I first met Leo Valls through the site a few years ago. He emailed me a clip that blew me away. It was the first time that I had seen Bordeaux skateboarding. I really liked the spots and the approach that they had with their skating – just cruising the streets and skating whatever they came across. Leo always kept in touch and eventually came out here for a visit. He’s a really down to earth guy and fun to cruise around with. He recently came back and we sat down for a long overdue interview. Check it out below…

48 Blocks: Talk about the skate scene in Bordeaux and how you first got started.

Leo: I started skating in ’99, I thought it was cool. I saw this rasta  dude in front of my house and he did an ollie – it was the first time I saw someone jumping on a skateboard. It looked so tight, I was like “wow” that’s amazing. I just wanted to do it, so I started skating in the city. I lived with my parents in a little town outside of the city near the wineries and castles. I used to take the bus and go to the city and meet more and more homies. It was really cool. There was this huge marble plaza called Malraux with banks and ledges. It was underground, everyone was doing graffiti and skating there. There were lots of OG skaters and people would come from other cities. It was really cool to start skateboarding there.

48 Blocks: Who were some of the good people out there back then, were there any pros living in Bordeaux?

Leo: There weren’t really any famous people from Bordeaux. I think the Bordeaux scene wanted to stay underground. Especially with the plaza, they weren’t really cool with the other French skaters – it was kind of weird. There was this guy named Serge Defreitas who is an OG pro skater from Bordeaux. My homie Yoan Bario, he was super hip hop at that time – you remember ’98. World Industries had a demo at Malraux with Daewon Song and all those guys. They came and just killed it. I started skating right after that. They destroyed Malraux just a few years ago – they put grass everywhere because there was too much skateboarding. They built a skatepark and now lots of kids are just staying at the park, but most people just shred the streets and try to find new spots – original stuff to skate in the streets. We have good architecture with lots of marble. It’s a mix of old architecture and new architecture – old castles and old buildings as well as new marble plazas and ledges.

48 Blocks: Yeah, from the footage that I’ve seen Bordeaux has a lot of good architecture and spots – how do you think that influenced the way you skate and your style?

Leo: Hmmmmnnnnn….

48 Blocks: I noticed that you do a lot of crusing around in the streets and just hitting things as you go – it kind of seems like the architecture over there lends itself to that.

Leo: Yeah, the city is not that big – it’s pretty small. The streets are really smooth, when I come over here to San Francisco, I feel like the ground is really sketchy and rough. In Bordeaux it feels so good just to push. You can skate across the city in a day and hit twenty spots, you don’t need a car. I don’t have a car, French people don’t really have their driver’s license when they’re young. We just push around the city searching for spots. That’s probably why we skate like that – just pushing and trying to skate everything on the way. We’ll see something weird and just skate it and try to make it look cool, like artsy.

48 Blocks: I thought it was funny when you first came out here on this trip and we went to Double Rock and it was your first time skating an indoor park on wood. In America pretty much everyone has skated an indoor park. What was it like skating your first indoor skatepark?

Leo: In Bordeaux we have a cement park that’s outdoor. I don’t really like to skate skateparks actually cause it’s kind of boring for me. There are some indoor parks in France for sure, but I never really wanted to go there. When I was a kid I didn’t really want to wear a helmet for skating, it wasn’t really my style. So, I didn’t really want to go to the indoor parks. There is one outside of Bordeaux – I went there one time and didn’t even skate.

It was definitely weird skating an indoor park for the first on this trip. It was cool though because it was raining and we were with Lavar McBride who is an amazing skater – I used to watch his video parts when I was a kid. It was cool to skate ledges with him even if it was at an indoor park on some wood.

48 Blocks: When did you first get sponsored and who was your first sponsor?

Leo: I got sponsored a few years ago by a small company from the south of France called Logo Skateboards. They used to send me boards. Then this OG skater named David Coolio – he’s really cool and he started this company Metropolitan skateboards, they wanted to do something different and undergournd. Just basic graphics and keep it simple. They asked me if I wanted to ride for them. It’s such a good company.

48 Blocks: Who else do you skate for besides Metropolitan?

Leo: I skate for Adidas in France. I just got on Prize Fighter wheels – I’m pretty stoked about it because it’s a cool underground company from New York. Ray is such an amazing guy. I skate for Riot Skate Shop in Bordeaux, which is the best skate shop. This guy Seb, the owner of Riot, he did such an amazing job. He’s got like twenty people on the team and hooks up filmers in Bordeaux. He really helps the scene move forward and helps people grow with skateboarding. This year we just started a distribution called Riot Disribution. We wanted to import underground companies that we like from the US and Japan to make them known in France. We have this big skate shop and in the back there is an office, I work there with Seb. We stock all the product and send them to the finest French skate shops. We have companies like Rasa Libre, Traffic, Shut, Hopps, and more. It’s a good thing – I’m glad we did that.

48 Blocks: You’ve been traveling quite a bit. You came out here a couple of years ago and now you’re back, you’ve also been out in Japan. Give us a run down of the places you’ve visited recently.

Leo: I came to San Francisco a year and a half ago with some friends from France. I really like the place, but I came back here this time for my girlfriend actually – more to see her than skating. But it’s such a good place to skate, so it’s perfect. San Francisco is really tight, I met so many cool people – I can’t believe how many cool people I’ve met. Tokyo is definitely the best place to go for me. I love skating with all the Japanese dudes. I go there with my homie Yoan Tailliander who is a really good filmer. Every time we go there we have a blast. I’m going to Tokyo again for the third time in a week and I’m gonna stay there for two months and try to film with Yoan and my roommate Masaki to finish this video project about night skating called Minuit. I’m really excited about it. I think Tokyo’s the best place for architecture and people – it’s really different.

48 Blocks: How’s the language barrier from French to Japanese? Do you speak any Japanese?

Leo: I don’t really speak any Japanese, I just learned the really basic words to communicate with people. I speak English with people in Japan. I have a really strong French accent and people there barely speak English, so sometimes it’s really hard. But with skateboarding there is no real language barrier. I just have a blast skating for like six hours with friends in Japan like my homie Kenji Nakahira from Tokyo. He came to Bordeaux for a few weeks and he doesn’t speak English at all and at the time I barely spoke English. We would just have so much fun just skating and laughing together – just cruising around and skating spots.

48 Blocks: That’s really cool man – just how skating can transcend even talking.

Leo: Yeah, it’s crazy.

48 Blocks: Talk a little bit about Frame By Frame.

Leo: Frame By Frame was a really cool project. It was basically five filmers from France. They decided to collaborate to make the video. They worked for a year and a half on it. All the filmers worked on each part and they put all the footage together – like one part per filmer. The concept behind the film is the stop motion, you know photo by photo. The editing is really clean. It shows different scenes in France, there’s parts from Boreaux, Paris, and other different cities in France. It’s sick because it all came together which is pretty rare, that’s kind of hard to do. They just put it out on DVD – you can get it on their website. If you want to see some good French underground skateboarding, you should check it out.

48 Blocks: Let’s talk more about Minuit, what’s the translation of that?

Leo: It means midnight in French.

48 Blocks: So it’s going to be all night footage?

Leo: I think so – you can check the trailer.

48 Blocks: I’ve seen it, we had it on the site

Leo: My friend Yoan is really talented with a VX1000 and a fisheye. He’s trying to make this project happen – it’s supposed to be only night skating. My friend Masaki Ui who’s also my roommate, he’s half French half Japanese, he is gonna have a sick part. He’s got lots of sick footage. We’re trying to film for that, we’re gonna do two months in Japan to film. When we get to Japan we’re only gonna film at night because you can’t really film there during the day. We have this little battery that doesn’t make noise. We can use it to light up spots and not make too much noise when we film under houses and stuff. It gives us a little more time to film tricks than a real generator. I’m really excited about this project, Yoan is a super good filmer and he’s gonna show some skating from France, Japan, and San Francisco. So it’s gonna be a good mix of underground skating.

48 Blocks: How long have you been out here now on this trip?

Leo: It’s been two and a half months.

48 Blocks: So with two and half months in the states and two months coming up in Japan, do you think you’ll get homesick - What do you miss the most about France?

Leo: I miss my friends a little bit, but it’s okay. I see them everday when I’m in France. I’m really stoked to be here with my girlfriend. I not really homesick, maybe a little bit for food. I miss good bread, good cheese, good pastries, and stuff. But I’ve gotten used to the American way of life. – like American food. I really like it here, the weather is beautiful, it’s really colorful, lots of good people to skate with, new spots. It’s just good to change. Bordeaux is a really sick place to skate and I like that, when I travel and go to places I realize how good our spots are. When you travel you can really appreciate where you’re from and be proud of your city. But it’s good to be another place and see new people. It’s a way that you can really grow as an individual I think.

48 Blocks: What’s been your favorite American food so far?

Leo: I will say bagels. We don’t have bagels in France, I’m gonna miss bagels for sure. Bagels with cream cheese is tight, I like to wake up and get a bagel with cream cheese.

48 Blocks: That’s definitely a good one. Let’s give a shout out to some of the people in the city that you’ve been skating with...

Leo: So many people! You first – thanks for this interview and thanks for giving me a good welcome when I arrived, 48 Blocks definitely. My homie E.P. the photographer, it was really cool to shoot photos with him. My homie Elliot, he already booked a plane ticket to come to France this summer. He’s such a ripper, he skates the streets really well. Ryan, thanks so much for filming with me and giving me motivation – he’s really cool, I love to film with this guy. All the guys from Florida like Brian and Dustin, they’re really cool guys. So many people, I can’t say everybody. John from Oakland, Adam from the city, Carlos Young, Joey Johnson – he’s the first American I met when I came here. He introduced me to the American way of life. He’s a good guy. Everybody really, I can’t say shit about anybody here – everybody was so cool. I had a blast skating here.

48 Blocks: Cool, I think this will be a good interview – anything else you want to say before we rap this up?

Leo: Ummmnnn, I really glad we dropped this Frame By Frame part on the website – it’s good video. I hope to be back in the city soon, I can only stay for three months at that moment, but maybe if I get married with my girlfriend soon I will be able to come back and be an American citizen. We’ll see what happens…