Etnieskater
06-25-2007, 03:30 PM
Here you have it ladies and gentleman, MRCK gets Mays Member of the Month award, you voted..and he won :D May of taken him extra time to finish his interview questions but they are amazing, the longest and biggest information packed interview thus far. Grab a snack and sit down and prepare to be blown out of your chair!
http://blog-demerde.skyrock.com/pics/409269591.jpg
What originally got you into skating, and what made you want to stick with skating ?
Well, it’s probably going to sound a bit weird but as far as I can remember it’s not one main particular thing that got me into skateboarding, it’s not like I discovered skating all of a sudden one day, thought I would give it a try and eventually stuck with it. Actually, ever since I was a kid I’ve always found it appealing, I remember that I was already fascinated by anything skateboarding-related when I was like five years old for some reason – I could stare at any comic, ad or picture that somehow featured a skater for hours, and every time I happened to see someone skating down the street for a split second while taking a walk with my mom or even just on TV it made my day. I don’t know why it always felt that intriguing to me, I guess I naturally saw it as a cool thing to do. Then when I was about 6 or 7 I guess, I wanted to have my own board so I harassed my mom to buy me one, and she got me a green plastic banana board from some flea market I instantly fell in love with. We were living in the inner city back then and most of my friends weren’t interested in skateboarding so I didn’t get the chance to use it until we moved to where I live now, which we did when I was 8, meanwhile I collected more cheap boards I would only touch every once in a while to try buttboarding down stuff along with my friends on their bikes. Then I moved to Blois and my life took a brand new path, my parents put me in a pretty strict school that ate up my spare time and since I didn’t have any friends in this new town, I would spend most of what was left of it on video games and stuff, to the point where I was becoming a real nerd, getting overweight from eating too much crackers in front of my Super Nintendo and the lack of a social life. I never forgot about skateboarding, I still had my collection of boards somewhere in my garage, waiting for me to try them out in that quieter neighborhood I was living in now and the idea of skateboarding was still fascinating for me, I guess I was just scared of not being good enough to stand on a board without bailing hard and eating the concrete. Then for no apparent reason one day I thought I would go like, ‘**** it, I’ve always wanted to do it, and I will from now on’. Next thing I know is I am trying to figure out the mechanisms of tick-tacking in the street in front of my house. I had stepped on a skateboard for the first time and I never stepped off once since.
As I was seriously getting into it, I bought a better board, still a cheap one but my first one with a double tail, a grip tape, urethane wheels and decent quality trucks and bearings, so I could enjoy the experience even more. From my first sesh on I was addicted, during my classes I would be eagerly waiting for the bell to ring to have my spare time of the day and spend it riding my board and shredding my neighborhood for hours. That’s also when I caught myself looking at my classmates thinking ‘boy, if they only they knew how much fun I’m going to have as soon as I get out of here this evening’ for the first times, and I can tell you that it has been happening every day since. Keep in mind that back then, I didn’t even know tricks existed, I didn’t even know skateparks and skateshops existed (I would assume that there were probably a few in the USA and that was about it), I didn’t even know companies and pros existed or anything. During recess I would lurk for everyone carrying a board in the playground but being the loner that I am, I never felt the need to come up to them or anything and I spent a few more months skating by myself. Eventually I made a new friend who turned out to have a board he only used for transportation too, we started hanging out with each other and looking for hills to go down and funny spots like that. Then we witnessed a complete revolution, under the form of some random guy ollieing a bin in the school playground, we couldn’t believe it the first time, then he did it several times in a row, which left us gaping, wondering how the hell was what we had just seen even possible. Then I remember spending a lot of my sessions trying to randomly pop the tail just in case I would eventually figure out a way to pull the board up with me, haha.Then the first THPS was released, being the two video-game addicts we used to be my friend and I bought it right away, but it was the Nintendo 64 version which didn’t have the pro movies the Playstation version had, which disappointed us quite a bit, even though we spent hours and hours on the game, aah the memories. We bought our first skate mags as well, the first one we ever got our hands on was an issue of ‘Skate One’, a Powell catalogue that included a few interviews of the members of the team, trick tips, comics and tour reports, and boy how we would look up to Pat Channita, Danny Wainwright, Javier Sarmiento and Steve Caballero back then. I found a forgotten two-year old issue of 411VM at a local store and bought it, put it into my VCR and finally witnessed my first pro footage, which blew me away since I had never really seen pro-caliber skating before, I instantly fell in love with names such as Ronnie Creager, Jamie Thomas or my very first favorite skater Daewon Song. And I had never seen anything from Rodney Mullen yet, I’ll let you imagine how the first footage I ever saw of him left me in awe. The more I would find out about skateboarding, the more I would be psyched about it, the more I would feel like it was really made for me, the more it would feel like home. Skateboarding has always been my passion, still is after all these years, and hopefully will always be. I try to retain this little spark of soul I’ve always had for it throughout time and so far I feel like I’m doing well.
http://dadarules.skyrock.com/pics/563576594.jpg
If you weren’t skating, what would you be doing with your life ?
In all honesty I would probably be the average overweight computer nerd full of cholesterol and empty of any taste when it comes to artistic appreciation, listening to techno music and without any friends but my computer on which I would program my own games in BASIC... That’s the direction I was heading to eight years ago, no disrespect to computer nerds worldwide but man I’m so glad I first stepped on a skateboard. It brought me everything, fun, love, and just plain happiness, it awakened my soul to pretty much everything I’ve based my life on, it allowed me to travel to places I would never have ever been to if it wasn’t for skateboarding, it allowed me to meet new people with their own richness, basically it made me go through new experiences on a daily basis which contributed to make me richer inside and somehow built me. I’m really happy with my life at the moment, I love it, I have everything I need and I owe a huge part of it to skateboarding. The only downside to my passion for skateboarding is how it tends to take my life over a bit too much sometimes, I’m becoming an adult now and I need to grow up faster to be more responsible in real life situations, I’m working my way there though.
Do you plan on moving out of France in the future, to where and why would this place be your decision ?
I don’t have anything planned yet, not that I still live from day to day as much as I used to in my teenage years, because I do have a pretty good idea of what I want my future to be (except when it comes to career plans, I still have no real idea of the kind of job I want to have when I’m out of college, I guess I’ll just take what I can take), it’s just that I’ve never really thought about moving out of France in the future, therefore I couldn’t really answer your question. I’ll just go wherever life takes me to I guess, and if odds are that I end up somewhere near you, I’ll drop you a line, haha.
Have you got a girlfriend ?
Yes I certainly do ! She’s the main part of the future I just talked about for sure. We’ve been together for nearly three years now, and she’s wonderful, she has it all, she knows how to stir up my feelings and we both know and trust each other perfectly, it’s all good. Our story is just perfect, I’m a completely happy man when it comes to my love life. Je t’aime Marie.
http://blog-demerde.skyrock.com/pics/545715157.jpg
Is the term "french-kissing" used in France ?
Haha, not at all, we know it’s used in English though so sometimes some people like to joke about it but that’s about it really.
If you could have a session with anybody on the cafe who would it be ?
Well I’m always down for a sesh, so as long as you don’t take yourself too seriously when it comes to skateboarding then it’s all good, I want to skate with you ! Skateboarding is a good way to meet new people and since every person you get to meet in your life is unique, such experiences only makes your richer every time – even when it comes to skating, everyone has their own style and bag of tricks, which is always rad to discover, I know that I learned a bunch of my tricks from random skaters I met throughout my seven years of skating and it built up my collection. But I do have some names that instantly come to mind when I think of Cafe members I would particularly like to skate with – Varial_222, aronsamma, Sev7n, Roboman, Pathtek4, Infernomax, Supersonix6, Robbyskateboard, atrain, DeadBlueSky, Arto-Geoff, dead sparrow... The list could go on and on, so sorry if I forgot someone, I’m down for a sesh with everyone really.
http://dadarules.skyrock.com/pics/541508751.jpg
What does CK stand for ?
Well it was never meant to stand for anything, when I first got the Internet a few years ago I needed to get myself a cool nick so I just took my name (“Aymeric”) and played around with it, I removed the vowels to get MRC and I added an extra K because I thought it looked cooler and it would probably prevent people from thinking that my name is Marc or something, haha. Then I needed to register on Youtube and some forums which required a longer user name, so I thought about it for a while and couldn’t find anything better than “Mr. CK”, which turned into “MisterCK” on Youtube since they wouldn’t allow the period. “CK” isn’t actually meant to stand for anything by itself. Sorry for the potential disappointment this revelation may cause !
Who's your favorite pro ?
I couldn’t name just one. Daewon Song has been one of the first skaters I ever looked up to, then I stumbled upon Mullen’s ending video in THPS2 for the first time - remember that I didn’t have Internet access back then, nor a skateshop I could have directly purchased vids at, I don’t think I would have been able to afford it anyway, therefore getting to watch pro skateboarding footage was always exceptional for me... It blew me away like a hurricane, and redefined what I thought was possible to perform on a skateboard. I’m still a Mullen fan to these days, but along the years I’ve discovered a lot of skaters I like just as much – Alex Moul, Ocean Howell, Ed Templeton, Natas Kaupas, Tom Penny, Mark Gonzales, Jason Lee, Frankie Hill, Ray Barbee, Willy Santos... The list could go on and on. In all honesty, asking me to pick a pro skater that I don’t particularly like would be a much tougher question to answer.
Most inspirational video part(s) ?
Way too many... I’ll just go and link you up to my favorite video parts ever.
Natas Kaupas "Streets of Fire" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=JRkLUQknXeM)
Rubber Boys "Public Domain" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sw1goX6AMDg)
Mark Gonzales "Video Days" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=TVOVVa-Si9Y)
Jason Lee "Video Days" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=IpLSPR-fDY8)
Ocean Howell H-Street "Next Generation" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Th9UCl53EgY)
Brian Lotti "Now n Later" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=FF_qg_Hlsmc)
Rodney Mullen "Questionable" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=vs5Oe7unAwA)
Pat Duffy "Questionable" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=aBeFQLnr6Lw)
Rodney Mullen "Virtual Reality" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=dr8Zr_d4kEU)
Pat Duffy "Virtual Reality" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=xeb_48bGDlQ)
Any Franky Hill Part (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bp-0uabfSLE)
Willy Santos "feaster" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=5aYvQfGRbX0)
Ray Barbee "La Vuena Vida" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bGknfukwhB4)
Ray Barbee "Ban This" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=oYKWli-pOU0)
John Montessi "1281" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=lgZ1t5EaZzM)
Ron Knigge "1281" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=4XZVRmffO94)
Armando Barajas "1281" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=X7u0wj3z6Ik)
ARmando Barajas "Stacked" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=0zEaph33rsU)
Alex Moul "spirit of the blitz" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=jkNkT_RMoK4)
Julio De la Cruz "Da Deal iz Dead" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=lM3bCYFp4dY)
Ed Templeton "Jump of a Building" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=O-rX0ItUfjg)
Chris Senn "Jump of a Building" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=NlMWY4HuxSs)
Ed Templeton "Welcome to Hell" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=YZUvdKFaGW0)
Adam Mcnatt "411vm profile" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=z0uOfD7Ykj4)
Jerry Fowler "411vm Profile (http://youtube.com/watch?v=-hjahMzWTKs)
A.V.E. "wheels of Fortune" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=LY-t70N3FU8)
Evan Sheilfelbine "wheels of fortune" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=d7tpFZ7oTXs)
Nate Sherwood (http://youtube.com/watch?v=hs9SQr68NM8)
Eric Koston "Chomp on this" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ8HwBfPdaM)
Jerry Hsu "Subject to Change" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=V_uDERWVpMI)
Alex Maul "Guarte" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=rpLqAvRtz6M)
Denis Businetz "Roll Forevor" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=9P7Sg7BHSl8)
Oli Bourgen "The Strongest of the strange" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=dtO6n3SUfMw)
Scott Bourne "The STrongest of the strange" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=SOU5WHnRtdw)
I may have missed out a few but I wouldn’t want your eyes to melt. Also maybe only a quarter of my inspiration comes from pro footage, the rest originates from either skating my friends and having fun learning random tricks together or just watching footage from random people on the Internet. Summing up skateboarding to pro footage would be just as much of a mistake as summing up a book to its pictures – let alone when you don’t even bother trying to open your mind by watching more than the latest mainstream releases, then you are just staring at the cover.
http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5449/04aymericnc3marchesupwj3.jpg
Are you popular in the French skating scene ?
Not really. The only reason why I’m somewhat popular is because of my blog (http://mrck.skyblog.com) and the blog of my team (http://blog-demerde.skyblog.com, I haven’t updated it in a while though), both of which get quite a lot of daily hits, I have some following on the Internet but that’s pretty much it.
The cafe knows you have A LOT of techy tricks. What is your favorite ?
It changes all the time ! But my love for impossible variations, ollie one-foots and featherflips never seem to go away. Pressure flips are fun too, especially variations that flip halfway then you catch the board upside down in the air and late half flip / heelflip it back the other way, I do these all the time these days. Double flip and kiwi flip variations always feel good too, and I used to do a lot of no-comply tricks a few years ago, but I don’t do them as often anymore. However thinking that I only do tech tricks would be a big mistake, that’s what you see of me the most on the footage I have on the Internet but easier tricks such as shove-it and 180 variations are a big part of my usual skating as well, just because they’re easy and feel just as good.
Have your feet always been naturally good at late flips and front foot impossibles, or are they possessed by the devil ? If so, would you prefer the devil continue to dwell within you, or exorcise him and thus be banished to the world of... "Normal Flip Tricks"...
Well it’s just the direction my skating naturally took, when I think about it tech skating has always been the one aspect of skateboarding that impresses / inspires / motivates me the most. This is another thing I love about skateboarding – how it’s just a piece of wood with wheels, and all the rest is your personal interpretation of it, depending on your personality, which results in how everyone has their own unique style, bag of tricks and preference when it comes to what to skate and how to skate it. Which is what makes it all about expression – it’s like an art form, your board is your brush and your environment is your canvas. Some of my first tricks were nollie impossibles, nollie pressure flips, frontside no-complies and kickbacks, I learned them back in a day when I didn’t even know neither how they were called nor if they even existed, just because I didn’t have access to pro footage and I spent my first year and a half of skating in front of my house without any connection to what other people were doing on their skateboards. My tricks just came naturally, I learned them because I loved how they looked or felt (I’m unable to practice a trick I don’t like the feeling of) and I kept doing them because I still love them, and I broadened my bag of tricks along time, following that guideline according to which I won’t learn anything but the tricks I feel like learning, which includes both some of what you define as ‘normal flip tricks’, and some of these more obscure moves. I just let them come to me and I have fun with them. I don’t really divide skateboarding into two worlds, or any different amounts of worlds for that matter, I just like to look at it as one big thing, that same piece of wood with wheels every skater looks at but perceives differently. Which is a big part of the richness of skateboarding.
http://dadarules.skyrock.com/pics/548887840.jpg
Your Heavell sponsorship seems to be going well, do you have any contact with the rest of the team ? e.g MSN ?
Nah I don’t, but I know all these guys Youtube account and some of their Myspaces so it’s allright, I can get in touch with them whenever I feel like it, and I’ve got some comments from Christobal Bahamonde on my vids and I’ve left him a few comments too... The only guy from Heavell I communicate a lot with is obviously Wade (the owner), he’s a really nice guy with a similar approach to skateboarding as mine, and I admire his will to innovate and how he supports skateboarding as a whole with Heavell. Most companies try to focus on their image and only sponsor either only handrail killers or tech ledge combos masters – Heavell gives everyone their chance regardless of the way they skate and therefore contributes to skateboarding as a whole instead of being just another mindless company. I’ve always sworn to myself that I would never get sponsored by a company that wouldn’t take me and my skating for what we are – now you can imagine that Heavell means a lot to me, I’m happy to represent them and since they’re not that big yet and they deserve more recognition in my opinion, you can choose to support their products, just contact Wade through http://www.heavellskates.com or PM him on Skaterscafé for orders or questions (his name on the forum is ‘Goblin_Skater’).
If you had to choose one dream sponsorship, what would it be and why ?
Heavell is all I need. They are the perfect sponsorship for me, I think I would have declined any offer from a company with a different policy anyway. They don’t put restrictions on my skating, they take it as it is and go as far as supporting it, which is exactly what I think a sponsor should do. I can’t stand all these companies out there who hire the biggest talents they can find and try to dictate them the way their skating should take to make them marketable just for the sake of their image. I see skateboarding as a free cultural underworld and I encourage creativity, individuality, spontaneous expression and open minds to respect it. In a way, I’m a firm believer that a skateboarding company should represent the skaters who ride for it, instead of the opposite, which happens in too many cases nowadays alas. Having a corporate image is fine, until it puts restrictions on the skaters themselves. Skateboarding relies on skateboarders, not companies.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1041/551650260_cf0ecdc8f6_o.jpg
Did you ever expect the Internet could funnel you through stardom like it has ?
Haha, ‘stardom’. I don’t even know why there seems to be such a craze around me because in all honesty, I think that there are a lot of people who deserve it more than I do, I feel it misplaced sometimes. I guess a lot of people are interested in alternative ways to skate and since I upload a lot of stuff on Youtube, they find my clips quite easily. And since not a lot of people do weird tricks at the same extent as I do, they suscribe to my channel out of curiosity. It’s pretty cool but at the same time I feel like a freak and some people just seem to forget that I’m not here to be watched or to showcase my skills, I just need a place to upload my random footage and it disturbs me when people think I only skate flatground just because most of the stuff I upload are sets and matches for online games of SKATE and I don’t like being confined in such a restrictive definition. I like skating everything, flatground is just a part of my skating (just like it is a part of skateboarding in general for that matter) and during my first years of skating I was way more into manual pads and ledges than flat and banks. So I don’t regard myself as a ‘tech flatground skater’, I regard myself as a skater with his own style just like everyone else, and that’s what makes it fun.
http://blog-demerde.skyrock.com/pics/417667927.jpg
But have you ever had a trick you got super frustrated on ? Like one that really was hard, and still cant do ?
I can’t do the tricks I don’t like the feeling of, and just like everyone I have a few moves I’ve never really been able to get the grasp of, despite my insistense. I’m horrible at hardflips for some reason, I guess I never really practiced them, but I’m starting to like them more and more these days so they shouldn’t be a problem for long anymore. I used to be really really horrible at nollie flips and switch flips too, as well as their variations, but I recently worked out all my problems with these, I just needed to practice them a bit. Hmm, then I guess all this makes switch / nollie hardflips my nightmare trick ? I don’t know, there are a lot of them !
Do you have any hidden hobbies ? Any other hobbies besides skating that you do when you can’t skate ?
Skateboarding is my main hobby by far. I used to play bass quite a lot and to be in a punk / hardcore band along with two friends a few years ago, we played one gig then never played again, we never officially broke up, I guess we only chose skating over music (both of which we never took seriously anyway) naturally. Fingerboarding and video games are fun every once in a while on rainy days only, I guess that’s my nerd side persisting... I love music of course, but for some reason I wouldn’t count it as a hobby, more like a daily soundtrack for my life. I like wasting my time on the Internet too... When it comes to my hobbies I’m pretty much like the average skateboarding joe.
Why did you cut the hair ???
It was getting annoying long, giving me acne despite my high standards of personal hygiene (I’m not even kidding, I’m slightly germophobic / hypocondriac), and my girlfriend wanted to see how I would look like with shorter hair. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1240/551650232_566265b503_o.jpg
Have ya ever been attacked my any animals while skating ?
POODLES ! They are my worst enemy, sometimes I just skate ride the street and I hear those dreaded high-pitched barks out of nowhere, and as I feel them getting closer and closer, that’s when I know I’m going to have to jump off my board if I don’t want to get my calf bitten, and as soon as I do the little bastard runs in front of me then stops just to stare at me and give me that half proud, half empty look, wagging its tail and waiting for me to get back on my board to chase me again. They’re just creatures from hell whose only purposes in life are to harass skateboarders and to make old people feel less lonely, there are days when I’d like to send them back where they came from...
Pirates, or Ninjas ?
Ninjas all the way. Regardless of what happens throughout the world daily, I will always believe in the power of technique and subtlety over brute and drunken force, and whoever needs cannonballs to defend themselves has a deep and serious problem of self-esteem.
Any shout outs ?
I’m going to have to quote Alex Moul on this one : ‘This question's always a dangerous one, because you always get some wanker who calls up and goes, ‘you didn't thank me in your interview’. I'm going to be a bit boring, as I probably have in this interview, and just say you know who you are. Because if listed them off I'd probably be even more boring.’
Have a good day and have fun skating.
Videos
GTZdPvqHygU syntJ48HoVI
Thank you MRCK for the great interview, great experience for me. Now give him his well deserved reward and good luck to next months voting process!
http://blog-demerde.skyrock.com/pics/409269591.jpg
What originally got you into skating, and what made you want to stick with skating ?
Well, it’s probably going to sound a bit weird but as far as I can remember it’s not one main particular thing that got me into skateboarding, it’s not like I discovered skating all of a sudden one day, thought I would give it a try and eventually stuck with it. Actually, ever since I was a kid I’ve always found it appealing, I remember that I was already fascinated by anything skateboarding-related when I was like five years old for some reason – I could stare at any comic, ad or picture that somehow featured a skater for hours, and every time I happened to see someone skating down the street for a split second while taking a walk with my mom or even just on TV it made my day. I don’t know why it always felt that intriguing to me, I guess I naturally saw it as a cool thing to do. Then when I was about 6 or 7 I guess, I wanted to have my own board so I harassed my mom to buy me one, and she got me a green plastic banana board from some flea market I instantly fell in love with. We were living in the inner city back then and most of my friends weren’t interested in skateboarding so I didn’t get the chance to use it until we moved to where I live now, which we did when I was 8, meanwhile I collected more cheap boards I would only touch every once in a while to try buttboarding down stuff along with my friends on their bikes. Then I moved to Blois and my life took a brand new path, my parents put me in a pretty strict school that ate up my spare time and since I didn’t have any friends in this new town, I would spend most of what was left of it on video games and stuff, to the point where I was becoming a real nerd, getting overweight from eating too much crackers in front of my Super Nintendo and the lack of a social life. I never forgot about skateboarding, I still had my collection of boards somewhere in my garage, waiting for me to try them out in that quieter neighborhood I was living in now and the idea of skateboarding was still fascinating for me, I guess I was just scared of not being good enough to stand on a board without bailing hard and eating the concrete. Then for no apparent reason one day I thought I would go like, ‘**** it, I’ve always wanted to do it, and I will from now on’. Next thing I know is I am trying to figure out the mechanisms of tick-tacking in the street in front of my house. I had stepped on a skateboard for the first time and I never stepped off once since.
As I was seriously getting into it, I bought a better board, still a cheap one but my first one with a double tail, a grip tape, urethane wheels and decent quality trucks and bearings, so I could enjoy the experience even more. From my first sesh on I was addicted, during my classes I would be eagerly waiting for the bell to ring to have my spare time of the day and spend it riding my board and shredding my neighborhood for hours. That’s also when I caught myself looking at my classmates thinking ‘boy, if they only they knew how much fun I’m going to have as soon as I get out of here this evening’ for the first times, and I can tell you that it has been happening every day since. Keep in mind that back then, I didn’t even know tricks existed, I didn’t even know skateparks and skateshops existed (I would assume that there were probably a few in the USA and that was about it), I didn’t even know companies and pros existed or anything. During recess I would lurk for everyone carrying a board in the playground but being the loner that I am, I never felt the need to come up to them or anything and I spent a few more months skating by myself. Eventually I made a new friend who turned out to have a board he only used for transportation too, we started hanging out with each other and looking for hills to go down and funny spots like that. Then we witnessed a complete revolution, under the form of some random guy ollieing a bin in the school playground, we couldn’t believe it the first time, then he did it several times in a row, which left us gaping, wondering how the hell was what we had just seen even possible. Then I remember spending a lot of my sessions trying to randomly pop the tail just in case I would eventually figure out a way to pull the board up with me, haha.Then the first THPS was released, being the two video-game addicts we used to be my friend and I bought it right away, but it was the Nintendo 64 version which didn’t have the pro movies the Playstation version had, which disappointed us quite a bit, even though we spent hours and hours on the game, aah the memories. We bought our first skate mags as well, the first one we ever got our hands on was an issue of ‘Skate One’, a Powell catalogue that included a few interviews of the members of the team, trick tips, comics and tour reports, and boy how we would look up to Pat Channita, Danny Wainwright, Javier Sarmiento and Steve Caballero back then. I found a forgotten two-year old issue of 411VM at a local store and bought it, put it into my VCR and finally witnessed my first pro footage, which blew me away since I had never really seen pro-caliber skating before, I instantly fell in love with names such as Ronnie Creager, Jamie Thomas or my very first favorite skater Daewon Song. And I had never seen anything from Rodney Mullen yet, I’ll let you imagine how the first footage I ever saw of him left me in awe. The more I would find out about skateboarding, the more I would be psyched about it, the more I would feel like it was really made for me, the more it would feel like home. Skateboarding has always been my passion, still is after all these years, and hopefully will always be. I try to retain this little spark of soul I’ve always had for it throughout time and so far I feel like I’m doing well.
http://dadarules.skyrock.com/pics/563576594.jpg
If you weren’t skating, what would you be doing with your life ?
In all honesty I would probably be the average overweight computer nerd full of cholesterol and empty of any taste when it comes to artistic appreciation, listening to techno music and without any friends but my computer on which I would program my own games in BASIC... That’s the direction I was heading to eight years ago, no disrespect to computer nerds worldwide but man I’m so glad I first stepped on a skateboard. It brought me everything, fun, love, and just plain happiness, it awakened my soul to pretty much everything I’ve based my life on, it allowed me to travel to places I would never have ever been to if it wasn’t for skateboarding, it allowed me to meet new people with their own richness, basically it made me go through new experiences on a daily basis which contributed to make me richer inside and somehow built me. I’m really happy with my life at the moment, I love it, I have everything I need and I owe a huge part of it to skateboarding. The only downside to my passion for skateboarding is how it tends to take my life over a bit too much sometimes, I’m becoming an adult now and I need to grow up faster to be more responsible in real life situations, I’m working my way there though.
Do you plan on moving out of France in the future, to where and why would this place be your decision ?
I don’t have anything planned yet, not that I still live from day to day as much as I used to in my teenage years, because I do have a pretty good idea of what I want my future to be (except when it comes to career plans, I still have no real idea of the kind of job I want to have when I’m out of college, I guess I’ll just take what I can take), it’s just that I’ve never really thought about moving out of France in the future, therefore I couldn’t really answer your question. I’ll just go wherever life takes me to I guess, and if odds are that I end up somewhere near you, I’ll drop you a line, haha.
Have you got a girlfriend ?
Yes I certainly do ! She’s the main part of the future I just talked about for sure. We’ve been together for nearly three years now, and she’s wonderful, she has it all, she knows how to stir up my feelings and we both know and trust each other perfectly, it’s all good. Our story is just perfect, I’m a completely happy man when it comes to my love life. Je t’aime Marie.
http://blog-demerde.skyrock.com/pics/545715157.jpg
Is the term "french-kissing" used in France ?
Haha, not at all, we know it’s used in English though so sometimes some people like to joke about it but that’s about it really.
If you could have a session with anybody on the cafe who would it be ?
Well I’m always down for a sesh, so as long as you don’t take yourself too seriously when it comes to skateboarding then it’s all good, I want to skate with you ! Skateboarding is a good way to meet new people and since every person you get to meet in your life is unique, such experiences only makes your richer every time – even when it comes to skating, everyone has their own style and bag of tricks, which is always rad to discover, I know that I learned a bunch of my tricks from random skaters I met throughout my seven years of skating and it built up my collection. But I do have some names that instantly come to mind when I think of Cafe members I would particularly like to skate with – Varial_222, aronsamma, Sev7n, Roboman, Pathtek4, Infernomax, Supersonix6, Robbyskateboard, atrain, DeadBlueSky, Arto-Geoff, dead sparrow... The list could go on and on, so sorry if I forgot someone, I’m down for a sesh with everyone really.
http://dadarules.skyrock.com/pics/541508751.jpg
What does CK stand for ?
Well it was never meant to stand for anything, when I first got the Internet a few years ago I needed to get myself a cool nick so I just took my name (“Aymeric”) and played around with it, I removed the vowels to get MRC and I added an extra K because I thought it looked cooler and it would probably prevent people from thinking that my name is Marc or something, haha. Then I needed to register on Youtube and some forums which required a longer user name, so I thought about it for a while and couldn’t find anything better than “Mr. CK”, which turned into “MisterCK” on Youtube since they wouldn’t allow the period. “CK” isn’t actually meant to stand for anything by itself. Sorry for the potential disappointment this revelation may cause !
Who's your favorite pro ?
I couldn’t name just one. Daewon Song has been one of the first skaters I ever looked up to, then I stumbled upon Mullen’s ending video in THPS2 for the first time - remember that I didn’t have Internet access back then, nor a skateshop I could have directly purchased vids at, I don’t think I would have been able to afford it anyway, therefore getting to watch pro skateboarding footage was always exceptional for me... It blew me away like a hurricane, and redefined what I thought was possible to perform on a skateboard. I’m still a Mullen fan to these days, but along the years I’ve discovered a lot of skaters I like just as much – Alex Moul, Ocean Howell, Ed Templeton, Natas Kaupas, Tom Penny, Mark Gonzales, Jason Lee, Frankie Hill, Ray Barbee, Willy Santos... The list could go on and on. In all honesty, asking me to pick a pro skater that I don’t particularly like would be a much tougher question to answer.
Most inspirational video part(s) ?
Way too many... I’ll just go and link you up to my favorite video parts ever.
Natas Kaupas "Streets of Fire" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=JRkLUQknXeM)
Rubber Boys "Public Domain" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Sw1goX6AMDg)
Mark Gonzales "Video Days" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=TVOVVa-Si9Y)
Jason Lee "Video Days" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=IpLSPR-fDY8)
Ocean Howell H-Street "Next Generation" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Th9UCl53EgY)
Brian Lotti "Now n Later" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=FF_qg_Hlsmc)
Rodney Mullen "Questionable" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=vs5Oe7unAwA)
Pat Duffy "Questionable" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=aBeFQLnr6Lw)
Rodney Mullen "Virtual Reality" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=dr8Zr_d4kEU)
Pat Duffy "Virtual Reality" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=xeb_48bGDlQ)
Any Franky Hill Part (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bp-0uabfSLE)
Willy Santos "feaster" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=5aYvQfGRbX0)
Ray Barbee "La Vuena Vida" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=bGknfukwhB4)
Ray Barbee "Ban This" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=oYKWli-pOU0)
John Montessi "1281" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=lgZ1t5EaZzM)
Ron Knigge "1281" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=4XZVRmffO94)
Armando Barajas "1281" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=X7u0wj3z6Ik)
ARmando Barajas "Stacked" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=0zEaph33rsU)
Alex Moul "spirit of the blitz" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=jkNkT_RMoK4)
Julio De la Cruz "Da Deal iz Dead" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=lM3bCYFp4dY)
Ed Templeton "Jump of a Building" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=O-rX0ItUfjg)
Chris Senn "Jump of a Building" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=NlMWY4HuxSs)
Ed Templeton "Welcome to Hell" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=YZUvdKFaGW0)
Adam Mcnatt "411vm profile" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=z0uOfD7Ykj4)
Jerry Fowler "411vm Profile (http://youtube.com/watch?v=-hjahMzWTKs)
A.V.E. "wheels of Fortune" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=LY-t70N3FU8)
Evan Sheilfelbine "wheels of fortune" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=d7tpFZ7oTXs)
Nate Sherwood (http://youtube.com/watch?v=hs9SQr68NM8)
Eric Koston "Chomp on this" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ8HwBfPdaM)
Jerry Hsu "Subject to Change" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=V_uDERWVpMI)
Alex Maul "Guarte" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=rpLqAvRtz6M)
Denis Businetz "Roll Forevor" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=9P7Sg7BHSl8)
Oli Bourgen "The Strongest of the strange" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=dtO6n3SUfMw)
Scott Bourne "The STrongest of the strange" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=SOU5WHnRtdw)
I may have missed out a few but I wouldn’t want your eyes to melt. Also maybe only a quarter of my inspiration comes from pro footage, the rest originates from either skating my friends and having fun learning random tricks together or just watching footage from random people on the Internet. Summing up skateboarding to pro footage would be just as much of a mistake as summing up a book to its pictures – let alone when you don’t even bother trying to open your mind by watching more than the latest mainstream releases, then you are just staring at the cover.
http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/5449/04aymericnc3marchesupwj3.jpg
Are you popular in the French skating scene ?
Not really. The only reason why I’m somewhat popular is because of my blog (http://mrck.skyblog.com) and the blog of my team (http://blog-demerde.skyblog.com, I haven’t updated it in a while though), both of which get quite a lot of daily hits, I have some following on the Internet but that’s pretty much it.
The cafe knows you have A LOT of techy tricks. What is your favorite ?
It changes all the time ! But my love for impossible variations, ollie one-foots and featherflips never seem to go away. Pressure flips are fun too, especially variations that flip halfway then you catch the board upside down in the air and late half flip / heelflip it back the other way, I do these all the time these days. Double flip and kiwi flip variations always feel good too, and I used to do a lot of no-comply tricks a few years ago, but I don’t do them as often anymore. However thinking that I only do tech tricks would be a big mistake, that’s what you see of me the most on the footage I have on the Internet but easier tricks such as shove-it and 180 variations are a big part of my usual skating as well, just because they’re easy and feel just as good.
Have your feet always been naturally good at late flips and front foot impossibles, or are they possessed by the devil ? If so, would you prefer the devil continue to dwell within you, or exorcise him and thus be banished to the world of... "Normal Flip Tricks"...
Well it’s just the direction my skating naturally took, when I think about it tech skating has always been the one aspect of skateboarding that impresses / inspires / motivates me the most. This is another thing I love about skateboarding – how it’s just a piece of wood with wheels, and all the rest is your personal interpretation of it, depending on your personality, which results in how everyone has their own unique style, bag of tricks and preference when it comes to what to skate and how to skate it. Which is what makes it all about expression – it’s like an art form, your board is your brush and your environment is your canvas. Some of my first tricks were nollie impossibles, nollie pressure flips, frontside no-complies and kickbacks, I learned them back in a day when I didn’t even know neither how they were called nor if they even existed, just because I didn’t have access to pro footage and I spent my first year and a half of skating in front of my house without any connection to what other people were doing on their skateboards. My tricks just came naturally, I learned them because I loved how they looked or felt (I’m unable to practice a trick I don’t like the feeling of) and I kept doing them because I still love them, and I broadened my bag of tricks along time, following that guideline according to which I won’t learn anything but the tricks I feel like learning, which includes both some of what you define as ‘normal flip tricks’, and some of these more obscure moves. I just let them come to me and I have fun with them. I don’t really divide skateboarding into two worlds, or any different amounts of worlds for that matter, I just like to look at it as one big thing, that same piece of wood with wheels every skater looks at but perceives differently. Which is a big part of the richness of skateboarding.
http://dadarules.skyrock.com/pics/548887840.jpg
Your Heavell sponsorship seems to be going well, do you have any contact with the rest of the team ? e.g MSN ?
Nah I don’t, but I know all these guys Youtube account and some of their Myspaces so it’s allright, I can get in touch with them whenever I feel like it, and I’ve got some comments from Christobal Bahamonde on my vids and I’ve left him a few comments too... The only guy from Heavell I communicate a lot with is obviously Wade (the owner), he’s a really nice guy with a similar approach to skateboarding as mine, and I admire his will to innovate and how he supports skateboarding as a whole with Heavell. Most companies try to focus on their image and only sponsor either only handrail killers or tech ledge combos masters – Heavell gives everyone their chance regardless of the way they skate and therefore contributes to skateboarding as a whole instead of being just another mindless company. I’ve always sworn to myself that I would never get sponsored by a company that wouldn’t take me and my skating for what we are – now you can imagine that Heavell means a lot to me, I’m happy to represent them and since they’re not that big yet and they deserve more recognition in my opinion, you can choose to support their products, just contact Wade through http://www.heavellskates.com or PM him on Skaterscafé for orders or questions (his name on the forum is ‘Goblin_Skater’).
If you had to choose one dream sponsorship, what would it be and why ?
Heavell is all I need. They are the perfect sponsorship for me, I think I would have declined any offer from a company with a different policy anyway. They don’t put restrictions on my skating, they take it as it is and go as far as supporting it, which is exactly what I think a sponsor should do. I can’t stand all these companies out there who hire the biggest talents they can find and try to dictate them the way their skating should take to make them marketable just for the sake of their image. I see skateboarding as a free cultural underworld and I encourage creativity, individuality, spontaneous expression and open minds to respect it. In a way, I’m a firm believer that a skateboarding company should represent the skaters who ride for it, instead of the opposite, which happens in too many cases nowadays alas. Having a corporate image is fine, until it puts restrictions on the skaters themselves. Skateboarding relies on skateboarders, not companies.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1041/551650260_cf0ecdc8f6_o.jpg
Did you ever expect the Internet could funnel you through stardom like it has ?
Haha, ‘stardom’. I don’t even know why there seems to be such a craze around me because in all honesty, I think that there are a lot of people who deserve it more than I do, I feel it misplaced sometimes. I guess a lot of people are interested in alternative ways to skate and since I upload a lot of stuff on Youtube, they find my clips quite easily. And since not a lot of people do weird tricks at the same extent as I do, they suscribe to my channel out of curiosity. It’s pretty cool but at the same time I feel like a freak and some people just seem to forget that I’m not here to be watched or to showcase my skills, I just need a place to upload my random footage and it disturbs me when people think I only skate flatground just because most of the stuff I upload are sets and matches for online games of SKATE and I don’t like being confined in such a restrictive definition. I like skating everything, flatground is just a part of my skating (just like it is a part of skateboarding in general for that matter) and during my first years of skating I was way more into manual pads and ledges than flat and banks. So I don’t regard myself as a ‘tech flatground skater’, I regard myself as a skater with his own style just like everyone else, and that’s what makes it fun.
http://blog-demerde.skyrock.com/pics/417667927.jpg
But have you ever had a trick you got super frustrated on ? Like one that really was hard, and still cant do ?
I can’t do the tricks I don’t like the feeling of, and just like everyone I have a few moves I’ve never really been able to get the grasp of, despite my insistense. I’m horrible at hardflips for some reason, I guess I never really practiced them, but I’m starting to like them more and more these days so they shouldn’t be a problem for long anymore. I used to be really really horrible at nollie flips and switch flips too, as well as their variations, but I recently worked out all my problems with these, I just needed to practice them a bit. Hmm, then I guess all this makes switch / nollie hardflips my nightmare trick ? I don’t know, there are a lot of them !
Do you have any hidden hobbies ? Any other hobbies besides skating that you do when you can’t skate ?
Skateboarding is my main hobby by far. I used to play bass quite a lot and to be in a punk / hardcore band along with two friends a few years ago, we played one gig then never played again, we never officially broke up, I guess we only chose skating over music (both of which we never took seriously anyway) naturally. Fingerboarding and video games are fun every once in a while on rainy days only, I guess that’s my nerd side persisting... I love music of course, but for some reason I wouldn’t count it as a hobby, more like a daily soundtrack for my life. I like wasting my time on the Internet too... When it comes to my hobbies I’m pretty much like the average skateboarding joe.
Why did you cut the hair ???
It was getting annoying long, giving me acne despite my high standards of personal hygiene (I’m not even kidding, I’m slightly germophobic / hypocondriac), and my girlfriend wanted to see how I would look like with shorter hair. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1240/551650232_566265b503_o.jpg
Have ya ever been attacked my any animals while skating ?
POODLES ! They are my worst enemy, sometimes I just skate ride the street and I hear those dreaded high-pitched barks out of nowhere, and as I feel them getting closer and closer, that’s when I know I’m going to have to jump off my board if I don’t want to get my calf bitten, and as soon as I do the little bastard runs in front of me then stops just to stare at me and give me that half proud, half empty look, wagging its tail and waiting for me to get back on my board to chase me again. They’re just creatures from hell whose only purposes in life are to harass skateboarders and to make old people feel less lonely, there are days when I’d like to send them back where they came from...
Pirates, or Ninjas ?
Ninjas all the way. Regardless of what happens throughout the world daily, I will always believe in the power of technique and subtlety over brute and drunken force, and whoever needs cannonballs to defend themselves has a deep and serious problem of self-esteem.
Any shout outs ?
I’m going to have to quote Alex Moul on this one : ‘This question's always a dangerous one, because you always get some wanker who calls up and goes, ‘you didn't thank me in your interview’. I'm going to be a bit boring, as I probably have in this interview, and just say you know who you are. Because if listed them off I'd probably be even more boring.’
Have a good day and have fun skating.
Videos
GTZdPvqHygU syntJ48HoVI
Thank you MRCK for the great interview, great experience for me. Now give him his well deserved reward and good luck to next months voting process!