Marius Constantin (@marius_constantin)

Lloyd – Thanks again for agreeing to do an interview! Would you like to introduce yourself for any new readers?

Marius – Thank you too!
Yes, my name is Marius Constantin and I`m from Romania. I started freestyle skateboarding around 2007 and for a very long time I was the only one doing it, but that changed when I started making tutorials on YouTube in my language. I own Nose&Tail skateshop, the only skateshop in eastern Europe that sells freestyle gear and I am a big supporter of the freestyle movement.

Lloyd – I recently watched your two part travel blog about journeying to the Urban Rural Ride in France. Is there one specific memory that stands out to you the most after travelling over 2,000 kilometres to get there?

Marius – Part 3 is out just as I’m writing this, you should check it out. Travelling over 2.000 km is not an easy task, but I had a friend in Vienna that helped us out with accommodation (thank you Robi), and on the road we found a hotel in the city of Mulehouse, so this kind of crazy travel sticks out in my memories and of course the stops on the road that we make and have some fun are always a pleasure after a long drive. I think it’s a mix of everything, I can’t pick just one.

Lloyd – What was the music selection like while you were on the road?

Marius – For me it was almost silent, with some radio music. I was travelling with my wife, Bianca and she can’t listen to loud music, so the kids in the back had to listen to their headphones haha. If I’d not had Bianca with me, they would probably play some trap music the whole way. I feel like an old guy just typing this.

Lloyd – For a lot of people I’ve spoken with, skating freestyle with others is a pretty rare occurrence. What’s it like to hang out with a bunch of freestylers at once? Seems like a good time.

Marius – Well, here in Slatina we have a lot of freestyle skaters, so it’s super nice to go outside and just skate together, practice routines, listen to some good music on the boombox. Tony Gale, Robert Wagner or Stephane from France knows our way of life and they can confirm why everything explodes here when it comes to freestyle. I swear, every time I turn on the music from my JBL, it’s like the scene comes to life and everyone wants a part of it.

Lloyd – Who were the skaters that stood out most to you at the Urban Rural Ride? Everyone I’ve seen clips of was awesome.

Marius – From my team was Daniel Popescu. Since he just turned pro, I didn’t know what to expect from his first time in the division, but I got a good surprise. For Andrei, I already knew that he is a machine and he would win. From outside of the team, Daniel Adam was for me a killing machine with some crazy crazy hard combos. It was nice to see Harry Fisher progress super fast as well and I got super stoked for Alex Foster getting 3th place, he came a long way. I liked the French team as well. It’s new, but they were really promising from what I saw.

Lloyd – I noticed you’ve established yourself pretty well on YouTube. Was it your intent to gain a large following on social media, or did that happen organically?

Marius – I got a decent amount of subscribers in the first 5 years when I was making a lot of tutorials. After that, Kendama exploded in Romania and I was the first shop that sold it and made videos of it as well, so I got an extra 20k subscribers from that too. My intention was to teach freestyle tricks to kids. If you look closely now, I barely make 1k views on my new videos. That’s because I haven’t posted regularly for a very long time and YouTube put me at the end of the algorithm.

Lloyd – What is it about freestyle that motivates you to continue progressing and participating in contests?

Marius – For me, freestyle will be here to the end and I will not stop. I did have some bad years in the past where I said that I will still skate, but not compete. After that, a lot of kids wanted to compete from Romania, so I had to keep competing for the sake of it, so they can have someone older as an example and motivate them, but actually they were the ones that motivated me to continue as well. I’m 36 now, 4 more years and I’ll hit 40. I can go to masters division if I feel that I can’t have my level as high as I wanted for the pro division, but until then I will try my best. I’m super happy that I’m not the only pro in Romania anymore, Dani is killing it and next on the list to become pro is Andrei Novelli, I see him in maximum two years changing division. So yeah, I can say 100% that the motivation for me are these kids that I am so proud of.

Lloyd – So the freestyle scene healthy back home. Do you expect it to continue growing over the coming years?

Marius – Yes, it is healthy and it will continue to grow. Right now I’m in the process of making my own sports club association, so that I can find ways of getting money for travelling and accommodation, so these talented kids can continue what they’re doing. It is not easy to travel to competitions. You probably know about Romania and what the salary is here, so I won’t go there, but yeah, I really hope that this association will allow me to help the kids in the future, and of course I will try to make national freestyle contests here as well. We will have our fist one as a test on the 15th-16th of July in Bucharest. It’s going be a closed system, but this will open the way for the future ones for sure.

Lloyd – What’s your preferred board set-up for freestyle, and what are a couple of your favourite tricks?

Marius – My preferred size is 7.3, double kick, symmetrical. I can tolerate a little concave, but not crazy full concave like the street boards have, that’s just not right on a freestyle board. The same thing goes for the nose and the tail kicks, they should not be more then 16 degrees. My favourite wheels are Seismic Focus 97A 55mm and now I skate Film Trucks 4.25, but I want to try Indy 109’s again. My favourite tricks are butterflip, carousel and one foot spins, along with some footwork.

Lloyd – Before we wrap things up, would you like to add anything, thank anyone, give some shout-outs? Anything you want.

Marius – I would like to thank everyone that skates freestyle in the world, because they are keeping freestyle alive. Big shout-out to Christian Heise for making the biggest freestyle contest in the world, Stephane from France for giving it all for the sport, Tony Gale for his precision in our discipline, Fuji brothers for making great contests in Japan, Yo Yo for always being present for us, Denham for his dedication in the last three years, Mike for making great boards and content for the kids and so many more that I would not have space here to write. Thank you, freestyle family.

Lloyd – I appreciate you taking the time to answer some questions. We’ll have to do a follow up after your next freestyle adventure!

Some of the rad folk from Nose & Tail, Putain and Never Enough! Photo by: Tony Gale

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