Laurent Gehin

February 07, 2008 @ 3:53 PM

Laurent Gehin

By Henrik Edelbo

Laurent was born in Aix en Provence in France three days before being flown off to Tunisia, and from there on he was pretty much travelling around until he moved to Denmark about five years ago. His father is French and his mother is half Danish and half Welsh, but he mainly regards himself as Danish. 
I first heard of Laurent in the late 90’s when the local skaters in Esbjerg (a Danish west coast city) started talking about this kid who was always visiting in the holidays.

How has your life been moving around and how has your connection to Denmark been?

“My feelings of the constant movement are quite mixed, I mean I’m definitely grateful for the experiences of not being tied down to one place my whole life has given me, but at the same time living a life where you’re forced to constantly be adapting to new environments, people, cultures, etc. was really hard. A lot of goodbyes. I definitely don’t regret any of it though.
My connection to Denmark basically came since my Dad wasn’t around a lot of the time when we (my brothers and sister) were growing up, we grew a really strong relationship with our mother so when we had holidays, instead of going out to explore new places, we would go to Denmark to see family and friends, so eventually Denmark became what I considered ‘home’.”

Laurent Gehin

Tunisia, India, Brazil, France, Scotland, U.A.E and Denmark are the countries in which Laurent has lived. It is very apparent that this lifestyle of moving from country to country every couple of years has given Laurent an ability to adapt to new people quite fluently. During the last couple of years I have been travelling quite a lot with Laurent filming for the Carhartt video Stroka Mozak and for his age is really confident and easy going. He does get a bit freaky at times, I have several times woken up in a hotel room to the sound of Laurent mumbling some Arabic/Portuguese jibberish and some outspoken Franglish(French, English and Danish at the same time) in his sleep. Since Laurent doesn’t really have a mother tongue he speaks fluent (almost perfect) English, French and Danish, and after being kept awake by his nocturnal Franglish storytellings I usually call him Salvatore, after the character in Umberto Eco’s The Name Of The Rose who, “speaks not one but all languages, none correctly”.
When asked how he got into skating and how he has been able to keep on despite living in countries where no one skates, Laurent says,

Laurent Gehin

“I kind of became obsessed with it to a point where it ended up that I just had to start.
It was this friend of mine from back when I lived in Paris, around ’97-98, he didn’t actually skate himself at the time, but he would sometimes tell me about these friends of his who skated, and it just sounded like the most amazing thing to me. Ended up getting my hands on some cheap board, rolled down the hill in front of my house and… here I am now.
As a skateboarder moving has had its ups and downs. Like I said, I started in Paris with my friend, then the year after that I moved to Aberdeen, Scotland where the skate scene was a lot of fun and I made a lot of my best friends to this day. Then after two years in Scotland I moved to Abu Dhabi, this was before the U.A.E. became the hit it is these days, and for the first one or two years I was skating by myself. It was pretty much the same spots you see in magazines and videos now, just no one to skate them. The only way I can really see how it affected my skateboarding is that since I didn’t grow up skating one amazing/shit spot, I kind of learnt to appreciate whatever I had the chance to skate.”

Laurent Gehin

The skinny redhead has been living in Denmark for 5 years now. The first 3 years at a boarding school outside Copenhagen where he took his IB(International Baccalaureate) education and for the last 2 years he has been living with his brother and friend in Nørrebro, Copenhagen.

“As I said before, I’ve always considered Denmark my home. Some of my friends from the town my mother’s from (Esbjerg), told me there were sponsorship possibilities for me in Denmark, which at 15 or however old I was at that point was very interesting, (laughs).
But I would say the main reason I decided to settle down, was because I was just tired of the whole ‘‘nomadic lifestyle’’. I was leaving somewhere I was really happy to be and a lot of people I loved, to basically go do the same all over again. So enough kind of became enough, and it was time to have a home.
It affected my skateboard life in a couple of ways, before moving to Denmark I had those good three solo years in Abu Dhabi. So suddenly being in this big skateboard community that really puts a lot of work in taking care of itself and getting to skate with a lot of people who feel the same way about it as I did was really, you know, where I wanted to be!”

Laurent

Ever since I got to know Laurent he has been very productive when it comes to photos and video footage, the first couple of years this was only in local Danish publications but now he is getting more international coverage as well. Last year he had a video part in the DC European Collective promo video and this year he has video parts in the Carhartt video coming out as well as the Street Machine video. In connection with filming for these projects you have kind of taken up the ‘nomadic lifestyle’ again, how has this more ‘serious’ approach to skating been?

“Making a living off skateboarding is amazing, I’m sure I don’t have to retell that story. There have been small issues though that I’ve had to adjust to, but that’s also the other old classic of ‘‘turning hobbies into careers’’. I’m definitely not complaining.

Laurent has always been drawing a lot and recently he started attending a drawing school. What are your future plans with this and does this mean that you are going to focus less on skating?

Laurent Gehin

“I’m not exactly sure what the future plans with it are, but other than skateboarding, drawing is the only other activity I really care about and enjoy doing. So I guess in my dream world, someday in the future when I’m too old or crap to be skating, somehow, which is what I haven’t figured out yet, I’ll be doing that.
The drawing class is really new to me though, and I have a lot to learn, so right now I just enjoy having the dream and kind of treat it like skateboarding, try to get a little better everyday.
Nothing’s going to change with skating, except now I have the routine part of my day that I know I have to get over and done with, then after that go burn out all the energy that’s left on the board. If anything, this is helping my skating.


Sponsors, if needed: Streetmachine, Carhartt, DC

Laurent Gehin


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