Words and photography by Cyril Lestage
It’s late in the morning, in a space that smells like glue, woodstains and vinyl stickers. A young man lies on a chair, half anxious of the day to conquer, and half happy as he digs through a raspberry pastry. Actually, he’s munching. He’s really enjoying that pastry, see.
Legs in the air, red face, raspberry pastries and hand cuts. That’s what I think about when the name of Valentin Novo is written on a skateboard or yelled at the park. See, that man is one of the secrets and last geniuses of this earth. Someone who goes through life by pure will power, and a bit of luck and craziness, that’s what I call genius – I could be wrong, but I’m not pretending to be.
I first met Val at a contest in my hometown, but I knew of him long before that. He was depicted in skate mags ever since I can remember, 20 years ago at least – way back when he was already himself, some sort of alien skateboarder who was more concerned about long hair, handplants and fastplants than the rest of us riding 7.5″ skateboards. Back then, many skateboard mags took notice of him on the French contest circuit, and then, all of a sudden, he seemed to have disappeared from media attention.
Through the magic of lice, he appeared again to me. I learned about his very busy life. He dedicated an existence solely based around guitar craftmanship and skateboarding, and made a point to earn a living doing so.
Over the course of 10 plus years, Val has made more bass guitars, and regular guitars, and weird guitars that I could ever count with my body parts. Thanks to his know-how and dedication, he managed to personally deliver instruments to Slash, Cab, and even your local band. He builds them all bit by bit, in his colorful and borderline extremely messy workshop. The thing of beauty, is that this magical place is yards away from a little skate club he has cared for for the same amount of years. Every other day, Val will sweat and spare blood with kids, his son and adults at the ramp he built, or at his local concrete skatepark in Belfort, France. Just like he would do, ten years ago.
The only thing is… his little skate club is probably one of the most well known skate clubs in Europe. Not because of all the transition ripping bastards it produces, or even because of Val‘s expensive personality. No no no.
The Canard Skate Club is the greatest of all because its members, as Hell Angels on wheels, display rubber ducks on their helmets. It’s fun, it’s silly and it’s a gimmick. I mean, it’s like skateboarding.
Valentin Novo skates and manages the french team for Verdad/Vatos skateboards, gets Freegun underwear, rides for Surf Paradise Shop, an still skates Oüs shoes.
