Samu Karvonen Life In The Eastern Blog

November 17, 2008 @ 10:22 AM

Samu’s road to recognition doesn’t involve ender-ender mega stair youtube shop video parts or glorious xyz-games all around ramp champ titles. Instead, it’s been his steady regime of round the clock skating and a bit of good luck, that are gradually starting to make people take notice, first outside of his group of friends, then beyond the city limits and finally across national borders. And it doesn’t hurt to have a blog and an inclination to film everything, at all times, regardless of whether there’s a major-sponsor video in the works, or whether it’s just a motion picture album to look at later in life. Lately, though, his filming mania has been paying off and chances are that the footage will amount to a bit more than that.

Text and photos: Deeli

Samu first entered the stage of sponsored skateboarding a few years back in a little DIY park “Wamma” in the heart of proletarian Helsinki.
“I think I was launching off some little kicker over a picnic table and I broke my tail off. I guess I turned my board around and tried again and ate shit. This guy I sort of new who worked in the new Lamina skateshop [Harri Puupponen’s venture into skate retail. –Ed.] in town saw me and told me to stop hurting myself and come by the shop the next day. From then on I got a half price discount in the shop.”

Samu started spending his pocket money exclusively at Lamina. At the time Tuukka Korhonen was riding for a clothing company Mic Mac, which did an annual summer tour together with Lamina. When they hit the road next year, Samu and his mates got in a car and followed the tour van as semi-official extras. The sticker job in their rear window said Flow -50% Team. One thing led to another and Samu ended up riding for Blueprint through the local distribution.