I.T.W Louie Barletta de SLAP MAG

Words and Photos by Mark Whiteley • Snapshots by Louie & friends

It started off as a joke, but in the end the only funny thing was how much ripping went down. Louie jokingly asked about doing a true “Week With” interview about his real life riding his bike to the liquor store and going bowling and all that—but when he really started getting to work, Louie uncorked his rippery in a big way and ended up with one of the most productive “Week With” interviews yet. Have a read and a look at some excellent skating from a true individual.

If somebody offered to pay you 10 million to have a sex change, would you take it?
I’d probably do it for less if the operation costs were covered, too. For sure, if I got to pick my own name!

What would you pick?
I’d want something exotic like Candy.

Would you keep your last name?
No, I’d start all over.

So the pro career would be over post-op?
No way, enjoi needs a new am. Suddenly there’d be this ripping girl am right after I disappeared. People would say she skates like me, but they’d never know. Damn, you’re blowing my cover. People are going to expect it now!


Louie's photo of Jon Nguyen's nollie heel.

You’re a really talented and diverse skater, but lots of people just consider you a goofy or weird skater. Does that bother you at all?
Hmmm…not really. I know I’m portrayed that way, and that’s fine. I’d rather be known as a happy-go-lucky guy than a hammer time, me-against-the-world kind of guy. I’m just trying to go with the flow. In some ways I get bummed. Filming for the enjoi video, I did some tech stuff that was edited out because it didn’t fit the flow of the part, and I know that shapes the way I’m seen.

Do you feel like people other than you shape your image?
Just the Capt’n. In that case it was just a choice to keep the part moving in a certain way. It always looks weird when you see a whole part of rails and then all of a sudden there’s a block line. With me, the more tech stuff didn’t flow for the video part. Something I like to live by is this: just because you can doesn’t mean you should. There are a lot of people out there who could benefit from that, but who am I to say so?

Do you go out of your way to do unusual or obscure tricks?
I just take a different approach to things. I’ve been skating for quite awhile. When I first saw a switch 360 flip, of course I wanted to do that. Same for flip-ins and flip-outs on blocks. You follow the trends and you learn all kinds of stuff. But now I’m a little older and I know I can do all those things, so I don’t feel like I need to follow those trends anymore. I want to keep progressing, but progression isn’t always more stairs. Progression can also be manipulating something into something new. It’s not always one-upping.



Take your cover photo as an example. When a trick like that comes to mind, do you want to do it because nobody else does, or do you want to do it because it seems like a cool trick?
The fakie airwalk was more of a culmination of you and me talking about a trick that we had both thought about and sort of tried but never really seen anybody do. I wanted to do it just to see if I could. The day we went to Sacramento I was trying it on flatground, and I didn’t think it was possible. When we went to the double set, it started popping into my hand, and suddenly it seemed possible so I did it. It wasn’t like I’d been lying in bed thinking about tricks nobody else does. I just go to a spot and dork around; whatever pops or flips right, I go with it. That was one thing that made doing a “Week With” interview hard for me: I didn’t know what I was going to do. I don’t plan things out like that; I like to let skateboarding happen, and I’ll ride it. That really makes my style the way it is. I don’t have a particular style; I’m just a dude who likes to skateboard.

What do you think of people’s perception of enjoi as being a “gay” company?
What can I say? We’re marketing geniuses. Do I really care? No. Nobody on the team cares. But let’s just say that when me and the Capt’n go out to the local watering hole we aren’t fishing for trouser trout.

The funniest part to me is that a lot of the guys on the team are definitely womanizers.
Blatant womanizers. But that’s the whole sarcastic realm enjoi exists in. That’s why the people who like us, like us. You’re either smart enough to get it or you have no clue what we’re doing. It’s so far out there that it could almost be true, and that’s what makes it funny. I like Oscar Wilde, I love the Smiths, so what? I don’t care. I think it’s funny if people really think we’re gay.



Some people really do think that. I’ve heard it out of people’s mouths, claiming some of you guys as confirmed gay. I’ve definitely seen the Internet threads on it.
“Confirmed,” that’s a rad word. If you believe the Internet, Muska is dead 10 times over. So there you go. Just because it’s written doesn’t make it a fact.

The video was pretty well received, and surprised a lot of people. Do you think that changed the image of the company at all?
I think it solidified the fact that we are real skaters, and we legitimately deserve to be where we’re at. I was feeling like people must think I’m the worst dude, or the luckiest person in skateboarding, like “that dude has a pro model and he doesn’t have to do anything!” In that sense it helped out a lot. We don’t have skateboarding in our ads, we aren’t showcasing our talents. If you don’t know that Jerry (Hsu) rips, you might never have known if it weren’t for the video. It stamped it into people’s minds in simple terms. There are people on the team who have real talent and something to offer to professional skateboarding. Maybe not me, though.

When Marc (Johnson) left the company, was there any question what you guys were going to do?
There was. There was the question of what we would each do for ourselves individually, and also what we would do for each other as a team. It came down to the fact that some of us had places to go and some of us didn’t, so the feeling was that we wanted to stay together and keep going as a team. In the end, the places that we could have gone to at the time wouldn’t have been as cool as what enjoi is today.

You’re from a pretty little town out in the country. How’d you get interested in skating out there?
I was playing little league baseball, and my aunt, who was the outcast of the family and I never talked to, came to the game. She told me she wanted to see me hit a home run, and if I did she’d get me a BMX bike. I was this little tiny kid—the bat came up to my nose. I’m up to bat and I hit it and I ran as fast as I could all the way around the bases. I came around third and went towards home, but the coach was waving me back and the catcher got the ball and started chasing me, so I turned around and went back to third. I stopped at third and started crying. I wanted that bike so bad! So as a consolation prize she got me a skateboard. That was that. I was a little kid living in the country, but of course there were the cool high school kids who taught me how to go off jump ramps and all that. I was hooked. Who knows what would have happened if I got that home run.


The super-launcher wedge in Sac gets kicked in the face on a Judo foot plant.

What was day-to-day life like for you out there?
I’d hang out with my granpda and ask all sorts of questions. I was so the “How come?” and “But why?” kind of kid, but my grandpa was really patient and explained everything to me. It was really cool growing up with him. We were kind of poor, living the farmer’s life, and that ended up having a massive effect on my skating. We didn’t have cable so I couldn’t talk about the cool shows with kids at school. We couldn’t afford the cool jeans. Straight away I was out of the cool loop at school. I grew up that way, so nothing really changed when I started skating—I was already out of the crowd. The people there just didn’t have much to offer me, I was interested in travel and experiencing life. I just couldn’t see myself marrying my high school sweetheart and giving up on life. So I just moved on. I’m glad I left when I did.

And you moved to downtown San Jose from there?
Yep, right into the mix. I started to go to school at San Jose State. Me and a bunch of guys got a house, total skate house. You haven’t lived until you’ve lived in a skate house. No rules, just skating 24/7. That’s when I met Marc and little Jerry and it all just fell together. I kept going to school for a long time, though—I was only one semester away from graduating when I stopped going. I don’t think I’ll go back, because my interests have changed since then and I’m not that into what I was studying anymore. I do think school is great, though, and I think people who stop learning at age 18 are really missing out on a lot. Don’t do all your learning from the idiot box and other people’s opinions.

What’s the story with your portrait for this interview?
One day out of our week we went hunting, because that’s one thing I do sometimes. I wanted a portrait that would seem so not like me. Just me alone and against the world, riding my motorcycle with the American flag in the background. I really wanted a photo the Capt’n shot of me and the whale I landed the other night but you were all bummed and said it wasn’t appropriate.


Spine ride to no-handed b/s nosepick to big bank bomb, mer einches from life-distrupting poison oak.

“A Week With Louie” began as a joke. You wanted to have photos of you riding your bike to the liquor store, but it became one of the most productive and gnarly “Week With” interviews we’ve had. What got you sparked?
My work ethic kicked in. I try not to be a slacker when it comes to getting something done. When I go for it, I’m going for it. This isn’t my normal skate week, but I’m not a lazy dude. I’m my own business, so I get up and start doing business stuff for who I am. I do things every day. I’m not hanging out and dodging phone calls. I always have something I need to do. A lot of pro skaters take it for granted that they don’t have to work a 9-to-5 job, but if you’re serious about what you’re doing you do have to think of it as a job. Obviously it’s not like carrying windows all day, and I’m not working at a coffee shop anymore, but I’d way rather be doing this than anything else so of course I’m going to put forth 100–percent effort.

You’ve been shooting skate photos yourself the last few years, and had stuff published in big time magazines. Why’d you start?
The thing that really got me into shooting skating was watching Caswell do a Smith grind first try on a 15-stair rail while we were out skating, and we weren’t with a photographer or anything. It just clicked. Somebody should have shot a photo of that! It wasn’t like I saw it as a way to get paid $200 by some bearing company or something, but a way to share something cool my friend did with people who weren’t there to see it. So yeah, Caswell was my main inspiration. He was also the first person I got a photo published of. I’m mostly doing it for fun, though. I’m not trying to be a real skate photographer.
Unlike a lot of pro skaters, you travel on your own time and dime, away from team trips and demos, just to go see places and have fun. Where are some of the cool places you’ve been that didn’t involve a team van?
The inside of an Italian jail. That was amazing. I stayed in Italy after the end of an Osiris trip, bought a Vespa, and cruised around. I got stopped by the police, and didn’t have insurance or registration. It was bad, so they took me in. But yeah, I don’t understand people who want to just sit in the hotel on trips. Sometimes I want to grab them and remind them of where they are. I want to be 70 years old, senile, and telling crazy stories about places I’ve been and things I’ve done and have nobody believe it, but I’ll know it’s true. I skated a curb in Vietnam!

How has your life changed since your last SLAP interview six and a half years ago?
I live in the same house with a ton of people, and Weird Science is still on repeat in the VCR. I hang out with the same people. I skate the same amount every day. I guess not much has changed. The smooth taste still doesn’t fool me. I think I turned pro. I feel more secure with myself; that comes with time. I used to be more insecure about what I was doing. You get some weight off your shoulders when you feel like what you’re doing is legitimate, and at this point I feel more legit. But really, not much has changed, for better or worse.



The Tiltmode III video is starting. What other projects will you be working on in the near future?
There is some official talk on Tiltmode beyond drunken bar talk, but goons are goons, so we’ll see. Other than that, I’ll just be searching for Animal Chin.

Closing comments?
Every person has the potential to be a priest or a prostitute. Choose your own destiny.

Whoa, is that a quote?
That’s from my grandpa, but I’m claiming he probably got it from a Brad Pitt movie or something.