Whether you meet him at a club or witness him on a skateboard, believe me, you will remember Kanya Spani. You don’t forget this kind of energy that easy. Although he had almost made himself completely forgotten that one time already. In his home country South Africa, he was a well-known pro, had interviews, covers, and sponsors. Then he moved to Germany and, all of a sudden, was just some local. He had to start all over again. But he’s fine with that. His biography has more than one reboot. No problem for Kanya. With the biggest smile he just yells, “Let’s get it!” and off he goes.

San José International Airport. Around six in the morning. “Nice rims,” I’m saying to the dreadlocked taxi driver as he is lifting my suitcase into the back of his tuned Japanese sportster. The sun is blasting with the self-evidence of a civil servant job and no more than 500 meters away from the airport, we’re already stuck in the rush-hour mess of metal boxes. I’ve learned my first two lessons about Costa Rica pretty quick: the sun rises and goes down at six all year – hence the boys are motivated to get going early in the morning to get as much done as possible – and you have to deal with that kind of traffic. We will spend a lot of time in it. Even the driving skills of my host, the filmer Francisco Saco, who sees lanes as a well-meant advice rather than normative limits and who zigzags his Hybrid SUV through every little gap that opened up a split second ago, honking like a madman, aren’t really helping us much. Nonetheless, it’s imperative to travel by car. Pushing from spot to spot? Forget it. Almost as fun as learning how to scratch on a cheese grater. There seems to be a ban on imports of smooth asphalt and marble slabs. Welcome to Crusty Rica!

There is an old saying that goes like this: when life gives you severe knee injuries, make a successful career as a photographer. This can definitely be applied to the Belgian Quentin de Briey. After his skate career was stopped rather abruptly, he has managed to make a name for himself in the world of glossy fashion magazines with his analogue aesthetics, and now he’s getting people like Lionel Messi in front of his lens. For us, he documented some time in NYC which reflects the spectrum of his work.

Some people will try as hard as they can but never get what they want to achieve, cause they just don’t have what it takes. And then there are people who just go with the flow and succeed cause they simply have it. It’s hard to tell what “it” is, but Hugo Boserup surely is blessed with it. He just looks good on a skateboard. He’s one of the guys you want to see more of. Well, here we go.

In the course of human history, skateboarding appears rather late. The necessary requirements for the infrastructure simply couldn’t be met for a long time. But what if Leonardo da Vinci had invented a rolling machine instead of a flying one? Would the Renaissance kids have practiced kickflips on the marketplaces of the Italian metropolises of that time? This is exactly what Yannick Stechmeyer-Emden was wondering about when he first looked at the painting “Città ideale”.