La Capsule – Los Angeles

I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that over at Magenta, we have been fans of downtown skateboarding for many years. Yes, we are in love with beautiful, chaotic urban aesthetics, and addicted with the social and cultural experiences that skating a city center can offer. We also know for sure, at this point, that it means putting yourself in all sorts of tricky situations. 

The first few times I flew to the city of angels for skating, I remember wondering why there were so many videos coming out of this area of the world but so little filmed in its very city center. Los Angeles county was and still is one of the epicenters of skateboarding, and we have all seen a ton of skateboard videos and photos from there that have influenced our skating in one way or another. But why are the majority of these videos filmed in the suburbs or nearby cities ? Is downtown LA really that terrible and too much of a bust? We decided that the best way to find out was by working on an LA capsule video, to experience the true vibe of skating downtown Los Angeles.

A portion of the crew met up for a short week in LA to cruise day and night.. Ben Gore and Jesse Narvaez drove from San Francisco and camped in the frontyard of my family in law’s house. Jimmy Lannon and Marshall Nicholson flew from Florida and stayed with homie Wolfgang from 86’d mag. We were joined by a bunch of local friends with the likes of John Lindsay, Matt town, Kevin Stanley, Eby Gafarian, Ian Freundner, Jake Slater and more…

Even Chris Thiessen came out one day to help out with his magic VX touch;
Marshall the gentle giant was an absolute boss, up and out everyday and every night, impeccably filming tricks on the go with the VX but also capturing all sorts of city sights and interactions. And man, did we experience some interactions! We even witnessed an insane car chase in the middle of downtown. There are a lot of crazy people in the streets of LA, especially at night, and you need patience to get clips done due to a ridiculous amount of security guards that seemed to be hired specifically to kick out skateboarders. We would try a line one time, go around the block, come back for another try, go around the block and so on, often having to bail. But we do love the feeling and the look of spontaneous skating where you know you don’t have all day to try something. To be honest, it often looks more natural and fun in our eyes. 

Oh, did I talk about the level of the next level skate stoppers in LA ? Yes, you will find skatestoppers everywhere in LA, even on the top of walls that no one is going to skate, not even Tiago. 
You can go ahead and watch our new LA capsule video, because despite the situation on the ground, the car chase, the hardcore security and the crazy people, we had a blast skating and filming this video. Hope it makes you want to skate a city center and push around really fast with your friends. Thank you to everyone involved, especially Marshall and Chris for filming, Wolfgang for shooting and the homie Nando for hooking it up with a working VX when ours was broken on the second day of the trip. 
Enjoy !

Text by Leo Valls

Color Photograhy by Wolfgang Bradt

Black & White Photography by Ben Gore