Road Trips and Super-Fans: ​Hanging Out with Skateboarder Curren Caples in Malmo

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

Malmö is one of those places that everyone has heard of but very few seem to have actually been to. It's the birthplace of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, it's connected to Copenhagen by a huge bridge that's the focal point of a Scandi drama, and its most famous landmark is a big twisted skyscraper. That's all anyone knows. Fact.

So here's a bit of Malmö education for you: the city is quietly becoming one of the most exciting skateboarding hotbeds in Europe.

Wherever you look in this beautiful city there's a perfect spot with a group of local skateboarders gathered around it, and whenever there's a bit of open space someone has dropped in a couple of ramps and created a makeshift park. Having embraced skateboarding in this way there's no friction from passers-by, no security guards chasing people down. Skateboarders and non-skateboarders exist in harmony. It's a beautiful sight.

As if to really show the world what a skateboarding powerhouse it's becoming, Malmö recently hosted the final of the Vans Pro Park Skate Series in their brand new skate park. It's a perfect concrete bowl with a terrifying tombstone looming over it, something that Pedro Barros and Alex Sorgente weren't afraid to destroy during the finals, with the latter winning the men's event. Even more impressive was the winner of the women's event, Brighton Zeuner, who at only 12 years old is already out-skating most of the men. She also came out with the funniest post-competition interview, where she claimed she "just wants to drink Sprite and party".

The only disappointment of the event was the fact that Curren Caples had to pull out due to an injury. Most people became aware of Caples after his short part in the iconic Flip video 'Extremely Sorry'. He had long blond hair, looked about 12, and was clearly unbelievably talented. He's since become one of the most exciting skateboarders around, turning pro for Flip and Vans and winning medals at numerous X-Games. All of that and he's not even old enough to buy a drink in his local bar yet, clocking in at just 20 years of age.

When I meet him outside the park he's limping heavily. I ask what happened: "I was grinding this rail in Copenhagen and came off. It was a 42-stair curved rail. It was kind of stupid to try it with this contest right now, but it was my last day in Copenhagen and I needed to get footage for a part I'm filming."

As we take a seat under the hot Swedish sun, he tells me how he got started in skateboarding.

"I didn't really have a parental influence to be a skateboarder, I had more of an influence to be a surfer as that's what my dad did. I took up skating myself. Between the ages of four and six I would just skate in front of my house barefoot, and then after a couple of years my parents would take me to skate parks."

Much like many skateboarders before him, Caples was brought up in the U.S. state of California. With the beautiful weather, perfect spots and skate parks everywhere, it must be a dream location when all you want to do is skate. "Yeah, I'd say it helped for sure," he tells me, "because there are so many skate parks and it's where a lot of skateboarding started, and still is. My parents would drive me to parks and I grew up just skating transitions; that's all I used to do. When I got to about nine I stopped skating with pads, and I started skating handrails and more street. But yeah, California kind of has it all."

Though he was surrounded by iconic skateboarders in California, his main hero growing up was Liverpool-born Geoff Rowley. "I would just watch the Flip video 'Sorry' all the time and be completely obsessed with his part. That and Girl's 'Yeah Right' was a huge influence. They blew everyone's minds when they came out."

It didn't take him long to be snapped up by the big companies, with Vans, Ricta, Oakley, Independent, and more all singing him up. Most excitingly, though, he became pro for Flip, meaning he was suddenly riding with the heroes he used to watch obsessively on 'Sorry'.

"I started to meet everybody when I was about 14 years old; it was like: 'Holy shit, I'm skating with Rowley!'" He smiles, "I wouldn't say I was that nervous though; I've been around Geoff and Arto Saari my whole life."

In 2014, Curren joined the Flip team to take part in the most iconic and infamous road trip in skateboarding, the 'Thrasher King of the Road'. If you've never watched it, this sees three or four skateboarding companies travel separately around America, ticking off challenges out of a book over the course of a couple of weeks. The challenges range from nailing certain tricks at certain spots, to getting a Thrasher tattoo.

Having recently watched the latest series on VICELAND (did you spot the promo?) I felt the need to ask him about the experience.

"It was cool, man, but hectic. I was pretty nervous before, but I already knew what I was and wasn't going to do. I wasn't that keen on the non-skateboarding challenges. Though I did do the 'make out with someone over 50' challenge. I had to because I was the youngest one at 18.

"I didn't really feel like I had to prove myself – I was young, but I was already pro." With a hint of authority, he adds: "You can't look at it like 'this is the gnarliest thing ever' – at the end of the day you just have to go for it, it's all for fun, that's what was intended. I've been watching [the latest tour] on VICELAND and I feel like it's getting very serious now – I'm psyched to watch it, but it looks hard to compete. When I did it we were in different states, but [now] the teams all end up in the same cities, and it looks pretty hectic. I would have been psyched to take part [again] though."

The trips always have their moments of insanity, from David Gravette getting a face tattoo, to Clint Walker smashing a member of the other team over the head with his board. I ask Curren what was the maddest thing that happened when he was on the trip. "We went to one spot and there was shaving cream everywhere (one of the challenges was to do the best trick covered in shaving foam). We cleaned it for like an hour, and then one of the team riders, Alec Majerus, skated the rail and completely snapped his leg and had to leave the trip."

Aside from leg breaks and face tattoos, the life of a touring skateboarder has always sounded like a dream. Seeing the world, meeting interesting people, and generally experiencing situations that you never would if you weren't really good at riding a plank of wood with some wheels attached to it. But is it as good as my mind tells me?

"It depends on who you're with, because if there's somebody that's fucking it up for everyone it sucks. If it's like a demo trip and there's signings and stuff, it's really mellow. You can just hang out and do whatever, but filming trips are hectic and really stressful. But it's given me a chance to see the world; I've seen a lot thanks to skating."

If you take a glance at Curren's Instagram or go through the comment section of any of his YouTube videos, the one thing you can't get away from is smitten teenage girls talking about how much they adore him. He's unwillingly become the teenage heartthrob of skateboarding, with his long blonde hair, cheekbones and skinny jeans seemingly ticking all the boxes. It must be a strange thing to have to deal with?

"It's pretty weird when someone wants a photo with you, and they already have you as their background," he laughs awkwardly. "I can tell that they get all embarrassed for a second, it's funny. I just pretend I haven't seen it. To be honest it's a pretty cool feeling. It starts to get weird when someone comes up and they're shaking – I don't really know what it feels like to be like that, because I've been around my heroes all my life. Sure I've been starstruck, but never to the point where I'm shaking uncontrollably."

It's even bordered on stalker territory. "I've had random girls show up at my house just to get a photo with me, that kind of made me trip out." I lean forward on my chair: "Go on," I say.

He laughs: "Okay, so I was expecting a friend to come round, and someone knocked and I yelled something stupid like 'come in fucker!' Then they knocked again…so I went to open the door, and there were some girls like, 'Can we get a photo?' I was like, 'Errrr I guess?' I took the photo and they just ran into a car and sped off. I found the photo later on Instagram and I got my friend to text them and ask how they found my house. They were like, 'We figured it out.' Apparently they'd seen videos of me skating on YouTube and then combed Ventura until they found my house. That was pretty nuts. Also, it was her friend's birthday – that was her birthday treat."

Having a group of random girls using their detective skills to find your house must be a head-fuck, but it's cool that Curren sees the funny side. I guess that's just part of the life of a young, good-looking, skateboarding heart throb. Someone's got to do it, right?

@nathancopelin