We love seeing friends of ours doing bits under their own steam.
And that’s just what the boys from RAVE skateboards have been doing since the creation of the brand, a couple of years ago. After a very busy year in 2018, going on back to back skate trips, releasing projects and new product ranges left and right, the boys have been showing no sign of slowing down recently releasing “La Jondelle”, a new video all filmed on a spot the crew built just outside of Bordeaux. We decided to get in touch with PJ Chapuis, one of RAVE’s founders, who happens to be the man behind the video — on top of having some of the best tricks of the edit — to know more about how it all happened.
As PJ told us, the discovery of the spot was a bit of a lucky one: “Originaly we were all going on a mission to check a pretty mediocre spot that could potentially be skate-able in the Bouliac neighborhood, and whilst wandering around the area, I stumbled on this bridge, with a huge bank all the way under it. I raced back to the nearby Mc-Donald where everybody was remedying their sorrows into Big-Macs and brought them to the spot. We actually had to work quite a bit to make the spot skateable, as we had to fill grooves that were all over the length of the bank. The photos we took on this first scout mission hyped Olivier way too much and we headed to Leroy Merlin to buy everything we needed to make concrete! We had to do 5 or 6 of these construction missions before the spot was fully skateable. We’d also been wanting to construct a slappy curb to bank for a while, so that was the perfect occasion to do so. The wall ended up being the last thing we constructed.”
Although being hyped on the newly build playground, PJ admitted it wouldn’t be the first place you’d bring your kid skating: “To be honest there’s nothing much around and you wouldn’t come here to chill if you were not skating the spot. The vibe there is pretty cold, as the spot is located outside of the city center, near the Garonne (main river that crosses Bordeaux). There’s also a very dark wood wood nearby… we’re not 100% sure of what’s going on with the cars constantly stopping by and leaving 20mn after, but we’re guessing it’s all a bit unorthodox haha.”
When asked about the feedback on the Balaclavas with the current tense social situation due to the riots (remember?), PJ told us that the location already being not that friendly, people didn’t hang around for long: “We could read doubt & tension in some people’s eyes… I think we must have scared a bunch of rollerbladers. They didn’t want to cross the bridge, haha. But the location being already so odd, most people don’t want to hang around anyway. We’d never done a clip with our Balaclavas and we thought the spot would be a good occasion to pay our homage to Deer Man of Dark Woods from Barrier Kult…”
Anyways, the boys being on their usual lordish behaviour, they were cool enough to hook us up with the location of the spot. If you’re around town and don’t mind the local fishy vibes, here’s your ticket to what should be a fun day…
