Bastien Salabanzi: the Thrasher interview

Thrasher Magazine, Dec, 2003 by Michael Burnett

Would you rather skate a perfect rail or a perfect manual pad?

I think the manual pad, even though I can probably do less tricks on the manual pad.

How's the photography coming?

Good. One day it was my girlfriend's birthday and I wanted to buy her a camera. I got her a Nikon FM3 and I started looking at it and trying to figure it out and I ended up buying one for me too. In Barcelona Arto's friend Antton has all these cameras and I start to ask him, "What does this do? What does this do?" I like it.

Do you want to do it as a job some day?

I don't know how you have a job for the photos I take. When you shoot photos like me, I don't know. What do you do with your photos? So I don't care, you know? I just take photos of whatever. I don't shoot skating. I see a place and I think, "That looks rad!" and l want to make it look a certain way. It comes out and people say, "Oh, that looks good," or whatever, I'm happy but I still want it to look the certain way I imagined it.

Is there any older pro whose career you'd like to emulate?

I've already been skating for eight or nine years and I can feel it in my body. It's been like three years of being crazy and I can feel it. Guys like Geoff, he's 25 or whatever, he's not old, but he's been skating some pretty crazy shit for a long time. You have to be kind of gnarly to keep skating like that, you know? Being in California and getting killed every other day, I'm telling this to you: you want to stop skating sometimes! You want to go to the beach or whatever!

A lot of skaters out there are nerds. What would you say to all the skaters out there who say, "You know, I just can't get girls?"

I just can't get girls? The thing is, for guys, that's just how it works, We don't choose girls. That's the girl that says, "OK, I'm gonna let you step. I'm gonna let you talk to me." I see all day long some guys who try and get the girls' attention all day, but it's never gonna work! Only when you think it's never gonna happen--boom! You're in a good situation. You don't even know what happened and you're with a gift. It's only when you try too hard that you have nothing.

Do you always have girls around?

No, I don't think so. I think that any guy seriously needs sex all the time, casually. It's like brushing your teeth or something. It's really healthy and important.

Wow. Anyway, who's your pick for Skater of the Year 2003?

I don't really know what's going on, man, in Cali-World 2003. I don't keep up with all that.

Who's your favorite amateurs?

I have no idea.

Yeah? Well, who are your favorite pros of all time?

Favorite? That's kind of hard. I really like Mike Carroll because I saw him in video or live on many different spots and he always has the same style and does the gnarly tricks. I think, "No way he can do that!" Mike Carroll, I like him. I don't really want to say people from the Flip team, because they say, "Oh, those are his friends," but I see really gnarly shit every day with them. I see it every week. That keeps you going. Some of the Flip guys, like Mark, really inspire me. I just see that skating and it's like, "Just don't think about anything else. Just try that shit and you can do it."