Keenan Lewis – IRL
It’s funny that the last thing we posted was full of peak Aimu (who is now very much a global skateboarding phenomenon…), because watching this Keenan Lewis footage gave us quite a similar feeling to when we first released Aimu’s early part, back when he was just 17. Now obviously, they skate nothing like each other, and filming/editing-wise, the two projects are worlds apart, plus Keenan is a bit older (23), but it’s another one of those instances where you’re left thinking: “Okay, this guy truly has something nobody else has,” as soon as the credits hit, which, despite the onslaught of wild clips we subject our eyeballs to daily, doesn’t actually happen that often. Or at least not on a level where, like for these two, it’s impossible to imagine a timeline where they don’t become household names in our little world.
It’s in the context of all this that we asked Jean-Luc Vida, the Xtreme Fisheye-eye virtuoso behind this vid, to tell us a little bit about Keenan, in the hope of finding out what makes him tick, and what influences nurtured that talent… Here’s what we got from him:
“Keenan is a nature-loving, anime fanatic raised by an older brother who forced him to learn the history of skateboarding. He often references skate videos and skaters from the late ’90s, but also finds inspiration digging further back to ’80s skateboarding, which isn’t common for most kids of around his age (born in the 2000s). He’s basically just a young lad from Florida with dreams of seeing an orca whale in the wild, carving his own path in the ever-competitive Los Angeles skate scene. From time to time, he’ll forget his skateboard while on the way to a spot, or he’ll forget to bring a change of clothes after a quick workout/stretch at the gym before skating, but he always manages to pull through one way or another.”
