laere

Jonas SkrĂ¸der, wallride, Amsterdam

Ph. Samu Karvonen

Teemu Korhonen, kickflip, Tallin

Ph. Henry Kingsford

Kyron Davis, wallride frontside crooked grind, Glasgow

Ph. Clément Le Gall

Vincent Milou, backside nosebluntslide, Elorio, Spain

Ph. Bart Jones

Sam Beckett, backside smith grind, Louisville, USA

Casper Brooker

Interview by Jacob Harris with Arthur Derrien & Kyron Davis Photography by Sam Ashley

Casper Brooker is a young man of many talents (skateboarding, trou...) but there’s one activity he particularly excels at: pinting. This means that although he’s relatively shy, getting him to open up and give an insightful interview was a lot easier than expected. All we had to do was find an environment in which he felt safe (Wetherspoon’s), surround him with people he loves and trusts (fellow pint sinkers), and it was only a matter of time (lagers) before he started sharing some his most exciting tales of success (often involving urine) – a true inspiration for generations to come. – Arthur Derrien Arthur Derrien: Casper, maybe just start by talking about Southbank and growing up skating there… Jacob Harris: How old were you when you first went there? Casper Brooker: I first went there when I was twelve I think. It was like an Emerica Wild in the Streets thing, and I was only allowed to go because all the older people from my local skatepark who were allowed to go to London on their own were going, so I was allowed to go with them. I thought ‘oh my god this is so sick’, I’d seen it on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, and I was just so stoked I was like ‘oh that’s the 7 set!’ I remember I tre-flipped the 7 into a bank and won a pair of Emericas and then I just skated around for hours non-stop. JH: How long had you been skating for? I’ve been skating since I was eight. Kyron Davis: We’ve been skating for about the same amount of time. Yeah because we used to go to Bay together didn’t we? KD: Yeah I started when I was seven and you’re a year older than me. JH: You two are from a slightly different generation of PlayStation skaters, from like me, Tom (Knox) and Daryl (Dominguez). 64

KD: I remember seeing you one time like, do you remember the handrail, and like me and you were just hyping ourselves to jump on it and I was like ‘fuck skating it,’ you tried to do a crook but you fully sacked yourself and barrel rolled? That was one of the first times I saw somebody in real life, like take a proper slam. I remember that clearly; I remember what shoes I was wearing. My feet were really far off the floor; I was tiny then. AD: Back to Southbank I guess… How often do you still skate it? Well now I don’t really like it that much but I still go there quite a bit. The scene down there has kind of changed – there’s always been like little rude boys there selling weed and stuff but this whole generation who started skating there, have just kind of cool guyed it, they’re all nice enough but they’re just not so into skating – there aren’t so many people there skating every day. It used to be that I’d finish school on a Friday, I wouldn’t have to text anyone, I’d go down and there used to be loads of people there skating or sat by the river. The Friday night sessions would be amazing – I was too young to go to the pub so I’d just go to (Jack) Brooks’ house and eat sweets then go back at ten the next morning. But yeah I don’t skate there as much but I do enjoy it when I go there. AD: Tell us about trou. Who’s been killing it on the trou front this year? Do you actually want to know about trou? Funny how this has become a thing… Nik Stain’s got the steeziest trou. Well it all started from when I wore those skin-tight jeans. It became like an obsession: I wanted my jeans to be the tightest – I’d go with my mum to Topshop when I was really young and try and get really particular ones and cut them and sew the bottom up. It started from that. A little bit later on my legs were getting way too big for the really tight

trousers. Then Leo Romero became my favourite skater so I’d try to get the same Levi’s he had – but I didn’t have the same leg shape so I’d lose my shit wanting my jeans to look like his… Then I got a bit over trying to dress like Andrew Reynolds and Leo Romero and saw everybody around Slam wearing Dickies and stuff like that, and then I looked at old Heath Kirchart footage and thought those trou are the best… AD: And then they got wider and wider until… Yeah now I can’t wear below 36 /34 and I put them on and think ‘do I want these any bigger?’ Then I look in the mirror and already look ridiculous. It’s a big obsession. Almost like an illness. Not that my trousers are especially amazing, just you know, I have to have three pairs of this certain colour so I can have them for this amount of time and if I get over them I can keep a pair and put them back… JH: Recently you’ve been using trousers as a way to commit to tricks… AD: What like ‘I need to get a clip in these trou’? No, no, just like when it’s hard to get certain trousers and they’re quite expensive I don’t want to fall over and rip them straight away so I have to commit. The trou thing is a deep-rooted problem that will never go away. KD: I didn’t realise how deep it is for you. JH: Yeah I’ve had to bring out spare pairs of trousers when I’ve come to meet him filming. I would place you in the sort of broad category of quite neurotic skateboarders. Oh yeah for sure. JH: What other sort of rituals do you have around filming, or just skating in general? When filming I definitely lose my mind a little bit – I talk, chatter to myself and make a lot of false bets that nobody is going to follow through on. The other day I was trying something over a road gap and I couldn’t quite get my head around it; I was flipping the board up with my feet, trying to catch the board, not really doing it, tapping my board on four flowerpots and counting to four in Spanish: ‘uno, dos, tres, quatro’ then as I came around the corner I would scream. KD: It makes sense though. If you have a little ritual it can help. Yeah if I do the ritual once then it becomes what’s going to get me through and I can’t change it – it’s like if I’m trying a trick I can’t take my beanie off halfway through or I might not land it because something has changed… Definitely in that category. AD: On the topic of you being a neurotic skateboarder, what also happens is that you are so absorbed that sometimes you let stuff you wouldn’t normally say slip. Can you tell us about the tre-flip over the handrail story? 65

of that.

Yeah that was really bad I’m not exactly proud

KD: Didn’t you call the geezer a cunt? Yeah… There was a motorcycle that’s always there so we moved it a bit. So the guy who owns it comes back he was working on the construction site next to the spot, and he’s obviously a bit… JH: He was a big fucker! He’s like this massive Irish guy and has a wonky eye and scars on his head. Looks mental. And he obviously knows what we’ve done isn’t that bad, that we’ve done it out of courtesy not to hit is bike, but he just says ‘OK. Have a good day. Just leave please. Now.’ At this point he’s obviously holding in his fury and having a hard time doing it, you could tell he was about to burst. I was pissed off because I just wanted to do it – we walked past him leaving and he was on his phone just like ‘blah blah blah skateboarders’ and I just let slip ‘ah you cunt’ and then as soon as it left my mouth I was like ‘oh my god’ he stood right up and went for me and there were six or seven of us but nobody was going to stick up for me because I’d been the worst guy ever. So I just had to stick my arm up and apologise loads like ‘sorry sorry sorry!’ It was just me being fifteen again; it was embarrassing and a big mistake. A real shame. JH: That guy didn’t want blood, but wouldn’t have been able to help himself. AD: I think you’re probably not the only neurotic person on the Isle team… Going on an Isle trip is definitely an experience that I don’t think many people would really understand… When we’re all together we all egg each other on. Nick: massive tweaker really over-thinking everything and going from super quiet and withdrawn to hyperactive and Chris, who doesn’t stop talking and knows he doesn’t stop talking and drives you mad. Tom, with coffee crust around his mouth, who nobody can understand ‘cause he’s just babbling and Sylvain, who seems the most balanced in the whole situation, but I’ve seen him like in Barcelona when people were throwing eggs at us while he was trying a trick and he lost his shit running around making ape noises screaming at them in quite a serious way. Jon’s the only one on the team who can smoke weed and not have a mental breakdown. It’s just an odd bunch of people who get put in a van together. JH: Since we’re on the topic of neuroses tell us about night terrors. I started getting night terrors when I was quite young. It usually occurs with kids from 7–12 when your body is growing and you’re not rested enough and you get stuck in a certain stage of sleep but I got it quite late. It actually happened once when I was sharing a room with Kyron (Davis) in Berlin during a summer Bright trade show (loads of booze and stuff). KD: Oh shit yeah! I’d come home early that night and Kyron walked in and I’m coming to from a night terror screaming at him, eyes blank and screaming, I come to and I’m so terrified. KD: It’s like you were trying to fight someone. You were kicking your legs, the covers were off, everything was off; you were just flailing.

You just burst out laughing. KD: I just panicked because I was so shocked at the situation. Also yeah I did find it pretty funny. I think the situation you want me to talk about (Jake) is at my ex-girlfriend’s house where I half had a night terror and then started sleepwalking. I was slapping her head a bit and started grunting, and sort of got up and was screaming a little bit – I was completely naked bumping into walls and getting angrier and angrier and then I went upstairs and pulled all these different coloured cloths and towels and made a den and was screaming while doing it – I’d pulled plants from the other side of the room, got these pig book holders that I had to get on my tiptoes to get and put them as what I would have thought would be guards to the den? I have no recollection of it, but I can definitely manoeuvre a lot when it happens. KD: What did she do? She locked herself in the bathroom. I woke up just completely naked shivering in my ‘den’. She was fuming with me but then found it quite funny that I had no idea what had been going on. It was quite funny, there was a lot of order to what I’d made. JH: Have you done any sleepwalks recently? Yeah, well if you don’t laugh you’ll cry. I went out with Arthur, Chris Jones and some other people in Peckham. I took myself home because I was a bit pissed, it wasn’t that late but at about six in the morning I came to as the sun was rising and I had my arm on the bed and my legs diagonally across the bed and was holding myself up… and I was urinating on my laptop. I’d rather not talk about it in an interview, but at the same time I’m not embarrassed because I have no control over things like that and I know some of the other things my friends have done... I have a friend that pissed on his wife’s phone a few times. Not just once, a few times. KD: I pissed myself in Scotland the other month. I did it in Paris! KD: Haha oh yeah, the best story! Me and you were in the room and you were like ‘shall I wear the white trousers or the black trousers?’ And I was like ‘obviously you’ve brought the white trousers for a reason, wear the white trousers’. We get back and it’s like me, Vaughan… Korahn was in there because he’d nicked my charger, Jacopo… KD: You were just in there sat there with the covers off just laying on your back and Korahn was just like ‘hey look at Casper!’ and we could just see it (the pee) spreading there down your legs, haha. I was so happy I got you to wear the white trousers! It’s not me being a wasteman though! My brother does sleep things all the time. I told my dad about the night activities and he just said ‘that’s not the worst thing you’ll do, it’ll get worse with age’. 66

JH: Growing up in London there’s a lot of famous skaters about, who did you used to look up to and has this changed? When I first started coming to London and Southbank when I was twelve I met Fos and he became a massive influence on me. Before that I’d watch Flip and Baker videos and then I watched Heroin videos and I was like ‘well that’s sick too!’. Then at like sixteen I got really into the Emerica thing and all I wanted to skate was handrails like Leo Romero and Heath Kirchart and I didn’t really take any notice of British skating. Then, at seventeen I’d go out with Holdtight (Henry EdwardsWood), Snowy, Joey, Nick and Chewy and stuff and I re-watched Lost and Found and was like ‘this is great.’ When you’re younger you just want to watch Geoff Rowley hit his face on the floor then get up and do the trick. Then a bit later you appreciate Scott Palmer skating Hull in an England Rugby top. I started to appreciate seeing Chewy (Cannon) skate Southbank or seeing Nick do that nollie-cab grind at St. Paul’s. When I saw it I was like ‘OK I’ve never even thought of doing a nollie-halfcab on flat before.’ JH: What was behind the transition from Heroin and Emerica to Isle and Nike? Rumour has it Reynolds was really psyched on you… I love Fos forever; he was such a big part of my life and is a sick dude, but I was getting to an age where I didn’t want to wear a monster on my t-shirt. I just grew out of it; you change all the time. With Emerica, just after that 2013 UK tour with Oscar (Candon) and (Tom) Knox and Rob (Maatman)… AD: You did that noseblunt! KD: Everybody was talking about that noseblunt at Mile End! ‘He slid the whole thing and then grinded round the corner!’ At the time it was like the best trip of my life, but looking back it was kind of the American guys, then us guys... And they were so nice to us but you know… I’d quit Heroin and Isle was happening and I’d had a call with Timothy from Emerica and he was so nice and he wanted me to film for this video (I guess it would have been Made?) and I just knew I couldn’t do that; it didn’t seem natural. How I was changing it felt right just to switch everything up. Around that time also I got my first girlfriend and I hadn’t done all that stuff before plus I was working a lot and just got a bit bummed out on skating. I still loved it, but I felt kind of over it. KD: That’s what happens though: when you get a bird your priorities just entirely switch up. You lose time and… It just happens to everybody. Especially when you’re nineteen and it’s kind of late, you just think: ‘oh my god this girl wants to have sex with me?’ I remember Knox having a word with me... KD: He’s done that to me too! He’s come up to me and had a word with me like ‘Ky you’ve got to do this, that or that.’ So now, when I have a question I will ask him. What was the question again? Oh yeah, well at the time I remember Percy (Dean, former Emerica Europe TM) told me they wanted me to come to Texas and I was really hyped but I’m a skateboarder from London, I just can’t keep up with how those boys skate. It was never a money thing.

JH: Why do you top up your Oyster card £5 at a time? I hate the travel system so much: TFL, Southern, etc., and I know it sounds so stupid and it just wastes my time, but I feel like if I put £5 on I’m giving them less money. I feel like fuck you I’m only putting this much on and I’m going to try and skate home. I am shooting myself in the foot a lot with it. JH: You’re not from London you’re from Purley. Purley is ten minutes away from Croydon; nobody knows where Purley is. There are three spots there: the metal mini ramp in the park, the mini ramp in my garage, and the NCP car park that is the car park for a gym. Well there’s the Tesco car park you can skate Sunday evening that (Paul) Shier used to skate. (Jacob goes for a cigarette) AD: Tell us the best and worst thing about living with the person ( Jacob Harris) you’ve spent the year filming a video part with? Well it’s not just a year, I was filming Vase too and I guess he’s the person I spend the most time with – one of my best friends. There have

been some tensions but nothing that’s not been sorted, but never anything that big. We’re very different but both very stubborn and that can clash; I think we’ve done really well to maintain things. I fucking love Jake; he’s wicked at what he does. I find him difficult sometimes and I know he finds me difficult sometimes but what relationship doesn’t have its ups and downs? AD: Maybe you can talk about filming for the Isle video. I remember you had a hard time getting into it, has this new part been any different? Well at the beginning of the Isle video I was in a weird way with my feelings about skating, but then I eventually did want to film for it. I went through almost the same thing with this part too... We started going into the summer and in the summer you feel like you’ve got all the time in the world and the pressure is low. AD: You’ve probably had a pretty similar summer to me just going to infinite events where you don’t do so much skateboarding but a lot of drinking. Coming back from that to winter and a deadline must have been harsh… Well you know what I do actually enjoy, especially in the past few weeks, the pressure that winter puts on you. Whether or not I’ve lived up to that pressure is another thing, but you do value the time you can skate way more in the winter. As much as it grinds me down, I do like it.

Backside smith grind, Manhattan. Ph. Alex Pires 67

Backside 50-50 transfer, Bermondsey

Gap to nosebluntslide, Bloomsbury 69

Ollie, Clerkenwell

Bluntslide kickflip out, Southbank

Ollie up, frontside shuv-it, Southwark

Kickflip, Nablus, Palestine 74

Ollie the first gap, impossible the second, Tate Britain

Smith grind, Blackfriars 77

Ollie over the rail landing on the pad, Brooklyn. Ph. Alex Pires

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Gronzisland Words Vincent Jugnet Photography Roger Ferrero

Around the same time last year Max Géronzi, Seb Housset and myself went on a little trip to Gran Canaria to film for his pro part. Upon arrival the holiday vibes were instantly felt and after a few Gronze grams the trip was dubbed: Gronzisland. Given last year’s success we decided to make it a tradition, only this time we picked Mallorca and had JB Gillet and Youness Amrani join us on the adventure. One thing you need to know about Mallorca is that it feels like a giant holiday resort, which means that when the tourists aren’t in town (which is most of the year) it feels extremely empty. Some of the cities like Magaluf are even entirely made up of bars, hotels and nightsclubs for tourists, which means that they’re rammed in the summer but are complete ghost towns otherwise. Those are the ones we’d have the most fun cruising through, as you can literally skate everything from restaurant terraces to shop fronts without having to deal with locals getting pissed off. 82

The only downside is that the island isn’t ageing very well. A lot of the street furniture looks battered and all the dream spots from the videos we used to watch are now falling apart or now covered in cracks. Even the legendary Feixina with all the small hubbas is looking pretty rough these days: the ledges are getting rounded and marble benches are broken… In fact that spot took JB out for virtually the whole trip. After trying to redo a line he stuck on a ledge and went flying back first into a curb, leaving him wriggling and moaning of pain on the floor. It sucked. That being said, up to that point the plaza had treated us well and we’d still managed to get a fair bit of footage from it. It’s when the storm kicked in that things really started slowing down… On the fourth day the weather went from blue skies and crystal clear water to freezing cold 70km/h

winds, and the shit thing with strong winds and skating is that unlike rain, you still feel like the day isn’t a write off. You still drive to the spot you’ve been talking of skating every day for the past week, only to realise once you actually give it a proper shot that there’s no way in hell you’ll be able to film a trick. It was quite demoralising… One thing you can count on when you go on a trip with Max is that he’ll come through with the untouched Google maps spots. Obviously these don’t always work out but during one particular hungover laptop session at the flat he struck gold: Aqualand. Just a few minutes away from our place was a huge water park with slides and all sorts of stuff to skate. Check @gronze’s post from the sixth of November, we couldn’t have dreamt of a better way to shake the hangover! To conclude, even though (as you can probably tell) the weather wasn’t exactly on our side, we still managed to make the most of our time on the island. Max kept us all hyped, JB kept us in good spirits, Youness skated his ass off at every single spot and poor Roger somehow made it through ten days of our French nonsense.

Max Géronzi, Backside kickflip. This spot is right outside of Mallorca’s famous cathedral. It’s currently being entirely renovated so you aren’t really allowed to circulate around it. We had to find an alternative route through tiny streets and climbing railings. We ended up skating the spot just a few metres away from the workers that probably built the spot… 83

Max GĂŠronzi, Switch frontside 180. Max found this vest in the car and kept it on all day pretending he was managing a construction site. As you can see he ended up skating in it topless, an attire he stuck to all the way to the restaurant and the bar where we spent the evening.

Youness Amrani, Switch backside tailside. We ended up spending a lot of time at the plaza simply because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relatively sheltered. After a few good slams and almost decapitating that kid with the glasses and headphones Youness landed this switch backtail whilst being gently splashed by the fountain water that the gusts of wind would send his way. 85

Youness Amrani, Frontside feeble grind. This oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in Magaluf, one of those towns I mentioned that seems like it was solely built for tourists. It was of course completely deserted at this time of year so it was great for skating, but like many spots on the island it was in pretty bad conditionâ&#x20AC;Ś The rail itself was perfect but the thin tiled run-up was battered. 86

Max Géronzi, fakie ollie frontside bluntslide. This plaza’s legendary, we’ve been seeing it in videos forever. Who wouldn’t want to film a trick on that mini hubba? Max landed this fakie front blunt in a few tries.

Kevin Bækkel Interview by Will Harmon

I’m still friends with today. I would always fuck around and bark at the hotel, because I can bark like a dog really well. People in the hotel thought there was a dog running around and I kept doing it at the skatepark too so all the people that I met Kevin Bækkel briefly last summer, we didn’t speak much, but what I remember most I’m really good friends with now (like Jared) came up to me is the sound made by the smack of his tail after and said: ‘You fucking kidding me, that’s you? We seriously thought it was a dog running around!’ And then we just performing a head-high Madonna. I’m guessing other skaters at the various European comps this became friends after that. past summer know that sound too: Whaaack! Yeah Jared said you’d bark like a dog because you It certainly gets everyone’s attention. So besides couldn’t speak much English… Yeah I couldn’t speak English at all basically, so knowing that he’s from Norway and his loud Madonnas I didn’t know much about Kevin before I was just fucking with them. Then I started hanging out doing this interview. The CPH guys (William and with them and we went to Hooters and I got kicked out Keld) told me Kevin always hangs with Jared of there for barking at a waitress. (Laughs) Cleland and Alexander Risvad in Copenhagen No way! Yeah. But after that I would come out to the States and they would be good people to ask to get some to hang out with those guys to skate and film. I’ve been background info. After some Instagram messages and an email later Kevin’s long-time friend Jared, doing that every three months ever since. from California, helped me out with some And you always go to California every time you go back? interesting Kevin anecdotes. Yeah I either go visit Jared or (David) Gravette. Right now I’m in Santa Cruz and I’ve been here a lot lately. And how did you hook up with Creature? Can you tell us where you grew up and how you were first introduced to skateboarding? Way back when I was thirteen I think David Kevin Bækkel: I grew up in a town called Gravette and Eman Guzman came and did a Vox demo in Hamar, Norway; it’s about an hour away from my town. They were like the first pros I’d ever seen in real life. I got hooked up with Creature in Norway after that and Oslo. I got into skating when I was nine years old. then I went and met those guys again in the States and they I’d go to the skatepark with my bike, and I’d see all the older dudes with skateboards and I thought introduced me to the rest of the team. it looked rad. I hear you’ve had problems at customs entering What do you do in regards to skating the US before. I’ve just been there so many times for three due to Norway’s harsh winters? months, then I leave for three months, come back for three When I was super young we didn’t have an indoor park in the winter. We’d just skate months and so on so the customs people would always stop outside in parking garages and stuff like that, but me. They couldn’t understand what I was doing. I was just then a couple years later we got an indoor park. coming there to skate and spend money basically. I always had a free place to live so I didn’t have a problem with But we’d always just gear up in all kinds of jackets staying there a long time. So many times Jared has been and pants and just skate outside. Our grip tape would fall off and shit… If you had a new set-up waiting for me at the airport and he’s had to wait like two you’d better watch out. Your grip would just fall extra hours because I’ve been in all these gnarly interviews off it was so cold. in little rooms with these gnarly American cops. They were thinking I was there illegally or some bullshit. Can you tell us about your first time going Do they think you are there to work or something? to the States? My first time in the US was for the Volcom What do they think? Wild in the Parks contest. I won the fourteen and They think I don’t have money when I come. They under European thing so they sent me to Arizona think I’m going to stay over my visa and not leave after three for the final. So I flew out to Phoenix and Axel months because I’m always on a tourist visa. They usually just don’t believe what I’m saying and then I have to (Cruysberghs) and his mum were on the plane and then at the contest is where I met all my homies that convince them. 88

Aren’t you spending a lot of time in Copenhagen? You had a video part with Jared in the Danish video Hitit. Yeah I’ve lived there (CPH) for a year and a half. Well, I just gave up my apartment there, so I don’t really know where I’m going now. Why did you pick Copenhagen to move to from Norway? It’s the best city in the world; I love that place and my dad is Danish so I speak fluent Danish. Half my family lives in Denmark. Jared told me to ask you about the two homie videos you were in out in LA: Disorganized Fun and Goosenectar… Yeah that was the first time I really street filmed. Yeah it was crazy, I came out to California and everyone has VX1000s, cars and the crew was like twelve people deep. We’d drive to all the famous spots and I had never done anything like that. I’d filmed a little bit in Norway, but nothing like that… It was a whole different story. You went on the most recent King of the Road, how was that? Any crazy stories? I did, but I can’t really talk too much about it because I signed all these gnarly contracts because it’s going to be on TV. But it was the best time of my life! It was the funnest thing I’ve ever done. OK so I don’t know if you can answer this or not, but did you feel you had to be over-dramatic to make the King of the Road episodes better? Is there pressure for that? No it’s just like how it is… It’s super mellow; there’s always a TV crew with us. But they don’t make us do things or make it gnarlier than it really is. Jared says to ask you why you went to Brazil last year? Oh my god… (Laughs) I got a phone call from this dude who was trying to put together a Norwegian team or something, but I didn’t really hear too much about it. He just called me and asked me if I wanted to go to a bowl contest in Rio and he’d pay my flight, hotel and everything. I’d never heard of this contest or anything, but I was like ‘fuck it! I’ve never been there. If it’s all free I’m gone!’ So I get there and I don’t even know what to call it, but I was on a Scandinavian team. It was me, the skater, a BMX dude, a marathon runner, a mountain climber and a surfer and I’m like ‘dude, what the fuck?’ So we all have to do our own contests and my team did pretty good, like all the other dudes, and then on the last day I had to do the skate contest so I did that. And then an hour after that they’re like ‘OK now we are going to have a team race.’ I’m like: ‘what do you mean team race?’ And they were like: ‘Yeah we are going out to the beach, we’ve got to paddle and canoe for like twelve kilometres.’ 89

What the fuck? Yeah, against twenty other teams from all over the world. What is the name of these games? It’s called a Rocky Man. Look it up it’s crazy. So were there any other skaters there you recognised? Yeah there were some. I don’t even remember they were all like Brazilian Mega-Ramp skaters. They were gnarly, but I don’t remember their names. That sounds weird. Yeah so after the 12km paddling there was a twenty-minute break and then we had to run twelve kilometres. Hahaha… Yeah as soon as I flew in to Brazil and I got to the hotel I was smoking a cigarette and they (the Norwegian team) come down and they’re like ‘no way! We got a dude that smokes on the team! Fuck!’ They were so bummed. They thought you were a professional athlete… Yeah they were like ‘this man can’t run for shit.’ But we ended up winning the entire thing though! It was crazy. So did you have to wear some type of uniform? I can’t imagine you running 12km in Dickies… Yeah I had some shorts and some crazy green tank top thing. There are some funny photos somewhere… Yeah as soon as I got there I wanted to leave; I was so over it. So did you do anything else in Brazil or was it just this competition? Louie (Lopez) and the Converse team were in town so every night I would just go meet up with them and go drinking and partying. What did your other teammates think of that? They were bummed. They would go to bed at like 8pm and wake up at five in the morning. I’d be out partying and come home at three or four. But you guys still won the whole thing! Yeah it was insane. They tried to make me do it again this year, but I was like ‘hell no’. You skate a lot of comps… Do you love ‘em? Or do you just skate them to win money? Sometimes they are fun and sometimes they are the worst things ever. I skate them basically to just make

Ph: Noah Quale

money, as I don’t get paid from anyone. I skate them to just get me through the winter basically. I don’t really care that much, but every time I skate a contest I try my hardest. Who are your sponsors now? Creature, Emerica, Indy, Mob and DAF. What is DAF? DAF is a coozie company. You know, the beer holders. Yeah! The guy I’m staying with, Noah, he’s filming the Creature video, and that’s his company: DAF Made. I have a friend here who loves coozies (Guy Jones). I kept the same coozie for almost two years in my back pocket. It’s so old, dirty, broken and just smells like old beer, but it’s my little lucky coozie I always have. Sick! So what do you have lined up for 2017? The Creature video is coming out in April. We might go around the US and show the video. But then I’ll do basically what I do every year in Europe: go to Copenhagen, go to all the little contests and skate all around Europe. I always come back to Europe for the summer. Europe in the summer… It doesn’t get much better than that! It doesn’t! OK anyone you’d like to thank? I want to thank my family, all my sponsors, and all the homies you know who you are! Smokes!!!

Frontside wallride pull-out, Estoril, Portugal. Ph. Pedro Raimundo

Frontside boardslide to fakie, Los Angeles, USA. Ph. Cameron Strand

Frontside 50-50 grind, Los Angeles, USA. Ph. Cameron Strand 93

Boardslide through all the kinks, Carcavelos, Portugal. Ph. Pedro Raimundo

Frontside air to disaster, Suvilahti DIY, Helsinki. Ph. Keke Leppala 97

Noseblunt pull-in to 5-0 grind, Lisbon, Portugal. Ph. Pedro Raimundo

Backside boneless plant, LA suburbs, USA. Ph. Cameron Strand 99

Endless Light The French Vans team in Seoul Photography Loic Benoit Words Jin Yob Kim

Sunday, three in the morning… Like a sleepless idiot I look out the window of my apartment. Tired light posts are illuminating the sidewalk. A drunken guy is drawing zigzags, his legs too slow for his head. Probably pushed by a deadline too. The neon sign of the corner store offers no help. He barely catches the green light as exhausted cars are lining up at the junction. Funny how there’s always someone up in this city. I’ve been living in Seoul for about five years. I decided just now to say five, because it feels like I’ve been saying four for almost two. So five years, give or take. It’s the same way with skating. I’ve been skating for fourteen years for three years now. That’s three determined kids turning pro back-to-back. Anyhow, the point I’m trying to make is that I’ve been living here long enough to make people believe I know my way around. Which brings us to the beginning of the story. And I like to start stories at the beginning. One fine day at the spot, about three months ago, I met my friend Quentin – French by heart, Korean resident by choice – and he told me that he talked to his friend Loic from Lyon, who works with Vans France sometimes, about bringing the team over. I said, ‘Sick! Who’s the team?’ and he answered, ‘Ah man, you probably don’t know any of them.’ Then, not too long ago, I got an email containing a detailed plan about this trip, including a list of names. In fact, it contained pretty much only that list and some flight information. And guess what, except for Joseph and Joaquim I didn’t know any of them: Valentin Bauer, Victor Pellegrin, Nabil Slimani and Yeelen Moens.

The Team The first time I met them I had to go find them. Their rented home was in the cuts of Bogwang-dong, a forgotten part in the centre of the city. I checked my smarty smart phone and found a bus-to-bus connection there. The first encounter is 102

always awkward; thank God Jibs and Mook were there. Then Val came out. He offered his hand and smiled. I shook it gladly and said, ‘Hey man,’ and he nodded back. Then he took a step aside and started stretching. I imagined he was a quiet assassin on vacation: shaved head, washed out black denim jacket on white corduroy pants, you know, super friendly but lethal. Nabil was a no doubt skate kid grown into a skate man. Those textbook frontside flips that people have in mind when they learn them… He does them. His ripped pants showed half a cheek and the first thing he said to me was, ‘Do you think these shoes look too big?’ Victor was a bit of a surprise. He came out and greeted me as if his entire purpose of visit was to say hello to me. He’s a bundle of positive energy, like a whole month of sunny days. Yeelen I remembered from his wallie crooks at Euston Station in Öctagon. I felt an instant connection to him, because he’s from Belgium (and I’m from Germany). I think we talk similar. Loic is a beast of a man, always ready to

snap. He was the team manager and still shot sniper. He pulls his camera bag with a tattooed hand. The first time I saw him he looked like a part-time gangster on his way to work. Joseph didn’t change much, I think. He was still the same architect-vibe kind of mate, always keen on finding that overlooked spot around the corner. And Joaquim; he’s an absolute pro at what he does, an organised machine with feelings. One time, he rolled down the street with all his gear and when he got the speed wobbles I thought he would transform into a car. This guy, I wish he had his own ministry or something.

Café Stop That was our crew. Eight days with a bag of mixed nuts. Quentin once told me that the French are French wherever they go. I probably answered something like, ‘Yeah man, same with Koreans.’ But on the second day, when I got off the bus, which is right in front of this coffee shop, I understood what he meant. The exit door opened and what I was supposed to see was a yelling old lady, carrying something on her head, and some uniformed kids going to school. Instead, I saw a bunch of French guys sitting in the sun, smoking cigarettes at non-smoking tables. I thought I got the wrong bus, this looked like Place de la République. But then an old lady came yelling around the corner and I shot back into reality. I got used to the Frenched-up meeting spot over those days, but I still think it’s funny. The French are French everywhere.

The Formula Seoul, capital of South Korea: I fucking love this city. Its core has a population of over ten million people who live and work in twenty-five districts. It has so many urban centres (financial, historic, touristic, etc.) that its landscape offers endless possibilities for a skateboarder. It’s impossible to know all the spots that appear and disappear on a daily basis, which is why I was being careful earlier when I said I knew my way around. The thing is, on the way to a spot you have in mind, you might pass half a dozen other little spots. It all depends on what you skate. If you feel most comfortable on vert ramps, then Seoul might not be the best place to visit, but the city is a Mecca for ledges, stairs, gaps and hubbas. The first spot we went to was near the river. It’s got a little bit of this and that, and I thought it was a good one to warm up at and see what the guys were into. Victor and Nabil found a tricky ledge and got interested, Yeelen played around with some stairs, Val did a difficult nose-bonk and Joseph 103

committed to a tall fifty on top of a round metal bench. After every try a group of picnicking high school kids would twist and shout to support him. Funny thing is, the one he landed perfectly left them completely unimpressed. Well, he proved great showmanship. The first couple of spots made it clear that this crew was so flexible that the best way to cover as much ground as possible was to pick one spot that’s a sure shot and hit every alleyway and every big building on the way there. But, what made this trip flawlessly productive was Joaquim’s visual direction. He knows what he wants before he leaves the house. And so we went from district to district, or from image to image, and basically hit the whole city in just a week.

The Good Every city has certain spots that you can just go and skate at any time. Seoul has some of those too, but the majority of our destinations were crowded public places or protected private properties. Of course, that didn’t stop us from going, but, you know, it complicates things. One of the good things in Korea is that most people leave you alone if you leave them alone. Sure, street skateboarding itself is a predatory action by nature, which makes a lot of people react in a survival kind of way, but once you show them that you’re only having a good time with your mates they often come around. At one spot, for example, a random hop over rail with little lighted bars at a parking lot, Joseph said, ‘There’s a guard whose booth is right next to it. Maybe we should just ask him?’ So we went there and asked him if it was all right to skate here for a bit. He said no, but I sensed a little room for negotiation. I complimented his rail and told him I had some friends from Europe who are really fond of it. It would look great in a photo, maybe even end up in a magazine. They’re professionals so, nothing to worry. He gave us ten minutes and the boys went to work. Nabil ollied the thing a few times and prepared for a backside oneeighty. Then he launched his board into a light and uprooted it from its mounting. Our ten minutes were up by then and the guard said, ‘Okay, that’s it. You’ve got to go now. If it was my place I would let you skate, but I just work here and I can’t risk my job.’ He examined the light. Difficult, I thought. I mean, he had a fucking point there. Fifty years old, supervising a parking lot that isn’t his, what’s he gonna do if he lost this gig? We pleaded for one last try and actually won him over. We set everything up for a last shot. Unfortunately, Nabil didn’t land it, but that’s not the point here. The point is that not every kick-out must end with mayhem and destruction.

The Bad And busts we collected like rich people count their money. After a couple of days we had so many that I regretted not keeping track of them. Most of them were pretty good. Sounds odd, but let me explain. In most cases we had a certain amount of time before someone came out, which

gave the guys enough tries to get their tricks. Sometimes we had to push for one more go or two more minutes, but even then, the guys are so great that they usually landed their tricks and all was good. We shook hands with the system and everybody won. Other times though, we got into beefy situations where the chemistry wasn’t quite right. One day, we went to the area around Seoul Station. There’s a spot that sounds rosy in theory but is a really quick affair. It’s got large marble cylinder blocks off a four stair set, one of which Joseph decided to get a frontside nosegrind on. Soon the building security came out and pointed their walkie-talkie antennae at the wax marks. In this case, there was no point talking to these people, but the trick and the spot were too good to walk away from. Stubbornly, the suited men would stand in front of the obstacle. What happened next was an unspoken agreement amongst conmen. Val quietly prepared a Miss Daisy by redirecting foot traffic to secure Joseph’s getaway, while Victor pulled a Jim Brown on the other side of the spot to get the security’s attention. This granted Jibs another try. He almost got it, but security was pissed now for being fooled. One guy got on the phone, and a moment later they walked away. It looked like he had called the cops. Joseph executed a perfect nosegrind on the next try. Everyone packed up in a split second and we moved on before we saw any trouble.

The Ugly Here’s the thing: as much as I want to promote the city, the fact is that a lot of the spots in Seoul are weekend spots. One day, in the middle of the week, we went to a financial district called Yeoido. We found a ledge to mini rail combo on the side of a street. Luckily, nobody reported us and Val and Yeelen both got some tricks. We were in a good mood then and moved on to the next spot, a nice set of ledges. Victor was flirting with a line when out of nowhere a guy appeared and started shouting and pointing at him. It’s hard to describe what happened next, but at that moment good old Victor reminded me of what happens when you put a Mentos in a coke bottle. Another time we went to an old merchant district not far from City Hall. It’s got a crowded little square that a lot of delivery guys use to park their motorcycles on. On the side, there are long granite benches, separated in length by a small but wide up-ledge pad. Nabil was trying a smith on the bench to pop out onto the pad. Whenever his board rolled away, it hit the stand of an old lady who had camped her goods on the side of the place. Victor was trying an ollie up the pad to quick front blunt transfer on the back of the bench. His trick was no threat to the lady, but it was certainly disturbing her radar. Nabil’s board hit her one too many times and she flipped out. She went berserk on us, which is interesting, because Koreans are generally rather composed people, utterly resilient and very aware of other people’s gazes. Not her though, she was fucking mad and grabbed Nabil’s board. She had her fists up in the guys’ faces and was screaming blue murder. Well, fortunately Victor had already landed his trick and I can’t wait to see the footage. Sorry, old lady. 104

The End There are tons of other stories from this trip, all great memories, but I’m already exceeding the word count I’ve been given. The team was here for eight or nine days, including only one weekend, and it’s still a mystery to me how we got so much stuff done. I skipped through the photos from the trip a hundred times while writing this article. And even now, at three in the morning on Sunday night, I look out the window of my apartment and think, C’est ouf, man.

Victor Pellegrin, ollie up to frontside bluntslide transfer

Yeelen Moens, crook bonk 105

Nabil Slimani, frontside 180 kickflip

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Joseph Biais, nosegrind

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Previous: Val Bauer, frontside 50-50 grind

Victor Pellegrin, frontside smith grind pop in

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Nabil Slimani, backside 180

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Joseph Biais, ride-on 50-50 grind

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Nabil Slimani, backside 180 kickflip

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Niilo Nikkanen Interview Samu Karvonen Photography Justus Hirvi

Niilo is well known in Finland and I’m sure some of you’ve heard about him too. He doesn’t live in Helsinki, which is the capital and the epicentre of skateboarding in Finland. For a long time it was said that if you want to ‘make it’ in the game you have to move there. The Internet and especially social media changed that and it doesn’t really matter anymore where you lay your hat as long as you’re in this new worldwide playing field. And I think it’s great because without the Internet who knows if you’d be reading an article about a skater who lives in a city called Kouvola. Yeah… Google it! Hey Niilo, where are you at? Niilo Nikkanen: Having a coffee in a place called Betony, in the centre of Kouvola. What have you been up to lately? I heard you twisted your ankle? Unfortunately yes, a few days ago in the indoor park. I kicked the board away but ended up half stepping on it perfectly the wrong way. Is it bad? Not too crazy, but it’s the same ankle I broke a year ago in Bangkok. Yeah I remember this. How was it to deal with it in a foreign country like Thailand? Eventually in the hospital it all worked out pretty smoothly with Bryan (Callaghan) helping me out. The crazier part was to get to the hotel from the spot that was about an hour away. We took some random motorcycle ride to the train station while bumping my ankle here and there on the way. I waited in the hotel for a few days to see how bad it was, but after I realised I still couldn’t put any weight on it I had to go give it a check. And what about this time? Did you go show the ankle to a doctor? Nah, it’s not that bad. Just chilling with it for a while. Safe. Weren’t you just somewhere in the south? A few weeks ago I was in Sicily with Farid (Ulrich), Kilian (Zehnder), Biemer the German photographer and Denny (Pham) but his heel was bruised so he couldn’t really skate that much. 114

Sounds a lot like a Nike trip? Well basically it was LiveLifeSkate / Bryan’s trip. He put it all together and got Nike to pay for it all. Dope! He’s kinda like a freelance manager and filmer for you guys. Exactly. He made it work super good. The tour clip is supposed to come out soonish if I’m right. Nice. Any other trips coming soon? We’re supposed to go to Alicante and Valencia with a few of my friends actually around this time, but maybe it’ll be in the end of the month then. Will your ankle be back in shape by then? I think it’ll be good in a week or so. How old are you? 24. OK. That explains the recovery time. Won’t be the same in five years believe me. I’ve always wondered how come you still live in Kouvola? You’re a well known sponsored skater but still you live 150km from Helsinki, where everything goes down. What’s keeping you there? Well we got a good indoor park here so winters are no problem. I got bunch of friends still skating who I started with, and I hardly ever stay here for the whole winter anyway. I’m always trying to travel to see the sun like every other Finnish person. And in the summer it’s not that hard to come visit Helsinki and stay at my friends’ places. True that. And the Indoor park you have is pretty massive compared to the city’s size and the amount of skaters. How did that come up? Well Roope Tonteri, a Finnish snowboarder who grew up here won the World Championship in 2013 and somehow used his position to help us to get a proper indoor park. Of course the city people were pretty proud to have a local world champ so they ended up paying for the park I guess. It was supposed to be called the Tonteri Arena or something, hahaha. Way to go! That’s how you do it. Yeah it’s really good. It’s mostly tranny though since Roope designed it, but there is still something for everyone. Does it ever get crowded in there? It’s not too crazy. There is a different time for BMX riders and scooters so we all get our own sessions there. It’s a part of this big ball game arena so the business is not fully reliant on the skatepark users, which is a good thing. Is there still the same course as in the beginning? Have you thought of renewing it one day?

There have been some talks about taking a piece of the floorball area next to the park and build one of these ski jump into a foam pit type of obstacles in it but I don’t really know if it will happen. Would be pretty sick if we could get that whole area and put more flat obstacles in there. Even if I wouldn’t live here it would be great to have an indoor park like that in Finland. I’m backing that up. It’s so big and good already that even some of us capital people are ready to make day trips there. On to a whole different matter: Do you still live with your parents? No, I now got my own little studio in the centre. It’s probably a lot cheaper than in Helsinki? Definitely! In here it’s actually possible to save money for the travels. So basically what you save from not living in Helsinki you use to travel south in the winter? Yeah, you could put it like that. So where do you get your money then? I was working at a surveying office, measuring lands and different areas for the city. So you’re the dude standing with an orange stick while the other scopes you with that weird binocular? Hahaha yeah, exactly that and sometimes it’s just sitting on a computer filling the maps with the data we gather for upcoming construction sites like playgrounds for example. Interesting. How come you got into that? Did you go to school for it? Not really, I graduated from business school studying data processing, which the only advantage to this job is few bits of software we use. My father’s girlfriend pointed this job out saying it could suit me. She knew some people from the office so it was easier to get an internship position from there. I never even thought about that line of business but eventually decided to give it a try. I worked there this spring, took of few months off in the summer and now I could go back there. So it suits your travels and skating schedule? Kinda. They are ready to give me an indenture position but I got to think twice if that’s really what I want to be doing next. Some sort of design studies could be interesting as an option, but we’ll see about that later. Well at least you got a place to return to if all else fails. Yeah, it’s a safe thing to have. I think the next step would be moving to Helsinki. But it is not that easy to get a place to study in there because everybody wants to be there. Then you’d probably need a job on the side to be able to study and live there… So when would I have time to skate then? Yeah. You would need to face some serious compromising. One thing I’m personally curious about is your sponsor situation. It’s now clear that Nike seems to be helping you out at least? 115

Yeah, Nike is helping me to go on all these tours and I’ve got some video incentives from them. That’s a good motivation to film. Back in the days photo incentives were the thing, but not in your case then? I don’t really know. I guess not. Maybe when this interview comes out. How was it to shoot your first full interview? Are you happy with the outcome? We got few shots in the spring with Justus (‘Jude’ Hirvi) and then my friend Jack (Thompson) mentioned he could edit a little clip of my footage for Free so we went for a few more shots. First I thought the photos were going for a web article along with the video but realised later it was going to be a full interview. I’m happy with every photo we got in the end. I really like Jude’s pictures and his style of shooting. Sure there are few things I wanted to have but never landed them. And I’m still missing a portrait. Got to get Jude up here to shoot one in the blizzard I guess, hahaha. Is it snowing in there? Yeah. All white. Not in Helsinki? Nope. All black. Outside hockey rinks are open though. Didn’t you play Hockey too? Not really. Just with friends here and there. I snowboarded and skied but just for occasional fun. In school I liked playing floor ball compared to other subjects, but never on a team or anything. I never liked being in one place at a certain time doing a certain thing. I like the freedom to choose when and where. Sounds a lot like skateboarding to me. You mentioned there will be a video part dropping with this interview? Yeah. Jack is editing a little Desert clip of my footage. What’s Desert? It’s a friends small hardware brand from Barcelona. All right. Cool. Definitely. It’s funny that I started filming in Kouvola without knowing where it’s all going to end up and now Jack, who hasn’t filmed any of those tricks, will edit it. I’m interested to see how it’s going to look. You have a history of filming and editing too so you probably got some sort of a vision of how you want it to look? I have been filming and editing these ‘Dirty connection’ clips with my friends for some years so yeah I guess I could be a little strict of how things should be edited. Or maybe not strict but I mean if you’re doing something why not do it good? I think Jack will send me some previews and we’ll look into it together. As long as you get along with the editor I think it’s all fine. Back to the sponsor issue: What’s up with Perus? I haven’t got any boards for awhile and I’m not really sure what happened in the end to be honest, but I know the crew is still there ripping hard and Pirkka (Pollari) has been doing some edits and stuff. So yeah, that’s about it. So where do you get your boards then? From Ponke’s the shop and Jack just sent me a box of Desert boards. Even though they are a hardware company they did some boards too. Stoked on these. And what about LRG? Are you still on? Last year we did this big ‘Let the kids play’ tour but this year it has been pretty quiet. No budget apparently.

It’s on but not. Can’t really say what’s up with that either. But I heard the ‘mixtape’ we’ve been filming for few years with the euro guys should come out before Christmas. There should be parts from every one of us. So there should be three different parts coming out of you in the near future? Hopefully yeah. Well that Sicily thing is more of a trip than a part. I hope Nike pays attention to this ($$$)! Hahaha. Yeah. I’m personally waiting for that LRG clip the most. We’ve saved some good clips with them from over the past few years. Would be nice to get them out since some of the footy is getting pretty old already. I know the feeling. Two years is still OK. Though these days a lot of shit needs to be either live or viral the minute after. Yeah it’s getting crazy. But if you got really good stuff I don’t think the footy really gets old in the end. I guess it’s a matter of the spot for example. If it’s your local plaza you’ll probably outdo your stuff from last year, but if it’s a special spot you won’t be returning to anytime soon then the footy can hold its breath for a little longer. Yep. A lot of that stuff is from Croatia but some we filmed in Helsinki the summer before. So for the past few years you’ve had a couple of different projects going. Do you arrange or swap footage with different filmers or are you just happy that whoever you film with then that’s where the footage will end up? Usually it goes to who ever filmed it. When we film with our own cameras or other non-HD cameras it ends up on some of our own edits. HD clips are usually more out of my reach and I can’t decide where they will end up. Which one you like more HD or SD? SD but it also depends on the spot and the filmer. I’m not too picky about it. I have some ideas of what spots looks good with what camera. Like maybe save the crustiest spots for VX or something. But sure you can film anything with any camera. Some stuff just works better with the other. So what’s your future plans? Alicante and Valencia, what’s next? Yeah, maybe continue to Barcelona from there. No return ticket. Stay until I run out of money and then come back to the indoor parks. And what about the summer? No bigger plans yet. Sticking in Finland I assume. Maybe go visit Copenhagen or something. There’s no point in spending all your money in the summer. I rather save it to get away in the winter. Taking it a day at a time. At least I have that one job waiting if nothing else pops up. Sounds like a plan. Since it’s your first interview you get the courtesy of the good old THANKS here. Cheers for all my friends that have been out there skating and filming with me, especially Arttu Paloniemi, Sami Eskola and Aapo Olervo. Thanks for my sponsors for the help, especially Vaughan Baker and Colin Kennedy from Nike. Thanks to LRG’s Christian Welther and the rest of the Stuttgart boys. Ponke’s the shop. Cheers to Jack for the Desert boards and the edit! Moms and Pops and Jude for showing me all the special spots and making this interview happen. 116

Ollie up to backside tailslide, Helsinki

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Nollie inward heelflip, Kouvola

Frontside crooked grind, Espoo 119

Frontside 180 kickflip, Copenhagen

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Frontside smith grind gap out, Lahti

Frontside feeble grind, Helsinki

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Switch hardflip, Helsinki

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Kickflip frontside noseslide, Helsinki

Backside 180 kickflip, Helsinki 125

Ceremony & Party January 17th, 2017 Astra, Berlin

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