We didn’t know much about Abel Bourbouze‘s skating until his Vague part that dropped last winter, and featured some of the most cobblestone-forward Parisian skating in an already cobblestone-friendly era for the city’s skate scene. The opening seconds of his latest, “CTRL+Z,” arrived with audible gasps around the main monitor at the QS submission desk, and didn’t let up until the final marble descent.
Mexico and France’s capital cities might not initially seem like they have much in common as skate scenes, but there’s more to the pairing than you may realize.
Alan Buenfil, an expat living in Paris, and his intercontinental crew bounced between the two in search of cutty banks and tight spaces. In Mexico, they manifest as cracked sidewalk tiles on giant hills that make up the city’s residential neighborhoods, and in Paris, they’re cobblestone descents toward the Seine’s edges.
The result is an almost dreamlike interplay between the two scenes (one that may be familiar to those who remember Carlos Didier’s “I ♥ IMMIGRANTS’” video from last year, one of Buenfil’s friends), to a point where when you actually do see a smooth, marble-tiled set of stairs, you can’t even tell which city it’s in.
SAPPHIRE is the new full-length Paris scene video by Ethan Moriceau, who you might remember as the lensman/editor behind “I Can Fly,” the great Hamza el Hagry part from early last year, or other outings.
Ethan says SAPPHIRE is his first “big video,” and in 2025, if you can wrangle two dozen of your friends into a cohesive-feeling, 23-minute project, that is certainly worth of the title of “big.” And SAPPHIRE is a showcase for the younger generation out of the French capital, who also hit Lisbon, New York, Milan and other required stopovers for any crew just beginning to feel comfort in their powers.
The titleholder for 2023’s [democratically selected] best video part, and the titleholder for 2021’s Q.S.S.O.T.Y. [QS office selected, and Keith is still pissed] teamed up for what can be democratically agreed upon as one of 2025’s first great video parts.
