Beyond Lucas Puig’s reputation as the quintessential European who “made it,” his sponsor history alone weaves his name into the skateboard culture of not only France and America – but also England, China and however many other countries in which he’s filmed video parts.
Born and raised in Toulouse, France, and traveling from a young age, Lucas had no desire to live elsewhere for some time. “I felt like I needed to be home,” he says of the gaps between skate trips. “That’s why I never moved to Paris or another big city.”
Five years ago, however, he relocated to the small Basque town of Biarritz. “We came here to be close to the beach,” Lucas says over the phone one morning. “For me, it was for surfing and for my girlfriend, it was for a different lifestyle. More chilled and less subways, less people. Just taking our time.”
The good news is we finally switched over to a circa 2018 design that’s mobile compatible, etc. Hopefully it’s not a Crailtap-getting-rid-of-the-iframes shock to the system, because let’s be honest: it basically looks the same, just moderne. We purged a couple spots that have been gone long enough for people to forget about, cleaned up some shit around the pages, etc. If anything seems to not be working properly, feel free to drop us a line.
The bad news is we are still amidst the same general skate internet content slump we have been experiencing all month. Nearly nothing happened last week…
On the off chance that you didn’t catch it, Jawn Gardner continues his streak of being one of the most contagiously good vibed skaters to watch in 2018, via his DC Streetsweeper raw files. That A/C contraption he made is nuts…
Gunes’ new FTC part is up there with John’s raw files as what got ran back the most at the office last week. Shout out to everyone who looks like they’re having fun while being really good at skateboarding.
Don’t know much about this one, but “Long Shots & Low Odds” is a ~moody~ seven-minute New York video from Canon Hastings featuring all your New York 2018 dietary staples (wallies, .T.F., a pit stop at the Grand Street courts) + a stubborn commitment to skating those red double cellar doors next to Motorino.
“I feel good because I can make money, because I can help my family, but I don’t give a fuck about the Olympics. I don’t care and I don’t want to be there.” Grey has an interview with Olympian and European life enthusiast, Tiago Lemos.
“The big underground music in America is like house and dance stuff, based on what I see in the shop, and that’s what skaters are buying. When I was getting into deep underground hip-hop growing up, the only other kids listening to it were skaters. Like, you guys know Hieroglyphics? Why? ‘Oh, it was on the blah blah blah VHS.'” This link actually has nothing to do with skating, but is an insightful conversation on how people consume music (particularly rap) in 2018, and a reminder that it’s ok to not have an opinion on some stuff!
Quote of the Week: “If you’re having fun, chances are, you’re breaking at least one law.” — Conor
It’s eerie how well this clip has aged. If you sent this to us sans titles as a “hey my friends went to Paris and here’s our clip!” in 2018, it’d probably get a pass…
We don’t make a point of running standalone posts about Thrasher videos, because chances are, you check Thrasher way before you end up on Quartersnacks navigating between the rap mixtape links for skateboard content. However, after posting J.B’s Freedom Fries part yesterday for no more reason than its status as once-a-week lunch hour viewing at the QS office, Thrasher uploaded all of French Fred’s raw footage from the creation of said part later in the day.
In the Jerry Hsu “Five Favorite Parts” piece that ran last week, he actually picked ten, and the post ended up consisting of the five he talked about the most. One of the more abbreviated stops was Gino’s Trilogy part, and how he didn’t necessarily need anything more than a handful of really solid tricks to make a substantial impact a la “less is more.” J.B’s parts have alsoseldomclocked in above two-minutes, yet always been memorable (remember how the feeble alley-oop 180 was the most talked about trick from Bon Voyage two years ago?) His 2:30 ender in Freedom Fries came at a time when “last part” meant a two-song emotional rollercoaster*. Watch Fred’s raw footage below; it’s obvious they could’ve tacked another 30-45 seconds onto it and didn’t. Everything in the part belongs and works. It’s perfect.
Great six-minute skate parts are as rare as great six-minute rap songs. Theydoexist, but there’s a reason most of the classics know not to risk overstaying their welcome.
*No disrespect to Arto, Zered or Jerry Hsu’s two-song tour de forces from the 2000s ;)
Something that wasn’t shined on enough in yesterday’s post was that the Kingpin “Greatest Plazas” list also included a new “Best Of Hotel De Ville” edit from J.B. Gillet. Anyone who grew up burning holes through the Rodney v.s.Daewon videos has probably spent the past fifteen years dreaming of skating that endless two-level ledge plaza with a hip in the middle. Research reveals that it is far too run down today to resemble what it did in the nineties (more on that later), but it still has to rank as one of the coolest-looking spots ever to grow famous through skate videos.
J.B. was the original cool French skater before Lucas Puig became a fashion-foward adult. Always thought of him as a French Kalis — great style, chill switch mongo push, amazing flip tricks, all the right ledge tricks, and an ability to be associated with one particular plaza throughout the duration of his career (yeah, Kalis might be associated with two at this point.)
Any remnant of associating a sizable portion of one guy’s footage with a single spot is in Europe. Even then, a lot of the “A-list” guys just seem like they travel around a lot e.g. there’s no real “Lucas spot” to the extent that there is a “J.B. spot.” For us Americans, the “single spot part” in 2014 is a rarity and pretty much impossible unless you’re Bobby Worrest turning in the year’s best. (Sorta interesting to know if Europeans who have never visited the States / don’t routinely get chased by cops for skating a ledge *got* how wild the “Hometown Turf Killer” part was.)
“I spent about, uh, 15 million hours here.”
The above was from 2011. French Fred, via Live in 2013: “So, HDV, as the young generation calls it now, is a sad state… To a point where it just gets worst every over week. For the locals that are used to it, it’s usable, but for people visiting Lyon, it’s a great disillusion. They freak out, and find it just unskatable. From the beginning, you had those lateral grooves that are part of the design, and that already was never easy to adapt to, but add hundreds of cracks all over, and it’s a mine field! Then again, Mark Suciu came, observed, then skated, and according to Flo Mirtain, did the craziest line ever done there, so everything is still possible! For the latest Go Skateboarding Day, Jérémie Daclin put some metal angles on the ledges that were in Beirut mode, totally unusable, and that gave a little boost to the spot.”
Mark Suciu seems like a horrible barometer by which to judge the average person’s ability to skate the spot. It’s probably best to scratch skating H.D.V. off the bucket list. The Lyon scene still seems like it’s going well though, no matter how dilapidated the “dream spot” may have gotten.
