Levi's® Skateboarding - Meet Val Bauer
Style /
March 2021
This season we’re taking inspiration from the California crew, the stone masters, who took the sport of rock climbing to new heights by injecting it with style and attitude, which laid the foundation for modern rock climbing.
We spoke to Val Bauer from the Levi’s® Skate crew about life in Paris and his biggest influencers. Read now.
How are you today?
I’m really good. We’re in Los Angeles and it’s 20 degrees outside. There are lots of opportunities spot-wise and the crew is perfect. I can’t complain about anything today.
How have you been coping with the pandemic?
I live with my girlfriend in Paris, which was a lucky position to be in. A lot of my friends live alone and I could tell it was way harder for them to cope with being stuck home. In terms of skateboarding, I’m more of a home guy anyway. I’d rather be in my city and think more about the spots I want to skate, so I wasn’t bothered at all about not going on skate trips. I really loved it. Last spring and last summer were both really nice. It felt good to be able to enjoy Paris as much as we could.
Going back a little, tell us about your hometown.
I come from a really small town in the north of France called Gondecourt. It’s 15 minutes from Lille and 20 minutes from the Belgium border. There was a small skate scene there. I grew up with older guys giving crazy advice like: “If you don’t know how to do every skate trick regular, don’t try to do them switch”, stuff like that. So for the first year and a half, I didn’t skate switch at all.
How did you start skating?
Me and my younger brother got the THPS (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater) game on Playstation. Then we would see people skating at the little church plaza and we were down to start. It was pretty much because of the video game. At first I was getting my parents to drive me to skateparks in other villages, then we stepped up to the bigger park in Lille. It started like this. Then I started skating the street park. Lille had the first street plaza in France. It was pretty big – there were a bunch of demos. I remember the Zoo York one was big, the Chocolate one was really big too. Wieger (Van Wageningen) was there for the opening. I was just obsessed about going there all the time. At first I would go there twice a week and spend the rest of the week thinking about tricks I could try there. I got obsessed by skating really quickly. That’s my nature.
THEN YOU SPENT SOME TIME LIVING IN LILLE BEFORE MOVING TO PARIS.
Yes, at 17 I moved into my own place and started working at Zeropolis skate shop. At 18 I started a marketing and communication masters – that lasted four years. Around this time I started going on more skate trips with the French Vans squad. I had a really nice deal with school: after explaining to the director that I wanted to work in skating, I was authorized to miss school for skate trips
What made you move to Paris?
After I graduated I worked full-time at the skate shop for around two years. I started getting paid for skating and I had more and more travel budget. The owner was keen for me to travel, but he relied on me – he had a family in Paris – and it got too complicated mixing working at the shop with going on trips, so I stopped working. Then I met the girl I’m still with today. She is from Paris and meeting her made me move there. I was visiting her in Paris between trips and within six months I was settled there. It went really fast.
What keeps you in Paris?
The situation with my girlfriend – I love where we live and I’m friends with a lot of her friends too. Paris is my favourite city to skate, so it makes sense for me to be there. It’s just home now and I couldn’t really see myself living anywhere else.
Where is your favourite spot in Paris?
Le Dôme for sure. I love the planters – they are really fun to skate. I like filming there too. Some of my friends give me shit for this because at some point I was obsessed with going there and trying to get new tricks on those things. I was just hooked.
WHO DO YOU SKATE WITH IN PARIS?
Remy (Taveira), Joseph (Biais), Lilian (Fev), Yes Clem (Clement Bossard), Clement Vanpeperstraete, Marca (Barbier), Edouard (Depaz), Willy (Maine) Nico (Gisonno) and some of the Cinquieme Terrasse people, Oscar (Candon) too, Alex Pires, Elliot (Bonnabel) and Romain (Batard). It’s pretty much the Giddy crew, extended.
Who are some younger, up-and-coming kids in Paris people should look out for?
My favourite is Nico. He’s a young guy who skates for Vans in France.
Who was your favourite skater back when you started?
When I was around 14, the Pissdrunx thing was really big where I was living. So those guys were my favourite skaters when I was really young. We would write their names with Tipp-Ex on our boards. I have also really liked Lucas (Puig) since I was really young because the first skate video I had was the Cliché video, Bon Appetit. I was really into Charles Collet and Lucas Puig from that video.
Which skate video influenced you most back then?
Bon Appetit. I also watched the Transworld videos Time to Shine and First Love over and over.
I read that you were very keen when looking for sponsors and contacting photographers when you were younger.
As I said before, when I’m into something, I get really, really obsessed by it. So I came from this really small town and I feel like I was just chasing the idea of making a living out of skating. That was the only thing I wanted to do, so at a certain point I was like: “OK, I have to figure out how to go on trips. I want to shoot photos, I want to film”. It felt natural for me to just text people. I didn’t feel awkward doing that because I felt that being motivated to skate wasn’t a bad thing. Later on I found out it was way different in big cities – you bump into people working on skateboarding projects or working in the skateboard industry and that’s more natural – but at the time I was just chasing photographers and trying to shoot as many photos as I could, which sounds a bit ridiculous. But I’m not ashamed of anything I did because I was just a young kid trying to chase a goal.
Who is your favourite Levi’s® teammate?
I spend most time with Edouard and Lilian. They are really close friends, so of course it’s going to be them, but the crew vibe is really nice when we go on trips. I had never travelled with British people much before, so it was fun discovering how that was, travelling with Charlie (Munro). It feels like British people are different to other Europeans. I can’t really explain it.
What was your favourite Levi’s® trip?
The most fun trip was Berlin. It was when they did the Copenhagen / Berlin / Amsterdam thing (CPH Open), so there were a lot of events going on. Our place was really nice and we had a lot of fun cycling around Berlin in the summer time.
What is your favouite Levi’s® fit?
I like the Baggy Jeans.
Did you used to skate in Levi’s® before riding for the brand?
Yes for sure. Back then I was oversizing 501s.
WHAT ARE YOUR EARLIEST MEMORIES OF THE BRAND?
My father and mother gardening in 501s. My mother wore a lot of 501s. I remember her telling me she bought her first brand new 501s with her first pay cheque. When I was 9 or ten, I asked for Levi’s® but we couldn’t find any in my size. Then they released those twisted jeans (Engineered) and my mother bought a pair for herself and I begged her to find me a pair. They were available in women’s sizes, so she bought me a super small women’s size and those were my favourite for a while. My mother was really into flea markets, so I would go with her and make a little bit of money selling old toys and I would buy some clothing, including 501s.
What are your plans for 2021?
There is this Vans project that we are working on right now in Paris so I’m going to try to get as many clips as possible for that first and I’m trying to get some Rassvet stuff done too. What else I don’t know. I’m not trying to plan stuff long term. I’m already happy travelling again. Being in Los Angeles feels really nice. I forgot how good it was to travel after I spent almost a full year without travelling. You get stuck in your comfort zone, so it felt good leaving that and also after filming for the same project in Paris for over six months, it felt good to see something else and not go crazy going back to spots. I felt like I needed a little bit of fresh air.