Kevin Rodrigues
SNEEZE N°54 Fall 2022 “the protection issue”
Article by Nic Fensom
Kevin Rodrigues, professional skateboarder, plays it straight. “When it comes to being human, and living, and being, and walking, and breathing, and feeling,” said retired pro skater Jason Dill, “Kevin is not fucking around.”
The 30-year-old won’t give interviews — for good reason.
“There was this misquoting,” explained Ben Chadourne, Parisian filmmaker, about an interview Kevin gave to a European skateboard magazine in 2018. “It changed the complete sense of what he wanted to say.”
Mistakes happen. But, understandably, Kevin was pissed.
“I mean, I get it. If you give an interview and they don’t transcribe it as you said, it sucks. ’Cause people are going to read it and they’re going to take it as this,” Ben continued.
Kevin swore to never speak on the record again. Ultimately, he finds the thought of answering questions about himself or giving his advice on anything too cringe.
“He’s his own worst enemy,” said Dill, “which I think is great.”
Kevin is perfectly placed in Paris. His parents immigrated to France from Portugal in the 1980s.
Kevin is so Parisian. “He also has the nature and the presence of someone alive in the 1500s,” Dill explained. “He has that thing to him where you look at him — man, you feel like someone was born in the 1500s and they somehow time-traveled to the 2000s.”
Incidentally, the 1500s is considered in many respects the Golden Age of Portugal. During that period, the country was a key contributor to the Renaissance. Kevin has gnarly tattoos all over his body. “They’re beautiful,” said filmmaker Bill Strobeck. “They look like a Depeche Mode cover.”
“I’m covered in stupid tattoos,” said Dill, “but whenever I see Kevin’s tattoos, I think, ‘Damn, good job — so well crafted, so well chosen.’”
“Very Gothic Renaissance, like gladiatoresque,” explained New York artist Jack Greer, describing the tattoo he gave Kevin on his left rib cage of a head being impaled by a circular spiked device.
The most talked about is the rose. Done by Swiss tattoo artist Caroline Vitelli, it spans the left rear of Kevin’s dome.
The world first became aware of the rose in 2018, upon the release of Bill’s “BLESSED” for Supreme. For about three minutes, Kevin is seen grinding, bonking, grabbing, and finger-flipping to the stoking song “Child’s Play” by post-punk newwave band Modern Eon. Occasionally, after landing a difficult trick, the camera stays on his face for an additional beat, capturing him muttering to himself like a baseball player walking back to the dugout after striking out.
Jack remembered first meeting Kevin in passing on Elizabeth Street in NoliIta in 2010. Young Kevin and young Ben were in town and in tow with OG French skater Luidgi Gaydu. Accompanying the trio of Frenchmen was OG New York skater Charles Lamb, a friend of Jack’s.
In 2015, on the fly, Jack peaced to Paris for a few months. He brought his dog, Iggy, along for the extended trip. On day one, while walking back to his Marais sublet through the Place de la République after buying dog food, he bumped into Kevin. (It’s worth noting: At that point in time, the République was not quite the République it would soon become in skateboarding culture.)
“I was in a new place and I didn’t really have a big network out there, and Kevin really let me in,” said Jack.
“Love him to death, first off,” said pro skater Aidan Mackey. “He wants nothing but goodness for everyone he surrounds himself with.”
“He looks you in the eyes,” said Ben. “You’re with him, and he wants to know about you. He’s not this guy who’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and then sees you again in two months asking you the same questions.”
“He always hits you with a little smirk too,” Bill said. “He’s super fucking polite. There are not many like him. And I’m not saying, ‘Oh, dude, he’s like the most special dude!’ It’s hard to explain.”
Kevin’s approach to skateboarding is and isn’t hard to explain.
“When you see this guy on a skateboard, he looks so dope,” said Ben. “It’s a gift.”
“The whole planet who’s into skateboarding understands this,” said Luidgi, former manager at Nozbone skate shop in Bastille, who sponsored Kevin at 14 with two boards per month.
“Maintenant je t’ai sous mon aile,” Luidgi had told him.
What he said was because of what he saw, which was another time-bending comparison, only not as ancient: an unassuming kid in the 2000s who skated like he was from the ’80s.
“There’s no one else I feel I could want to edit industrial music to, you know what I mean?” said Bill, recalling when he began filming with Kevin in Paris in 2016 after being introduced by Jack. “He had on an oversized denim jacket with pleats, he had on a beanie and it had a little gold cross earring clipped to the cuff. He just fit something that I was excited to work on. And his skating is very beautiful. The way he pushes, the way he thinks, the shit he comes up with.”
After seeing Kevin film a trick for the first time, Dill was in a state of disbelief. “‘He’s fucking early grab wall-riding down ten stairs? What the hell is this kid’s deal?’” Dill recalled, still in slight disbelief. He chuckled before getting frank: “And then you see there’s so much more and it’s so intricate. I love that it’s really a different display than you usually see of what someone does on a skateboard. And not at all within the circusy realm, and not at all within the realm of being ridiculous.”
Asked to describe Kevin’s skating, Nik Stain, pro skate rat, replied with one word: “Magical.” He followed up with: “The flatground is impeccable, which you can only catch if you see him out in Paris.”
Kevin pretty much keeps it within the 11th Arrondissement, situated on the east bank of the River Seine.
“It’s the area he likes, where he feels comfortable, and it’s not too far from his place. So whenever he feels stressed, he can just go home,” Ben explained of Kevin’s setup — practical on one hand, anxious on the other. “He doesn’t really like to go into the suburbs, ’cause it’s too much of a mission and he’s not in his comfort zone.” Kevin lives with his girlfriend of six years, jewelry designer Jeanne Hebert, and their new cat, Menace, in a classic Parisian apartment. On his way in or out, he’ll pass by his mom and younger sister’s groundlevel unit adjacent to the courtyard foyer. Kevin has lived in the same building almost his entire life. In fact, he was born there.
“Kevin represents his neighborhood in a very beautiful and romantic way,” said Jack.
Kevin’s home-field advantage can work against him, though. Paris doesn’t have many skate spots to begin with, so finding new spots is difficult.
“Now his approach is more about construction sites,” said Ben. “The streets of Paris are changing all the time. He can actually have a new approach.”
Kevin helped change skateboarding in France — somewhat to his detriment.
“He skates so much Paris that most of the crews want to come to Paris,” Luidgi said. “And also, on the brand side — any brand, any major brand — their focus is Paris.” “It’s not like before, when there was Lyon, Bordeaux — there were all these cities and it was more spread out,” explained Ben. “Now it’s all Paris. It’s the big scene.”
Ask any introvert what their version of torture is, and it may well be going anywhere there’s a big scene. “Like, ‘Nah, I’m good on that, I’ll tap in with you guys later. I ain’t going there,’” Jack said. “For a while, Kevin didn’t even fuck with the République. It’s the same way some people in New York would get to the point where they’d be like, ‘Dude I ain’t going to Tompkins. I ain’t going to the Bermuda Triangle.’”
“From what I hear, his thing is to go out really early and skate spots before anybody gets to them,” said Bill about how Kevin has adapted in order to focus and concentrate. “He’s kinda on that.”
“Wake up early, get on his bike, find a spot,” Luidgi explained. “The next day, super early, go skate the spot.”
“I love hearing that Kev’s been trying stuff or just skating alone super early in the morning,” said Nik.
“When Kevin is going to skate, you barely know,” added Luidgi. “If he calls you, it’s because he wants you to skate that spot with him and have fun.”
Even pro skater Vincent Touzery, Kevin’s closest friend, was surprised at how early the rendezvous time was for the last session they had together.
“Kevin was like, ‘OK, let’s do maybe 8 a.m. at this spot,’” Vincent said before laughing. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow, I thought more 10, 10:30.’”
Kevin’s last call on his skateboard for the day is usually around noon or 1 p.m.
From civilians to people who Dill described as “weirdo kook-fuckers doing commentary on skateboarding from their weird little desk on their weird little YouTube channel,” it’s easy to be perplexed, presumptuous, and ill-informed about Kevin’s intertwined approach to life and skateboarding.
“Respect the code,” Luidgi said pointblank.
“He makes himself a part of no bullshit,” said Dill. “Everything’s so real. His emotions are — not to take away from anyone else’s emotions or anything — so real. He’s such a real young man.”
Kevin moves in the direction he wants regardless of expectations. You could call that being an individual. (No surprise, Kevin’s favorite skater is Heath Kirchart.) “I guess that’s the result of not being thirsty,” said Jack. “You inherently operate a little bit outside.”
“I don’t know if ‘elusive’ is the word?” said Bill about Kevin, before harkening back to the days when pro skater Anthony Pappalardo was in his prime. “When Pappalardo’s craft took off, a lot of people started basically being like, ‘This is the dude.’ He had the skill to be the dude. And he had that ‘silence is golden’ type of thing. To me, he was just Anthony. But to everyone else it was like, ‘What the fuck is up with this dude?’ He was quiet and kinda in the shadows.”
“Dude is not off the grid!” Jack exclaimed. “Kevin is not actively trying to be elusive. He’s not faking the funk.” From what Jack ascertained from his time in Paris and his continued friendship with Kevin, it’s really heavy for Kevin to get footage because it’s not a passive engagement.
“Anyone who doesn’t do something for a career, they have a casual relationship with the thing,” Jack said.
“Can I go out and enjoy skateboarding easily? Yeah. I don’t expect shit from it. It’s just skateboarding. Kevin’s skateboarding ties into the history of everything he’s ever done on a skateboard before. And how that ties into, historically, all the things that other people did before him.”
“Kevin is an encyclopedia of skateboarding,” said Ben. “And he watches everything. The best and the worst. He’s really concerned about the skateboard world. Who is who, who’s doing what, how people express themselves.
Then he can think, ‘OK, maybe I can do this because someone did it in the late ’80s or early ’90s, and I’m going to try and bring it back.’ It’s very well thought out.”
“There’s so much more enveloped into the act of doing, that it’s hard for other people to understand that when you do a thing that a lot of people associate with being fun, it’s not so easy to do when you are being judged for it professionally,” added Jack.
Nowadays, footage of Kevin is rare. Don’t even ask about Instagram. Kevin’s skateboarding is not content for content’s sake. It’s project-based and all or nothing.
“In a wonderful way — and Alex Olson is kinda like this too — it’s like, ‘I ain’t putting it out there just because I can do it,’” said Jack. “What’s the beauty or value in that?”
“When Kevin films a part, he has a certain vision of how it’s going to look and the aesthetic of it,” said Vincent. “He’s very smart, very on top of that.”
“There’s a person that works in the F.A. art department whose favorite person on a skateboard is Kevin,” said Dill. “I showed him the new video before it came out, and before it started he asked, ‘Does Kevin have a lot?’ I said, ‘Just watch.’ And so the video went, and right when Kevin did the trick, the guy goes, ‘That’s fine by me. That’s enough.’”
The trick went down on a concrete ledge a few blocks from Kevin’s home. Dressed in all black, he swoops in and out of frame before the screen fades to black.
“People shared it more than the other stuff that people worked harder for,” chuckled Vincent about the video, titled X, by Hockey Skateboards.
“That’s the rareness of it.” The discussion thread on the SLAP message boards was busy debating Kevin’s one-trick “part.”
“I think K-Rod is good but not great, and definitely not on a legend status where you can release a kinda whatever trick in a video that includes all those guys,” said user Turtle Boy before asking if Kevin gets paid the same as fellow team riders Andrew Allen or Donovon Piscopo.
“To be fair, I would not say that a noseslide to overcrook going Mach 10 is a ‘whatever trick,’” replied user Made In China. “Like the Instagram post someone linked to on the last page, the only other person I’ve seen do that trick is Rob Welsh.”
You see. “This is Kevin. This is part of his attraction and this is how he shines,” Ben said with gusto. “Even if it’s not the most difficult trick, it’s full of beauty.”
“He is one of the dudes that you see one or two things of and you’re kinda like, ‘Fuck, I can’t wait to see the next thing,’ or ‘I can’t wait to see more,’” said Bill.
You get what you get. “All we can do is wait,” said Nik. “That’s what’s so special about someone like Kevin or Alex, and Jake Johnson too,” Jack added. “It’s not because they’re working extra hard to design it that way, it’s just who they are.”
“And people who are like, ‘Dude, what the fuck, Kev don’t have a part?’It’s like, ‘Dude, he filmed a part in the last video,’” reminded Bill.
“He’s so hard on himself,” said Dill. “When we did the Dancing On Thin Ice video, where it was him, Anthony Van Engelen, and then Aidan — that video, it came out over a year ago. When we showed Aidan’s part to Kevin, Kevin said, ‘OK, I think I quit now. I think that’s done for me. I don’t want to be in this video.’”
Hold up. “I ain’t gonna let him entirely get away with the ‘I don’t deserve to be here once I saw Aidan’s footage,’” Jack scoffed, then laughed. “That ain’t flying by me!”
For a fraction of a second in the video, you can see Kevin, just after nollie backside 180 curb-bashing the street gap in the Marais — which hadn’t been a spot prior to him skating it years earlier — clench his fists in victory.
“He went back so many times to get the tricks that he got on it,” recalled Vincent. “That’s when I could tell he had an idea, he had a plan, and he needed to execute it. He did not give up.”
The old woman with the street-facing apartment overlooking the gap can attest. During one of their many exchanges, Kevin offered her a quid pro quo: If she allowed him the time to land the tricks he needed, he’d instruct her on how to skate-stop the spot to prevent him from ever returning again.
“I think he tried hard during that one, and I really feel like he feels great being in a video with Aidan,” said Bill. “That feels like more their little thing. That’s a good thing.”
As far as a skater’s overall performance or trick count in a video goes, Dill, who is in fact Kevin’s boss, asserts that he puts no pressure on anyone.
“There have only been a couple times where I’ve had to call someone and say, ‘Hey, come on, what are you doing?’ And Kevin’s never been one of those people whatsoever.”
“Dill gave him more of the, ‘Hey, I’m doing this brand and I want the brand to depend on what you do, no matter what you do. You’ll make the brand what it is,’” explained Vincent about Kevin being a good fit for Hockey, and vice versa.
“‘I want to film for Hockey because they are the best with me,’” Ben said Kevin told him. “‘Dill is the fucking best with me. He just lets me be who I am.’”
Real recognize real. And Dill is not a commander in chief.
“I most certainly am not, in this day and age, trying to get on someone: ‘You need to film an ender!’” said Dill. “No. That’s never been the nature of the company. And then with someone like Louie Lopez, you gotta tell him to slow down: ‘They’re not worthy Louie. The world doesn’t deserve you.’”
Dill doesn’t operate like Kevin’s old boss, Pontus Alv, the Swedish founder, chairman, and C.E.O. of Polar Skateboards.
“Pontus was demanding, demanding, demanding,” explained Ben on why Kevin left Polar in 2018. “And Kevin was like, ‘I’m over it. You’re putting too much pressure on me, you’re asking me to do these things, do social media content, and I’m not that guy. And in the first place, you picked me, you chose me, because I wasn’t that guy. So why are you like this now? I don’t understand.’”
Vincent did mention how Kevin still has a really close relationship with Pontus: “They love each other, even to this day.”
Granted, coach Dill does know a thing or two about navigating a legendary career in professional skateboarding. He’ll happily talk about it.
“What I did with the whole thing was I flipped it on its head. I just would fuck my whole life up in a way that it was incredible I even got done what I got done. It was not much of me being like, ‘Oh God, what am I going to do?’”
“Everyone forgets that skaters are human,” Bill stated. “They’re not at 100 all the time. They’re trying their hardest, and they have ups and downs like everyone else. There’s a lot of emotional stuff, as well as physical stuff. That goes for every skateboarder out there.”
Keeping in mind that Kevin doesn’t like to travel, he has sustained multiple injuries on trips both abroad and domestic. He broke his hip ten minutes into skating 3rd and Army just after arriving in San Francisco. He broke his foot skating Marseille. And he was lucky that he could still stand after falling three stories from a rooftop transition in Sweden.
He also has a weird ankle situation, so he can’t really flip his board much. Plus, with him being so very French, he smokes like a chimney and, other than a 15-minute morning stretch, there’s not much happening in the way of self-care.
“He’s down to take a fucking slam,” said Bill. “To see a dude who you feel is frail taking a super gnarly slam — you wouldn’t think he would drop into something that’s super gnarly, but he’s down to take pain.”
“He actually enjoys it,” said Ben. Curiously, the 1.3-second song “You Suffer” by British grindcore band Napalm Death, is the soundtrack to Kevin’s noseslide overcrook. The lyrics scream the question: “You suffer but why?”
If only it wasn’t about getting the clip. “I just found it weird,” said Vincent, thinking back to when he first started filming in the U.S. for official videos. “We never had that satisfaction.”
The satisfaction Vincent felt from getting a clip in L.A. or New York, or wherever he was taken to, was cool — high-fives and hugs, job well done.
But the feeling didn’t last long, unlike when he’d have a good session with his friends — who had become, innocently enough, the Parisian blockbuster skateboard crew collectively known as the Blobys.
“I don’t know if this is going to sound bad, but I think it came to us more than we looked for it. And that’s why sometimes it’s hard for Kevin.”
Most would have chomped at the bit and parlayed the buzz into a more lucrative lifestyle. Before the Blobys, it was always the dream for a European skater to be properly recognized across the ocean.
“We see other people who have opportunities and are like, ‘You can be more,’” Jack reflected. “OK, so what? Is that better? I think people see a really talented person who doesn’t create as much output and doesn’t say yes to as many things that are asked of him, and they go, ‘Fuck, you’re blowing it.’ And I don’t think that’s fair. I think it’s like, ‘No, they’re blowing it for what you want from them.’”
Vincent elaborated further on the cultural differences at play between the Blobys and stateside crews, and how there isn’t that “hustle to make it” mentality.
“We do what we do. Sponsors or not, it doesn’t matter, we’re still going to do it,” he said. “I ended up going to the States and filming a lot but that was more for personal reasons — my wife is in New York. When I’m in New York I’m surrounded by pro skaters. If it’s raining, they’re going to look for spots. When it’s raining in Paris, we meet up and maybe cook and watch a movie.”
The value of Kevin’s contribution to skateboarding is immeasurable. However, him choosing to withhold it all means he won’t hit the social media metrics that brand marketers need to see from a skater in order to justify investing in them.
“I like that there are people like Kevin out there,” Dill said. “That’s a nice sentiment to think about in a world of constantly puking out every thought, emotion, or aspect of life through little glass screens.”
Kevin’s going out there, not always feeling 100, with the singular focus of skateboarding — applying everything he knows, working within the parameters he’s set, striving for a quality that he will hardly ever accept.
All the while knowing the clock ticks louder. He can’t and won’t be commercialized. He’s the guy in Paris, which is the last thing he wants to hear. And, to boot, culture vultures attempt to bite his style. (Weeks after “BLESSED” premiered, some other dude was seen skating around Paris with a flower tattooed on his head.)
“I think he felt in the past months there were moments where he didn’t want to step on his board,” said Vincent about Kevin’s all-encompassing inner conflict with his love of skateboarding. “I know that he wanted to want it, but it just wasn’t happening. And I think that really worried him.”
The self-pressure and overthinking only builds, clip after clip, day after day. Any satisfaction Kevin got from that noseslide overcrook will never compare to when he’d cross the bridge to meet up with Vincent and the rest of the Blobys for a session at Gare d’Austerlitz.
“Kev just wants to have fun — which is really hard to do when you’re in skateboarding for a while,” Bill said wholeheartedly. “Trying to get back to that is like digging in the mud. Sometimes you get those little hits that are like, ‘Fuck yeah, today was so sick. It felt like some shit from back in the day.’”
The skateboard crew is a microcosm of life. Everyone is different. You grow up. Things change. Responsibilities come. “I was so lucky to be taken in by Gino Iannucci, Keith Hufnagel, Keenan Milton, and their crew,” said Dill of his own impressionable years. “It changed my existence. It changed my trajectory. And I’ve always been a bit jealous of Kevin and Vincent and all those guys because those guys fucking enjoy themselves and really live life. And they’re all so close with each other. It radiates.”
Of the original nine Blobys, Kevin, Vincent, Roman Gonzalez, and Gregoire Cuadrado are pro. The other five still skate. So does Luidgi, at 49 years old.
“When I see where he’s at — man, he really did a good job in my eyes,” he acknowledged of Kevin.
“I think everything that happened to us is amazing, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Vincent before giving respect to Luidgi for his continued guidance and support towards the Blobys. “He’s the reason we all do what we do today. And we got lucky enough to do it the way we did it.”
As for Kevin, Dill said: “You can’t take the spots off a leopard. He’s gonna be who he’s gonna be.”
“Once you get to know him, you see that Kevin is the most simple guy ever,” Luidgi said warmly.
“He makes a pretty amazing chocolate mousse,” noted Jack. “This guy would never in a million years mention that, oh, he really likes making chocolate mousse.”
“Who gives a fuck anyways?” questioned Aidan, protectively. “Nobody needs to know fucker’s personal life anyways. Everyone go kill yourself, life means nothing!”