Sincerely, – Carlisle and friends in Milan
Video by Jeff Cecere and Ritt Pontepsiripong
Photography by Sam Ashley
Words by Ben Powell
Designed by esteemed Florentine architect Ulisse Stacchini and officially opened on July 1st, 1931, Milano Centrale is Europe’s largest railway station measured by volume of traffic. With influences drawn from classical Roman architecture, Art Deco and a host of other ornately grandiose aesthetic movements, Centrale was once famously described by Frank Lloyd Wright as being “the most beautiful train station in the world”.
Sitting at the very heart of the city, Centrale is often the first glimpse that visitors get of Italy’s economic capital and, whether they’re aware of it or not, of Italy’s most celebrated and globally influential skateboard scene.
Ronnie Kessner, nollie kickflip 50-50
The white marble plaza space around the station, intended to expedite the flow of the 120 million people who pass through it each year, has, over the last four decades, become emblematic of modern Italian street skating in a way that no other space has so far managed. First introduced to wider global audiences through appearances in 411VM and its short-lived Euro-centric VHS counterpart Puzzle Video Magazine, Centrale’s stock as an iconic spot has grown exponentially since then via appearances in the paradigm-shifting early Cliché videos, alongside iconic footage of luminaries of 1990’s ledge vanguard, (Gino’s 2004 backtail pop out from Hot Chocolate and Jesus Fernandez’s unhindered execution of every aspect of the space in Lakai’s 2007 Fully Flared to name but two). Centrale’s legacy loomed large over Milan’s potential as a global destination, often limiting the city’s visibility to that one blindingly white perfect spot. It took a younger generation of Milanese skaters, the likes of Jacopo Carozzi and the Rat Ratz crew, to direct attention away from Centrale and into the city before people realised that there was much, much more to Milan than the polished marble perfection of its central train station.
Carlisle Aikens, switch backside 180 kickflip
For the purposes of this issue of Free, and with that extremely cursory insight into the centrality of Centrale to Milan’s status within the global skateboard pantheon out of the way, in walks Carlisle Aikens and his hand-picked troupe of intrepid opportunists. Foregoing the inevitable restrictions that come alongside brand-led skate trips, Carl opted to curate his own, taking his friends and people who, (due to sponsor expectation and footwear contracts in the main), he’d never normally get to skate with on a trip such as this. More of a regular skate holiday vibe, just one which also came with two dedicated filmers and a photographer on a bunk bed.
“If it’s on your own dime then the limitations that come with getting brands to pay just kind of fade out of the scene. I did consider asking for help, but I just didn’t think anybody would have the funds to support a bigger squad like this with a bigger Airbnb and whatnot. In the end, I just thought ‘fuck it’ and reverted to the original idea of doing it on my own.” said Carl.
Marcello Campanello, kickflip 5-0
Fellow tourist Marcello Campanello: “Carl putting the trip together meant that there was more freedom in terms of people all riding for different brands out there together in a way that probably wouldn’t happen on a traditional brand trip. Plus, the bigger brands like adidas and NB aren’t too into Airbnbs either – I get it, they book on their legit account so then if something were to happen, the financial penalties fall directly on them. Whereas with Carl in charge we could do it how we liked.”
Strangely, neither of our protagonists had visited Milan previously: strange enough given the city’s draw for sponsored skaters, but stranger still given Marcello’s ownership of the most Italian-sounding name ever and Carl’s dual life as a high-end model with recent campaigns for Calvin Klein and Louis Vuitton under his belt.
Leo Bodelazzi, fakie frontside bluntslide
“I’m signed to an agency called Next, which does have an office in Milan, but the modelling world doesn’t really work in the way that people assume. My involvement is separate from the all-in-one ‘New York, Paris, Milan’ stereotype. Although my agency does do work there, I’ve never met any of the staff or signed any contracts with their office, which is what would need to happen first if I were to do any jobs there. Plus, the markets in Milan are completely different from the ones in New York and Paris where I’ve done the most modelling gigs…”
Marcello interrupts Carl, “Weren’t you meant to go to the Next agency office whilst we were on this trip to do exactly what you’ve just mentioned?”
“Yeah,” laughs Carl, “but I was so busy at Chinese Box I never got around to it.”
Olli Lilja, switch backside tailslide
Whether the collision of these two worlds is partly responsible for Carl having the financial wherewithal to take stewardship of a trip with 14 people on it is a question outside the parameters of this little piece. Given the current economic apprehensions about the long-term viability of career skateboarding within the industry though, you can’t help but wonder whether having modelling as a parallel occupation might be a slightly more secure foundation from which to go at pro skateboarding. Speculative rumblings aside bring us back to the matter at hand, namely ‘Chinese Box’.
Described by Sam [Ashley] as a ‘completely mid bar, filled with really ordinary people’, Chinese Box quickly provided that most crucial of skate trip essentials, the home-from-home local hosting apres-ski social activities. More so than on your average trip given the near constant rain for the first nine of the ten days they spent there and the loosely defined regime of expectation under Carl’s leadership.
Carlisle
Pushed for a justification for their adoption of Chinese Box as cultural HQ, Carl had only this to say: “All the staff were friendly, the locals too, and there was one sweet waitress who we saw every night. The frozen drinks helped also. Sam’s right, it was a very ‘normal’ spot, but they seemed to like us… Or maybe that was down to the huge rounds I’d end up buying for everybody after a few frozen Margaritas. Whatever it was, we were devout followers by the third night. We even ended up gravitating back to Chinese Box when we moved to a different Airbnb on the other side of the city.”
Amenity and familiarity are quite the draw. You’d be forgiven for asking, “Were they just out on the piss the whole time then?” at this juncture and neither Carl nor Marcello are going to try and convince you that this rainy Milanese sojourn was driven by a fanatic Puritan hunger to produce content over having a good time. Anyway, surely that’s the point of organising your own trip, right?
Cody Grant, 360 flip
Given the weather and the inevitability of spending at least 50% of every day at the grandiose vortex that is Centrale, you can hardly blame them for leaning on nocturnal libations for group morale. Plus, looking at the photos, it’s obvious that they pulled this one off despite unexpectedly inclement weather.
“Ironically, we’d planned to go to Milan be-cause we had expected it to be glorious weather in Spring, whereas what we got was rain and a lot of squeegeeing…” said Carl.
“A lot of Sam squeegeeing”, corrects Marcello. “The locals found that word hilarious. God knows what the Italian word is for ‘squeegee’ but it’s evidently not as funny. (Ed: it’s ‘tergipavimento’). To be fair to Sam, he went hard on that, making sure that we had pockets of dry, mainly at Centrale, on the first nine days where it rained. It’s an open secret that photographers are not generally the biggest fans of that spot because, ultimately, despite how perfect it is to skate, aesthetically-speaking, it’s just a collection of identical ledges, isn’t it?”
Marcello Campanello, backside nosegrind revert
Carl interjects, “He was trying to be cool about it for sure, against his wishes, (laughs). Centrale is a vortex: once you go there, it’s an unspoken truth that you’re not going to be leaving anytime soon. You can understand why photographers are not too keen… But then with the weather, where we knew it was likely to rain at any moment, it made sense to lurk at the spot that dried up fastest. I mean, it’s not a skatepark, so even with the vortex aspect, if we were stuck there, at least people could try and film shit. It’s a productive space.”
Centrale is often spoken of in the local and national Italian media as a totemic representation of Italy’s crumbling social contract. Open drug markets, aggressive begging, very visible homelessness and seemingly endless opportunities to prey on tourists all contribute to the spot’s reputation for sketchiness. Throw in multiple cameras, flashes, bags, iPhones and all the other digital clutter that accompanies the act of high-level sponsored skateboarding these days and you’re a lurker magnet, surely?
Carl & crew
“It really wasn’t that sketchy, at least not how I was expecting,” remarks Marcello. “I’d watched Jacopo’s Followed video where he talks about how different parts of the spot having varying degrees of sketchiness and how the Flushing Meadows style ledge over the grate was where the drug dealers tended to congregate so I was anticipating it being way more aggressive than it turned out. Maybe they’ve cleaned it up a bit or maybe it was the time of year or the bad weather that made it less dodgy. There were times where Sam and I were scheming on fools who were getting too close though. There was one guy who we named ‘Scarf Face’ who was absolutely lurking around the bags and getting too close to our shit that Sam and I started fucking around with. We reversed it on him and tried to act even more suss by getting mad close to him all the time.”
Talk of the ledge-with-the-grate necessitates some conversation about how the Milanese version matches up to the eponymous Flushing Meadows back in Marcello’s home borough of Queens. And perhaps which obstacle lays claim to being the original version also. (For the record, Centrale is eight years older than its New York counterpart which opened in 1939 but, without Flushing Meadows, would we still be calling Centrale’s ledge-with-the-grate ‘Milan’s Flushing Meadows’? That’s a conundrum best left for Ted Barrow). Marcello literally grew up skating Flushing, so he’s probably best placed to draw conclusions as to the superiority or otherwise of the Milanese version of his beloved childhood spot.
Tre Williams, switch heelflip
“I went skating at Flushing not long after we came back from this trip, and I have to say that Milan is just so much better. The ledges are lower, longer and made from better materials: I crooked the Milan ledge over the grate and the marble just takes you through the whole thing. Once you’re on it, you just float like ice. At Flushing, you hear the grind the whole way through, and it’s a battle to stay locked in. It’s much easier to fall off, so you’re always thinking, ‘Oh god, my fingers are definitely going in the grate if I slam…’
The floor at Flushing Meadows is so rough as well, compared to Milan. Both places are similar in one way though, in that you’re almost blinded when you first get there because of the sun reflecting off the surface – Milan might be worse for that aspect. I was jealous of Sam in his dark glasses every time we went there although I think that style choice might’ve had more to do with Chinese Box every night before…”
This trip’s established atmosphere of no-guilt hangovers evidently provided its own motivation, particularly when it came to the self-appointed treasurer and captain of this Milanese endeavour. The switch hardflip that you may well be looking at right now was not exactly the earnest example of post-Olympic athleticism that those of you with serious head injuries might be expecting. Rather, Carl’s approach to this one ought to reassure you all that even top tier sponsored heads with global Calvin Klein campaigns under their belts still approach professionalised trickery with the same wanton abandon as your average street drinker.
Carlisle Aikens, switch hardflip
“I’d seen that spot on video and wanted to skate it despite the night before being so fucking long. I kind of just made my peace with the less than perfect preparation for it, like, ‘well we’re here, I’m just going to fucking try it’.” said Carl.
Marcello interjects to add a little more narrative depth at this point:
“There’s a whole extra story behind that photo. Carl hadn’t slept the night before, hadn’t drunk any water, didn’t stretch or anything. Straight from the club switch hardflip. There’s the caption. He was shaking whilst he was trying it, like full detox style, with us just throwing in the encouragement despite being fully aware of how dead he must’ve been feeling.”
Back to Carl, “The switch hardflip is my trick where it ought to come quickly, but it never pans out to be as easy as I expect due to a variety of factors, whether it’s alcohol, or the shakes, or no sleep, or the ground.”
“He landed on it five times too and just did not move at all. Landed straight into a crack (there are huge ones every six inches or so) and just collapsed to the ground.” said Marcello.
Jeff Cecere
“Exactly what I wanted in my already delicate state. The way that spot is in real life is exactly how it looks on video – it’s difficult to keep your momentum when you land because the roll out is horrible. My getting the trick has a lot more to do with the crew encouraging me to keep going than anything else: a mental battle for sure but one that I brought upon myself. Live by the Chinese Box, die by the Chinese Box…”
With photos not shot at Centrale in the bag and a final respite from nine days of unseasonal rain, the crew were left to reflect on the outcomes of Carl’s foray into skateboard curation.
“We’re already planning our next trip because we got a glimpse of what a Milan trip could be like on the last day. We’re all fiending to be there for longer with good weather…” said Carl.
Tre Williams, frontside 360
Marcello agrees, “This trip felt unfinished: we had shitty weather, we only met up with Jacopo once (which is why we’re calling the video ‘Where’s Jacopo?’) The next trip will be, ‘We found Jacopo!’ Plus, Converse and Nike just put out that Good for tomorrow clip that has tons of Milan in it so fuck it, we might as well go back now seeing as how they’ve kind of legitimised the dual shoe sponsor vibe, (laughing).
