My friend Steven was driving the car, my brother Fayssal was riding shotgun. My friend Blok (Kristof) was in the back on the right, I was in the middle and Koenraad was on the left. We were driving at around 90 km per hour when somebody overtook us quickly. And just when he gets back in front of us his car breaks down and we drive straight into the back of it. Fayssal, Steve and me were unharmed but Blok and Koenraad got a broken nose and broken eye socket between them. Blok’s scalp had opened from his eyebrow all the way to the back of his head. I thought I was going to see him die in front of my eyes – really fucked up. We had had a really good evening skating at Area 51 and then just five minutes from home that happened.  Everything’ s alright with both the guys now, so we can’t really complain, I could’ve just as easily gone through the windshield. A blessing in disguise…

I’m fine. Skating a lot, hope you’re good as well, aside from the shitty weather.

I’ve been staying over at James Craigs’ in Fullerton for about two weeks now. That’s the first part of Orange County, about 40 minutes from downtown L.A.

I’ve thought about that already, but for the time being I’m just going to keep going back and forth. I can only stay three months at a time anyway.

Of course, from the moment I knew it was possible to live from skating that was all I ever wanted to reach in life!

Nollie to fakie.

Of course, everyone imagines it a bit differently than it really is. I thought that everyone here went skating everyday, from the morning until the evening because the weather is so good, but there’s quite a bit more to it than just skating. There are always some things that aren’t so nice, but that goes for every job or anything else in life.

I guess that’s what every skater would want eventually. So, yeah, it’s definitely one of my goals. I can’t say anything about it really. It could happen next week, or next year… you never know. The board company you skate for decides when you go pro and then you’re pro for all the other companies you ride for as well.

The pressure that is put on you. There are always high expectations to live up to but things usually seem to work out for the best if you just skate and have fun with it. Also, the more you travel to the States the more trouble they give you at customs, so that’s always quite a process to go through. Then you still have to figure out where you’re going to sleep, and find people that are motivated and skate a lot. Then again, during the week there’s not a lot of stuff to skate anyway, weekends are the best.

Most of it is probably just me. I do it without realising. Everybody can do almost every single thing right now, so it’s hard to come out with something new, which is what I want to do. I don’t think it’s bad to put yourself under a little bit of pressure to become better, or do something you wouldn’t normally dare to do.

Frontside half cab flip manual.

The battle is always going to be there, but that actually motivates me to try new stuff. It actually gets a bit easier with time because you can estimate everything better.

When I go out and try to film every day for a week and I don’t like any of the spots or it’s just not working out, sometimes I get sick of it, but a day later I’m already skating again.

He’s a roofer. He works five, sometimes six days out of seven, from 6 in the morning until 5 or 6 at night and he still plays football and skates after work or on his days off. I could never do that.

He used to always win but now it’s usually me!

Frontside flips, nollie double flips…

There’s a couple of tricks but it’s always hard finding the right spot to do them.

Back smith.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. The thing is I’ve always skated a lot of transition, people just never saw me do it. Of course, skating with other people makes you skate different spots and learn different tricks as well.

There were a couple of other options but I had met Lewis (Marnell) six months before and he said I should come and skate for Almost. We spent another month and a half in the States together afterwards, he’d arranged everything for us that time, thanks again, Lewis. I didn’t know who to skate for because everyone was saying something else and then I thought, “Who do I want to skate for?” Almost!

I haven’t had the chance to skate with Rodney yet and when I’m out with Daewon we usually go to a skatepark or a mini ramp. The spots he skates aren’t easy to get tricks on.

Yes, lots of suggestions, I can’t really think of many things to do in a mini ramp.

My bag of tricks is pretty limited in a mini ramp, though, so don’t expect too much.

Front Blunt revert.

Obama won last night, I haven’t left the house yet.

Yeah, I always used to play that whenever it rained. I have no idea what my longest combo was, though. Maybe around ten minutes with the perfect cheat.

No idea. I’ve done a lot of dumb combos but I can’t really think of one.

Switch 180 5-o.

Yeah, I’ve always been a P-Rod fan and I guess I always will be. One of the best skaters in my eyes, not just his skating but everything surrounding it as well. I’ve got a lot of respect for the fact that he’s still as down to earth as he is. Impressive.

Not because of who he is anymore, but I’m definitely still impressed by his skating every time. I skate with him like I skate with anybody else, though.

Skating changes and styles change too. I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, though. If there’s anyone that doesn’t need to think about that it’s Paul. I wouldn’t say he has lost in style, he just changed.

The good food in Belgium. Year-round good weather in L.A. .

I miss everything my mom makes. When I’m in the States I eat pizza, hamburgers, French toast, Mexican food and a lot more unhealthy stuff.

Switch frontside salad grind.

No, I don’t, but it was cheap!

In Belgium we skate the skatepark every day and go out filming maybe two or three times a month. Out here in L.A. I’m going from spot to spot, day in day out. I can’t really say one works better than the other. Skating always comes and goes anyway. In Belgium it usually works out pretty well because I’m in my personal environment. Eating and sleeping at home does a lot already. There’s more to skating spots than just feeling good, though. Everything has to be arranged, the spot has to be somewhat decent, and in the end you need a little bit of luck to not get kicked out and land your trick.

The spots in Belgium are about as good as they are over here, but in the States a hundred tricks have been done everywhere, so It’s actually easier to come up with something in Belgium.

Doesn’t really matter to me, both are good.

I’ve never gotten to film or shoot a lot of photos in Belgium and I think that’s important.

To show that it’s possible too, I guess. That’s about it.

Half cab nose grind to switch 5-o

It was, actually, but it could’ve just as well all been shots from the States, too.

I liked it better before, waiting for a video to come out and watching it every day for six months straight. They still meant something to everyone, now there are five minute parts coming out that get watched for a week and then just get forgotten, because there’s already fifty new parts that came out.

Magazines and photographers have a harder time as well, because everybody just throws all the footage on the internet.  We can’t really change anything about it, we can just keep having fun and doing our own thing.

Hardflip (click on the photo to see the sequence). 

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.