Bon Anniversaire! – Ten Years of Free Skate Mag
Filmed by Pekka Løvås & Vincent Jugnet
Edited by Pekka Løvås
Photography in Lyon by Sam Ashley
Words by Arthur Derrien
I’d just found out that Titi never turned pro because he “accidentally” went on a romantic quest to Brazil instead of attending his pro party. He was trouble, I knew it. A short sexy menace who was on his way to tempt us away from clips and into a puddle of fluorescent green shots at Le Voxx. Did he single-handedly focus Almost Skateboards? Was the same fate in store for us?
Eniz Fazliov, gap to nosebluntslide
As I was contemplating the potential danger at hand, Leo Cholet was using all his horsepower to straight nollie flip a massive road gap. Some were comparing him to Cairo Foster. I was trying to figure out what it was about his complexion that made me feel like he was made out of wax. “Wallace and Gromit” Flo declared, straight-faced. It made no sense whatsoever but I nodded. It was only day three, but most of us had already gone primal. Lots of roaring, stumbling about and bizarre challenges. Every time I’d look back at the troops chilling by the river behind me, Austyn Gillette would get up to power walk around, looking at the floor for rocks. Not crack, but it definitely had that energy. He just really needed to win the game. There was a Heineken gently swaying a few feet below in the Saône, and like every one of us, nothing mattered more than being the one to obliterate the floating target… And no, the beer bottle wasn’t ours, we weren’t monsters, we’d just slightly lost the plot. Austyn’s t-shirt had loads of holes in it, like a family of moths had gone to town on it. I think it was an on purpose fashion thing. Either way, terrible bit of kit if you’re scuttling around using it as a pouch to collect little stones. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, I thought. I started thinking about the Termite video. Flo pointed at the “Le Sucre” building in the distance, laughing about the time I got kicked out of the club on the roof and climbed back in with a girl I’d just met, who only had one arm. It’s three stories high, and a couple years later someone tried to do the same thing, fell, and it was bad. Really bad. I came back to earth. Good. Life is precious and this thing is starting to sound like a 2003 Vice article.
Leo Bodelazzi, fakie ollie 50-50
The trip was for our 10-year anniversary. I’d recently come to terms with new levels of selfishness and decided to convince everyone to come to France, where I grew up, so that I could combine it with seeing old friends and spending time with my mum. The crew we’d assembled for this milestone mission was a mix of our favourite skaters, including some that have been instrumental in making this print publication what it is today (like Eniz with his 27 covers), but also skaters we’re fans of but for one reason or another we can never get in the mag as much as we’d like (like Helena or Willow), people we’ve championed for years and want to see succeed at all costs (like Bodelazzi or Victor) and generally just some of the humans we’ve enjoyed hanging out with the most over the time we’ve spent on this Earth fucking around with this piece of wood. Sure, it’s the mag’s birthday, but if you’re going to go through the trouble of organising a get-together of this scale, why not treat it a little bit like it’s your own and surround yourself with people you actually want to jam with?
Tyler Surrey, switch kickflip backside tailslide
Our dream team consisted of Tom Knox, Ebou Sanyang, Victor Campillo, Thierry “Titi” Gormit, Karsten Kleppan, Eniz Fazliov, Leo Bodelazzi, Helena Long, Leo Cholet, Juan “Viru” Virues, Oscar Candon, Willow Voges Fernandes, Austyn Gillette and Tyler Surrey. That’s right, two Americans… “For a Euro Mag?! When there are so many skaters from Leipzig who deserve the shine! Sacrilege!” Well yes… And no. At its core, Free’s focus on European Skateboarding stems from a desire to shed light on skateboarders that historically weren’t properly covered by the main US media outlets, but also to contribute to growing a healthy European skateboarding landscape, with its own industry, brands, filmers, photographers, identity and culture(s). And what better way to celebrate how far we’ve come, with the days of having to move to Cali to “make it” far behind us, than inviting two American household names that decided to do that journey in reverse to spend some time in the city that changed the course of history in that respect: Lyon!
Willow Voges Fernandes, slappy frontside crooked grind transfer
Now, what comes next is probably going to be a tainted by the fact I spent my formative years sat on the waxy benches of Hotel De Ville – and I’m not going to claim that London (Blueprint etc.), Paris (Lordz etc.) or Barcelona (just for the being the spot Eldorado that it was at the time) didn’t also contribute to the industry becoming less US-centric – but Lyon undeniably played a key role in this shift, especially in the early stages. For one, the cultural significance of local VX visionary French Fred and his work simply can’t be understated. In the space of just four years he released three of the most era-defining videos of the early 2000s (éS’ Menikmati in 2000, Flip’s Sorry in 2002 and Cliché’s Bon Appetit in 2004), showing the wider skate community that not only did Europe have a wealth of colourful and varied architecture to film on, it also had lensmen capable of capturing and packaging the footage in ways that were extremely progressive for the time. Suddenly, major brands were scared of their videos looking bland and beige, leading them to look further afield when it came to filming destinations and filmmakers. A broadening of horizons that was only amplified by the incredible Euro talent featured in the Cliché videos, and what the Lyon-based brand was able to offer them career-wise. Basically, Lucas Puig flipping out of that mid-ledge front blunt at HDV to Frank Zappa changed the game; there’s no two ways around it. Suddenly, the Lakais of this world were starting to realise that for their shit to truly stand out, it wasn’t enough to just fly a bunch of Americans to dreamy plazas across the pond; they needed their JBs and Jesuses out there doing their thing on home turf where they shine the brightest and their footage is infused with a certain “je ne sais quoi” you can’t recreate in schoolyards. And the knock-on effect of that is that it opened the floodgates for people in Europe to really give skating a proper chance at home, on their terms, no matter if that was starting a board company (Cliché founder Jérémie Daclin actually even helped Antiz get off the ground!), becoming a pro skater or… starting a magazine.
Victor Campillo, frontside noseslide 270 shove-it
So yeah, an adventure that was shaping up to be the ultimate full (red) circle moment in terms of how deeply rooted it was in Euro-skate history, but that, in practice, on the ground, kind of propelled us into the future in a lot of ways. Take this issue’s cover for instance: as one of the most iconic spots in the city, it’s been skated by everyone from Penny to half the cast of Fully Flared. It’s seen all sorts of fucked up skating from some of the best in the world, but never in a million years would I have imagined someone would be hitting it from flat and in like that, let alone backside nosebluntsliding it. It was one of those moments where you think to yourself, “Fuck, is there even a limit to what can be done with this shit?” (which tends to happen most times Ebou stands on his skateboard). Because yeah, this thing was a ramp for 40 years and what, now suddenly it’s also a ledge? My brain could not compute, but at the same time I was quite content with being in that mental space, especially given our tendencies to get soppy about the past when it comes to celebrating big occasions like this one.
Oscar Candon, crack nollie kickflip
This whole stepping into the future feeling went further than just bugging out on what tricks were physically possible, though. Covid was an undeniable turning point as far as spot fixing is concerned, and I’m sure we’ve all done our fair share of lacquering and steel sticking now, but being around Oscar, and witnessing the visceral excitement he got from taking out handrails to create different spot configurations (see his and Eniz’s pics), after so many years of doing this shit, with all the ups and downs that come with that… I don’t know, it just got me so gassed on what we do. Like, no matter how jaded or over skateboarding you might feel at a certain time in your life, there’s always going to be a new set of parameters to get you sparked about approaching it in a different way. It made me want to keep being a part of it forever.
Tom Knox, kickflip 50-50
We went into this thing thinking that at some point it could be cool to ask people what they were doing 10 years ago, but instead found ourselves endlessly chatting about what’s next for them. Oscar was about to meet friends in the south of France to go on a climbing holiday, Karsten is finishing up his first full part with Grant Yansura for WKND, which he’s super stoked on, Leo Cholet was about to go skate some rocks in Sweden with his new board sponsor, Victor was excited that the Drift crew were coming to visit him in Marseille in September, Tom was on about shooting his third interview for the mag to align with Daniel Wheatley’s next vid… And actually that’s what I wanted to hear about. Plus, realistically if I zoom out, it’s not hard to guess the general scenario 10 years ago or in 10 years, if they were on this trip it’s because they’re lifers, who like Austyn will keep chucking stones at that bottle in the river, completely fine with the fact that it’s a moving target and quite happy to switch up the challenges and adapt to keep them interesting.
Helena Long, ride-on 50-50 to 50-50
Oh, and Titi? Despite showing up late and injured, he did not derail our operations even slightly. He even got a banger on the last day once his ribs had healed enough for him to skate. And sure, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that he wasn’t a little cheeky, because the video evidence of him playing the hotel lobby piano butt naked at five in the morning would say otherwise, but if you’ve spent any length of time with that boy you know that his energy is skate trip rocket fuel and should be protected at all costs. He feeds you the laughs that will carry you all the way through to the end of an adventure like this one, no matter how shattered you are, and leaves you gagging for another 10 years of memories to store preciously alongside the ones you’ve just made.
(Check out more of Sam Ashley’s pics from Lyon by clicking on the gallery below.)
