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.

Photos by Nikwen.

It’s funny how important a skater’s “image” is for his career. It’s almost like nowadays you need to fit into one of the “cool” categories to be considered relevant, but what category does Flo fall into? He’s not exactly a jazzy power sliding night skater, he’s definitely not a hesh tranny skater or a baker/hammer guy. You wouldn’t consider him to be a “super-tech” guy either, his skating a bit too varied for that. He could almost be an “energy drink superkid” but he reps CocaCola too hard, and his trick selection is slightly too tasteful. What the hell is he then? Or rather who is he?

There’s a reason why you probably don’t know much about his personality: he simply doesn’t want to share it with you. It may sound strange, but then again, when you think of it, why should he? He’s a skater, he’s not trying to get kids to hug him, he’s trying to get them pick up their skateboards and hit the streets. You may not catch him smiling at every demo or kissing your favorite American pro’s arse (no matter how good it would be for his career) but at least he’s genuine, no gimmicks. That being said, if you want to make it in the skate game, you have to play by it’s rules, so here’s an interview with one of my friends who won’t pretend to be yours just because it would be good for his image.

Fakie five-o front shove mid ledge.

Hi Flo, how are you? What have you been up to lately? I heard you guys were on deadline for the new Cliché video, how is that going?

 I’m fine and you? Yeah, the deadline is really close, we are supposed to stop filming at the end of February. Cliché are taking us on one last trip this month and then that’s it. It’s going really well, everybody is on it. I’ve been trying to film one last thing in Lyon but the weather has been so shit that I haven’t been able to try properly.

Who do you think has the best stuff so far?

I know Sammy and Daniel have filmed some really sick clips. I haven’t seen everyone’s footage though, but I’m sure Joey and Lucas have got good footage, they are both pretty productive. I’ve also been skating Lyon with Adrien quite a lot recently, and I’ve witnessed some crazy hammers, he’s been killing it.

Yeah I heard about Adrien’s gnarly stuff on the Rowley hubba… It sounds like one of the flows is going to get the last part! That would be a first…Do you think one of them is going to get on the proper team after the video drops? That’s how it happened with you right?

Yeah definitely, probably even more than one of them to be honest; the stuff they’ve got so far is mind-blowing. I guess the team will have to decide who they want to have properly on. That’s how it happened for me: I went on a few trips with them, filmed for “Clé,” and when the video came out they put me on.

So when was that, 4 or 5 years ago? Since then you have been trying to live from skateboarding, how is that going? Can ams make enough money to live comfortably in Europe without being sponsored by an energy drink company?

It’s going fine, I think you can definitely make enough money to get by in Europe. The only thing is I don’t think it’s enough to keep you going once your “career” is over. You know that after skating you will inevitably have to get a proper job, but right now, I can’t complain.

Bigspin backside disaster.

Leaving the financial aspect of it aside, are you still enjoying it? Because I remember there was a point last summer when you kept losing your shit. More than once I heard you say: “I’m sick of this, I can’t stand filming and shooting photos anymore, it’s driving me nuts, I just want to skate Hotel De Ville with my friends…”

Hahaha, no right now things are going well… But it’s true that at one point I was kind of over it. I injured my leg last year and for 6 months after that I just felt like I was struggling to do anything. It took me a while to feel confortable on my board again, and when you are supposed to be filming a part or when you are on a trip and you suck at skateboarding it can really get to you, you feel useless. I found myself wishing I could just have mellow sessions with my friends instead of constantly being on missions. But then you start getting better again, your confidence comes back and you enjoy it in the same way as you used to.

Don’t you think it could also be linked to the fact that it’s your job to skate everyday, you think about skateboarding all day and basically only hang out with skaters?

Yeah, it’s not good to be trapped inside a routine like that… But the fact that it’s a routine you chose to get yourself into, means that you have the power to get yourself out of it by doing other things that have nothing to do with skateboarding. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do recently.

Like what?

I’ve been drawing quite a lot. Whenever I’m not skating I try and go to driving school… I’ve also been trying to learn some new tricks on my kendama.

It’s funny I knew you would enjoy playing with that that thing (it was a birthday present from me and another friend). Seeing you learn tricks with it reminds me at lot of the way you skate. It’s really repetitive and takes the same kind of patience and dedication, except you probably don’t look as ridiculous on your board. Then again, can you tell people about the flat ground  “revisions” you do over the summer at Hotel de Ville? I find the concept quite amusing…

Hahaha, sometimes I play this little game where I try and redo every single trick I can do: kicklip, switch flip, nollie, flip, fackie flip etc… Then I would do the same thing with heelflips, bigspins and so on. I guess it kind of trains you up for playing SKATE haha… It reminds me of when I would session my bench on my own, in Gap ( little town in the south of France where he grew up skating).

What’s the story behind this bench?

Basically, when I was younger I stole a Bench from a school with a few friends and took it to an inner courtyard where my mother worked. It was ten minutes from my house and I ended up skating it for hours every evening after school.

Rickflip.

I know you spend hours on HellaClips everyday, do you think skateboarding is benefiting from this constant flow of skate clips, or do you miss the good old VHS days?

I hate the Internet’s influence on skateboarding and one of the reasons why I hate it so much is because there is no escaping it. Nowadays, I feel like you instantly forget everything about a part right after watching it. Videos don’t have the same charm as they use to. A few years ago, you’d buy a video and watch it over and over again for 6 months, and still love it. It’s not the same anymore, you end up watching so much useless crap that whenever you actually do come across something sick it just fades in with the hundred other clips you just watched.

I know what you mean, it desensitises you. What effect do you think it has on the industry?

It’s definitely not helping the mags (last week Skateboarder announced that they would no longer print their magazine) or videos put out by legit companies. Instead it’s making it mainstream and opening it up to more people. In theory that could be good for the industry, but the problem is that the core brands aren’t the ones who are really going to profit from this expansion.

Who will then?

All the people who never had anything to do with skateboarding in the past, but suddenly decided to latch onto it because they realized there was money to be made.

What have you got lined up after this Cliché video is done?

DVS want to put out a video, but I don’t know very much about that yet, so I can’t tell you if it’ll be a short promo or a full-length video. Bist  (the guy who filmed this edit) and I also want to make a VX video with the whole crew from Lyon, so I guess I’ll just keep filming and decide where I want my footage to go later.

I forgot you were back on DVS, what happened with Supra?

Well things didn’t work out with Supra, I went on a trip with them and I guess it wasn’t really a good fit so they kicked me off as soon as we got back. At the same time Shier became the new DVS team manager so we discussed a few things and he asked me to come back. I’m stoked, I already know everyone on the team and things have always gone well with them. Cheers Shier!

What Europeans should we look out for this year?

There’s loads of them: Madars, Adrien Coillard, Lucas, Jb, Lucien, JP Villa… All of those incredible Scandinavians: Joseph Scott Jatta, Jonas Skroder, Simo Makella, Pontus, Erik Petterson…