Photos by Jean Feil, words by Arthur Derrien.

One of the best things about skateboarding is its diversity. I can’t imagine there being another niche culture out there that offers such a wide spectrum of personalities. Do Sammy Baca, Wade Desarmo and Leo Valls really have anything in common other than the actual object they choose to have fun with? Well, not really. Their approach to skateboarding is so fundamentally different that it’s almost not the same activity. Yet they are all part of this same world, and I’m sure a lot of people would be able to admire all three of them on their individual merit.  Skateboarding wouldn’t be the same without the people who whole-heartedly dedicate themselves to a certain approach, and that’s exactly why interviews such as this one are so valuable. If someone has spent years unconditionally devoting themself to a vision, then they are bound to have a lot of interesting arguments to justify it. Leo Valls is a perfect example of this. His skating is the result of a thorough thought process and we are lucky enough to have him break it down for us.

Yeah I’ve been away quite a lot, I spent half of last year in SF, and then I went on that Magenta trip to Japan (featured in issue 109). After that I came back to Bordeaux for a bit and left again to go to New York… Now I’m back at home, in France, and it’s just rainy and cold. I can wait to get out of here…

Well my wife is American and she has to finish university in San Francisco, so we live there for half the year.

After we got married in 2011, I went to the American embassy to apply for a one-year tourist visa. The interview went really well and the immigration officer granted me a visa that allows me to go back and forth (between France and the States) as much as I want. The only condition is that I’m not allowed to stay in United States for more than six months at a time. For the moment I’m satisfied with the arrangement because I like coming back to France after having spent quite a long time out there. On the other hand, I’m not saying I won’t apply for a green card once we’ve decided where we want to live. Finding a new apartment every six months can sometimes be a bit complicated…

San Francisco I is a very pleasant city. Its hills, its architecture and its colours make it seem unique, especially from a foreign perspective. It’s a city where skating revolves around speed, control and simplicity. You learn to powerslide rather than push and to let yourself go. It teaches you to really enjoy how everything feels. Hill skating was quite common in the nineties, yet it seems to have gone out of fashion around the year 2000. I feel like it’s an aspect of skateboarding that should be developed. Even if the scene is quite divided, like in any other major city, it always felt welcoming. I feel well integrated and I’ve met some great people such a Ben Gore, Evan Kinori or Carlos Young…

Bordeaux, on the other hand, is a much smaller city; it’s quite dense. Its renovation, that started just over ten years ago, created a lot of new spots and with them came whole new generation of skaters. Its marble streets, its old buildings and its lights are part of its unique charm. These things are what I like about Bordeaux. They make it standout from any other city and they are the reason why it attracts so many out-of-towners. In a medium sized city with so many little spots, it’s easy to cruise around and let your creativity express itself freely.

I grew up in Bordeaux. My whole family lives there, along with my childhood friends and I know the city inside out. Everything is easy here, whether it’s skating or just going for a drink with friends. Vivien Feil even recently moved out here and has set up an office for Magenta. That doesn’t mean that I don’t feel like I need to be out of the city as often as possible, but Bordeaux remains my home no matter what.

I try to go to Japan every year. Throughout my trips, I got the chance to visit most of Japan’s major cities as well as exploring the countryside.

I also quickly became friends with some Japanese skaters; some of them even came to visit us in France. The bond we have is built from our common vision of skateboarding, a vision in which the aesthetic side prevails. Currently, in a time when the skateboarding isn’t going anywhere – in terms of technical progression, the Japanese are showing us that there is a lot still left to explore, from an artistic point of view.

Japanese culture is extremely complex and very difficult to grasp. Going back there is always an interesting experience. You learn a lot from these trips, and your return home is always quite thought provoking. Japan was deeply scarred by the Second World War and, as a result, after became very Americanised. Certain aspects of traditional culture remained, particularly those linked to art and craftsmanship – in Japan, everything has to do with mastery. Whether it’s martial arts, design, food, tea or skateboarding. The Japanese have tried to recreate American skateboarding, except it has been filtered by their culture. They produce their own interpretation of it.

I’ve been to Japan with Soy several times, he’s the one who opened me up to this side of skateboarding in the first place; he helped me understand the phenomenon. Not only have these trips inspired us, but they also gave us bearings, enabling us to compare the experience with what we were used to seeing. I strongly recommend whoever reads this to go over there and form your own opinion about the place.

I think that it’s important for each of us to try to understand why we spend so much time wandering the streets on our skateboards and how we can gain something positive from it. Turning pro really made me think about this, and I feel like it’s helped my vision of skating has mature over the last 3 years. For instance, I asked myself a few basic yet fundamental questions: how do people perceive what I put out? What is going to satisfy me and make me evolve? How can I offer something original, something that will help me standout?

I realised that if you take a step back and think about what you are doing, you can really give your skateboarding the direction you want. This reflection can help you get rid of certain rules you impose upon yourself, in turn allowing you to progress.

Being pro means skateboarding for a living. To be able to do that, your skating needs to interest enough people for companies to decide to support you financially. Right now, lots of pros and ams that are technically good athletes receive this support from major companies and it allows them live comfortably. I think this is a good thing.

Now, if we consider skateboarding as an artistic activity, then the clumsy concept of someone’s ‘level’ loses all of its relevance. I, for instance, find it appealing when someone’s skating has a unique aesthetic, something that really transports you into his world. This can be done through spot selection, by moving in a certain way, by speed, by rhythm or by trying to express a message. For example Bobby Puelo’s skating is the result of a thought process, just like Takahiro Morita’s or Gou Miyagi’s.

Now, let’s compare skateboarding to other artistic activities such as painting or music. Unless an artist’s technical abilities are ground-breaking, for his art to be of any interest/relevance to the art world, he has to make it stand out by offering a new artistic vision, by inviting people into the unique world he has created, by exploring new areas of his discipline. Where would painting be today if people had only explored figurative painting and its technical aspects? That’s why I think skateboarding becomes particularly interesting when it’s conceptual and abstract.

But sadly, it’s not an easy task as skateboarding is surrounded by this ‘extreme sports’ culture that makes people want to see skaters go higher and further etc. But I’m happy to see that, today, more and more people understand what we are doing, particularly with Magenta, so I thank them for their support.

These days everything goes live on the internet faster than you know it, the sheer amount of skate videos that come out every single day make it necessary for us to put out clips regularly. The aim of these short edits is to get people to pick up their boards and hit the streets as quickly as possible.

We pour a lot of energy and devotion into each of our videos, so it made sense for us to keep putting them out on DVD. We feel that it’s important to give some of our projects a material form, so that some of the people that are really passionate about what we do can possess the videos as objects.

By the way, our next DVD is going to be called ‘Soleil Levant’ (Sunrise); it will be longer than the previous ones and will feature the whole team.

Yes, it’s out of choice, it’s because the VX creates an atmosphere that suits our company, it allows us to give the skating and the editing a certain dynamic. That doesn’t mean I’m not open to any type of camera, it’s just that its easy too get caught up in trying to do something really tech, and forgetting that what your are doing actually has to have a direction, has to reflect a certain vision.

To me, the most important thing is to establish a real connection with the filmer or the photographer, making sure that you share the same vision; it’s the best way to have a coherent result. I need to have my say and even help with the editing, no matter how complex a task it can be.

I’ve always watched a lot of skate videos; I like to know what’s going on. That includes all of the videos that came out in the nineties; they influenced me enormously, as well as the recent super-productions that have come out since. However I believe that if you are really passionate about something, it is your duty to dig up stuff that’s less accessible, to search for that special something that was so hard to get a hold of, rather than simply enjoy what you can find anywhere, as it is inevitably destined for a more general public. If music is your passion, it’s unlikely that you’ll be into mainstream music.  It’s the exact same thing with skateboarding. A lot of underground projects are released every year, and they are exactly what I enjoy.

For instance, in 2012 Josh Roberts from Perth, Australia released ‘Domingo’ and Ryuichi Tanaka from Kobe, Japan released ‘Strush’. These are just two of the many creative gems that comfort me in thinking that underground skateboarding is still alive and well.

Photos by Sam Clark.

Frontside smith.

It was really strange, last year, in September I went to college for a few months, taking classes in Spanish. One of the days the teacher was strangely mad at me and told me, “Hey you, Mauro, stand up. Why aren’t you coming to the classes, I haven’t seen you the last week!” But the truth was that I was going to every single class and, because I was sitting in the back of the class being quiet, she didn’t notice. She also claimed that I was a spoiled brat that just came to class and did nothing, so I basically walked out the class, went home and bought the ticket to Barcelona and stayed there for 6 months.

No man! Not right now

No, I was kind of over it by the end, not [going back] for now anyway, too many sketchy people everywhere, gypsies fighting with Brazilian skaters at Macba for example. A city is normally good if you are with good people, in the beginning it was just me and my friend from Italy and we where sleeping in the kitchen of a friend’s flat so it was a bit boring at the time. But then when I found my own room and we started to hang out with Lars Griewe, Paul Labadie, Stefan Zanette and you guys, that’s when things started to get fun.

Oh yes, we did one crazy trip, it was me Sam and some other random guys that I didn’t know: 2 France men, 3 South African dudes, and Eugene from England, he only hung around for 2 days and then just left without a good bye or anything. I think he got paranoia from drinking way too much or something, the tour actually ended up being a beer drinking tour more than a skate tour.

Switch ollie.

I did a London trip with Nike and after that not much, some small trips here and there but mostly I’ve been back home in Sicily going to party’s at the beach because the heat didn’t allow us to skate, but then after the summer I had a couple of guys from Australia come to Sicily to shoot an article for the Skateboard Journal, that was pretty sick. The day they left Sam came over to keep on shooting for this interview, at the same time the Mofo crew from France came to get wasted too, and then the Italian Fallen team came down too and shot an article with Sam, so finally there was some good skating again.

No man!  I’m not lazy. I’m always saving up money to go somewhere. The last 6 years I’ve been all over the place, travelling by myself, exploring and meeting people.

I’m going to stay here until January to save up some money to go to the US for 3 months, I have these friends from Portland, Oregon, the sickest crew ever! They are filming for their new video and asked me to come out and get some shit done.

The first time I went to the US was a few years back, I went to study history there and stayed for one year. There were 2 Asian twins in my class and I could see that they were in to skating so I just started to hang out with them and they where a part of this crew; six guys my age and one filmed, all unsponsored and everyone skated so good, they’d go on crazy missions every day, they really lived for skateboarding and this made it feel like you weren’t on a trip with some big company with the pressure to deliver something. Some of these trips I’ve been on there has been some crazy-good trick landed and the rest of the crew didn’t really seem to care that this shit went down, but when we go on these camping trips it’s always really good vibes on the spot, backing each other up like real homies do, it’s like they almost want you to make your trick more than you do. I’ve never seen these guys freak out or get mad trying a trick, so when I go there I get really motivated to skate, it’s always such good times and far away from the feeling that you work as a skateboarder.

Early session for sure.

Backside smith.

Hmm, well that true I guess. I like to try to do my best in all fields, and it all depends what people I’m hanging out with at the time.

Cops man, it’s always-crazy stories with the cops here in Sicily. Skating is not too big yet, so sometimes the cops aren’t that bad. So, this day we were skating a school that you had to jump the fence to get in, after some time skating we could hear the sirens of the cop car, it was 3 cops and they starting asking us what we where doing and saying that trespassing was illegal etc. I started explaining we weren’t there to steal or destroy anything, and that we just wanted to shoot some skate pictures with Sam, who had come all the way from South Africa, just for 2 days to shoot this interview… We made it sound really important, but they didn’t let us stay and moved us out of there, so I just said, out of the blue, “Hey guys listen! I’m a close friend of the principal and he had allowed us to skate here, so nothing is illegal,” and the cop answers, “Oh yeah, really? Okay, so give me your ID so we call the principal to check that it’s all good.” In the end they just called back to the station and explained that I was a friend of the principal and that this case was closed.

Oh man, yes I remember. So, we where skating outside of a shop that sold sofas and the shop had the same name as my last name Caruso, I was joking saying this will be no problem because it’s my spot. So, I started skating the spot and after 5 minutes of course the owner came out of the shop all mad and aggressive, complaining about us destroying the place. He left and came back with his son, so we had to run away. After that we decided to come back on a Sunday to be sure the place was closed, it was all good for a while, then suddenly he showed up again, parking his car right in the way of the spot, getting mad about a plant that we’d had to move before he disappeared into the shop. After a while another guy came up to us starting to give us shit for being there so I started asking him, “Why do you care?” Turns out he was a cop and shortly after that another bunch of cops arrived and things started getting a little bit too aggressive, I was trying all kind of ways to explain to them that I was not doing any harm to the place or the people there. I was just about to make it so I pleaded for 10 min more. The police took the IDs in case something got broken and took them across the road to the police station to do the paperwork. [While they we there] we ran back and got it done in two more tries. We got our ID’s back after but I ended up forgetting my brand new board at the spot because I was too exited about the whole thing.

This was the first one, although it could have been Sam that left it on the freeway after taking out his bag, which was under my board, to shoot some landscape photos. It was much more of a bummer losing my board than when I lost my wallet in Barcelona, not sure but I think someone stole it…

Switch backside flip.

I’ve always wanted to go to Berlin for a long time, for 2 years there have been German skate crews visiting here in Sicily and they have told me Berlin is full of good spots and nice people, so I decided I want go there for a long summer, at least until September. I have a good friend that’s lives there so that’s a good start. And Sam is coming too no?

100… Maybe even 200.

Not even one. I’ve got to step up my game because when I was in the US these bets were for real and in the end you went and bought what you owed.

Frontside Flip.