Jean-Noël Félisot:
exclusive interview 2020

Intro :
From his humble beginnings in some hole in central France, to his life in Oklahoma, learning hand plants before they were called Andrechts, to his French vert champion title in 1984, continuing with sessions at Jeff Phillips skatepark in Dallas, Jean-Noël Felisot’s life belongs to skateboarding. Read, and cry for mercy…

Interview by Claude Queyrel and Jean Terrisse, may 2020.
Translation by Jean Terrisse, 2021.

(in french: here)

When were you born?
I’m born on Christmas eve, December 24th, 1963. My mom wasn’t able to finish her dinner, sorry about that…

And your name is Jean-Noël (« Noël » means « Christmas » in French)!
People were very imaginative back then! (laughs)

It should make for some good gifts since it’s birthday and Christmas on the same day!
People are often asking me if it’s a problem. Actually, it isn’t, I always enjoyed having both at the same time.

Your birthplace?
I’m born in Chaumont, small town in the Haute-Loire district.

What did your parents do?
My mom was a housewife, like often back then, she took care of the kids. My dad was setting up metallic structures, I didn’t get to know him that well because he would always be gone during the week. He would only come home on Friday evening, so I would spend most of the week with Mom.

Any siblings?
Two sisters, one older, one younger. One is a pharmacist, the other one works at a daycare center.

Did You live in the city center?
Yes. Chaumont is a small town, about 25000 people, and sadly the population is decreasing. There’s nothing over there, it’s the countryside.

Where do young people go for studies or work?
Nancy, Dijon, Troyes… these three cities are located around a 100 kilometer radius around Chaumont. Young people escape over there.

What were you into as a kid? Were you a mellow or a wild child?
I was a kid who spent a lot of time outdoors, like a lot of us back then. Tree houses, games with my cousins in the forest for entire days. Thursday afternoon was our weekday off… But I got a very strict education. You had to be at home at set time and all that. I grew up with football (soccer) as the main religion, that was France for you back then.

Was Nancy the reference team back then?
Yes, but Chaumont had a strong team in second division in the 70’s, early 80’s. They even became vice-champions. They had some big games against leaders like Bordeaux, Bastia in the 80s. So we were pretty much raised on that.

Did you follow Saint-Etienne (legendary 70’s French club team) in the European cup final?
“Les verts”, of course! The games where on Wednesday evening and that was the only evening I could watch TV late. And of course, we cried afterwards when Saint-Etienne lost! (laughs)

Did you play?
Of course. But it stopped when I discovered skateboarding. I immediately loved this feeling of not having to rely on a coach or teammates. It was you and your board, period.

So, how did you discover skateboarding?
I remember that very well. I was in 7th grade, around 1976/1977. I had been invited to a party at a friend’s place, and once I showed up he told me to come and see this thing he had in the basement. His father had brought it back from the US. And it was a skateboard. I stood on it, and boom, that was it. I can’t even explain why, all I know is from then on, that’s all I wanted to do.

Do you know where it was bought?
No idea. He didn’t even skate that much. But for me, it was crazy, I had found my thing.

What type of board?
Can’t tell you. Some plastic banana thing. But I had another friend whose older brother had an aluminium skateboard, bought in Paris, with Road rider 2 wheels and Acs 500 trucks. When he saw I was interested, he offered me to come and try it. For us, it was supreme, high class equipment.

In Chaumont, did you find boards in toy stores?
Yes, there was also a motorcycle shop, a Yamaha retailer who sold skateboards in the back of his shop.

Like Zone 6 in Paris (famous motorbike shop which got into the skateboard distribution).
Yes. But there was no way I could buy anything they sold. For me, working class kid, it was out of my league. The supermarkets were also selling crap boards, and that’s where I could afford one.

Did you have a « Banzaï »(extremely popular French 70’s brand) like everybody else?
Not even. My board was brandless. I bought it in a store with the cash I had gotten for Christmas. It was a cheap plastic piece of shit, but it had precision bearings. Once I got that, I went home with the board on my bike, and bumped into my dad. He went: « what’s that? » I told him it was a skateboard, a new thing I loved. « How much did you pay for that? » He basically yelled at me for spending all my Christmas money, about 80 francs (around 20$). I came from a football family, my dad was a football player, you were supposed to follow. They didn’t want stuff like that in their house.

You got your first board during wintertime, was it harsh up there?
Yes, disastrous. The snow would remain there until march. I skated in my street when the weather was good. We didn’t have anything else at the time, even if there was at least 200 skaters because it was the new fad. For a little town like Chaumont, it was crazy.

Was it mainly slalom and downhill?
No, not even. We learned tic-tacs, one-footed wheelies, daffies, handstands, stuff like that. The town was on a mount so there were downhill roads all around. It was perfect for catamarans and stuff like that. We made do with what we had, which wasn’t much, but we would spend entire days doing that.

Do you remember any competitions?
Yeah, it was the beginning of local contests, arranged by the local newspapers or sport shops.

Did you participate in them?
I did. Some guys were a lot more flashy, with Fibreflex boards, Acs 651 and Krypton wheels… I would show up with my shitty plastic board and would get vibed. I didn’t care, I competed because everybody did and I loved skateboarding, period. It was a way to meet everybody, but it wasn’t really my thing.

So, there’s a club set up in Chaumont at that time?
No, not all, because it ended really quickly. The craze died really quickly compared to big cities like Paris. At the end of 1978, there were not many of us left, we were only the ones who really loved skateboarding. So we were just a handful of friends. But the saving grace came in the form of a nice concrete track in Chaumont. Few people know of it, but we got a real skatepark. It looks a bit ridiculous compared to what we have these days, but it was great compared to what was being done in the area around us. That is what really gave me the kick, where I learned to ride transitions.

Had you already bought magazines?
Not yet, but we’re soon getting there.

Did you get to see someone who would count later in French skateboarding? No. Are you the only one out of Chaumont?
Yes, everyone quit early on.

So, where was that park located? in a sport area?
No, it was in an area with a lot of lower income, project housing called la Rochotte. Next to the skatepark was a youth club, which hosted all kinds of events and activities. There were a lot of them in the area, and the park was built with their help and input.

I never saw it in the French mags skatepark list.
Yes, I realized recently how lucky we were. There was no structure like that in the bigger cities around like Dijon or Nancy. Our park didn’t have any vert, but it was concrete bowls with rounded lips, which was the standard for 1977/78.

Did it create a scene around the park?
The ones who really loved skateboarding remained. Thanks to the park, I was going to have a very important encounter. One day, I saw this guy with an Alva deck and wheels, and Lazer trucks.
You still had your plastic board?
No. My friends brother I mentioned earlier had money, so he would often go to Paris and bring back equipment. So at that time, I had and « « Off Road » with Acs 580, can’t remember the wheel brand.

When was the park dozed?
They didn’t doze it, it was just filled. My mom told me about it about 4, 5 years ago.

So, you still skated it in the eighties?
For sure, last time was in 1990 when I came over to see my parents.

Was the concrete rough?
Yes, it didn’t roll very well. But it was just to say I came back and rolled on it. Today, they have a mini-ramp with a spine. There are always younger skaters I don’t know, and who don’t know me (laughs).

In the late seventies, the brands Lacadur and Banzai were making ramps in France. Did you get wind of that?
Yeah, actually Chaumont hosted a tour called « skate and health » in 1978, set up by the national anti-cancer league.They had a blue ramp, i’ll always remember that, it was the first me I saw one. That’s when I met the Almuzara brothers, Patrice and Fabrice. They toured the whole country with that portable ramp to promote skateboarding.There was a contest too.

Do you think Almuzara made that ramp? He was a carpenter…
Can’t say. Anyway, the contest was a success, there were even big skaters who had come from Strasbourg all the way to Chaumont. They were really good, and we weren’t used to contests at national level, so they kicked our asses.

Tell us about your reaction when you saw the ramp for real.
I’ll never forget what one of the Almuzara brothers told me when he saw me on it: « hey, Oh là là, take it easy, you’re going to get hurt !« Once I was on it, I couldn’t stop.

What did you do that first time? fakies?
Yes,fakies, but I already knew a little about transitions because we had our skatepark.

Was the contest on the park site?
No, it was a bit further away, close to a sport hall. At that time, there were no ramp contests, just freestyle, slalom and high jump.

Did you skate freestyle at the time?
Not much, I was never a fan. But I did lots of slalom and high jump. I ended up in 3rd place in the French championship in Bourges (laughs) I think Martial Givaudan won and Jose Dematos came in second, I think. I was rather good at high jump in spite my short size, 169 cm. My personal record was 153 cm.

That’s huge! (laughs)
Yeah, I loved high jump, it was my favorite thing after skatepark riding, can’t really say why.

Did you train on your own? did you have a French-federation-approved high jump board?
At the beginning we didn’t know anything about it so we didn’t have any of that.

Ok, let’s go back to that guy you met at the skatepark.
I noticed him immediately because I had never seen him among the locals. I was coming back from my cousins, and I would always sneak by the skatepark, and I bumped into him. So I went up to talk and he told me he was from the US, and that his mom’s family was French, his grandmother lived in Chaumont and he spoke French well. He was here on holidays. That was incredible, because all my life would change from soon on, all because of this encounter.

What was his name?
Tim Tapia.

Was he at a higher level, skate-wise?
Not really. We quickly became close and he’s stil my best friend today. He lived in Oklahoma, skated and had a Skateboarder mag subscription he got when he came to Chaumont.

Had you already read the French skate mags?
Yes, I had started reading them, and that’s how I got knowledge of my main influence in skateboarding: Alexis Lepesteur. That influenced me to skate ramps and vert. Like everyone I did slalom and high jump, but as soon as I saw him, I knew right there and then it was what I wanted to do.

He had this little thing that made a difference…
Yes, when I saw him in the mags, I thought it was incredible even if I didn’t have a clue. I liked the picture of Xavier Lannes (other 70’s french legend) as well.

With the mag, you were now in touch with US skateboarding.
Yes. And he was one of the first guys in Oklahoma to have a ramp with flat bottom in 1979. I can tell you there were very few of them. Thanks to him we were able to built and add a quarter pipe to the skatepark in order to get vertical. He had experience in building, so, so he helped us build it out of wood. We put it at the end of the freestyle area and that’s where I learned all my tricks.

So you’ve been the only Frenchman to have been coached by an American!
(laughs) Yes! He would bring us the mag overtime he got a new one. We looked at the pics, trying to understand how the guys did it. There weren’t many sequences, so you had to try understanding what was leading up to the trick, and what happened afterwards. I remember being blown away by the layback air. It took us days to figure out how to land it. But we finally did. (laughs)

You must have been one of the very first to do a layback air in France.
The hand plant as well, I had seen the Lonnie Hiramoto sequence in Skateboarder. I was dreaming of that trick and pulled it off.

From the Runway Skatepark to Chaumont, central France. Did your friends progress with you?
Yeah, we were vert die-hards. We spent all our waking hours on the quarter pipe. We spent so much time skating it together.

Didn’t you have to push like hell to get up on that quarter pipe?
No, the skatepark area was slanted downhill, so we had the speed. I put up one of my first hand plants,(before they were called Andrechts) on my fb page, there’s about one foot of vert. No coping, we didn’t even know what it was. I had a board shaped out of some kind of masonite, with pizza-like sandpaper for griptape.

With a wedge tail?
You’re joking, it was flat as a pancake. (laughs)

You got into it with some serious handicap.
Check my board on the pic for a good laugh. There were no shops around the area, it was impossible to find any equipment.

Amazing that you still had four guys sticking with it in a small town like Chaumont. Did you go and see the local council to build your quarter pipe?
No, not at all. Tim’s granddad worked with metal structures, and he gave us all the material needed.

Did you ask them for a permit?
Nope, nobody never told us anything, no problem. The thing stayed there for years and none ever asked us to remove it.

It was obviously different times. Did Bmx ers start coming to the park?
Yeah, there were a few of them and unfortunately, it was a bad experience. It cost me a lot. I had to go to court.

Fight?
Yup, Skateboard vs BMX. I smashed a biker’s head in and got into a lot of trouble.

Hope you didn’t break your board.
No, but his nose was history. (laughs) I had to pay for all the hospital bills, and was on judiciary supervision. I lost my cool. The guy was rolling on our equipment, where only skateboarding was allowed. We even had signs saying it, and I had warned him several times that there wasn’t enough space for him and that he could cause an accident., and he did. He slammed into me and took me out. As soon as I got up, I tossed my board into his face without thinking. I fucked him up pretty badly, and I wasn’t too proud of myself when I saw him lying there. Then came the ambulance, the police, court order and so on, the whole package.

How about your parents?
Oh man, my father already hated skateboarding, so I got Hell. But I guess that’s also part of growing up.

How did you manage to find your gear, like pads?
I had an old Norcon kneepad on one knee, and an old Off Road (French brand) on the other, an old Cooper sk100 square helmet and garden gloves. They were too big, so when I caught my board it would catch the truck bolts. Classic.

How about school at the time?
I hated it, and I was a bad student. I went into pre-professional training school after High School. But I would wake up at 6 to skate, I just had to roll for one hour before going to school.

And you went back there after school too?
Yeah (laughs), and on the week-ends, we were there from 9AM in the morning to 9PM. We lived for skateboarding.

What other spots did you have?
We had something rather incredible for the time: a full pipe!

Really?
It was a run-down concrete factory shaped like a cylinder in Chaumont. It was close to a road close to a housing project. We would come back from it covered in cement dust.

And probably in your lungs.
(laughs) It was horrible. I skated with a bandana covering my nose. We would go there when the workers were gone.

What year was that?
I’d say 1979. Before 1980 because I went there with Tim, and he went back home that year.

How big was it?
Don’t know. I know I couldn’t reach the top standing up.

Chaumont had a concrete park, a quarter pipe and a full pipe.
(laughs) Yeah, we were lucky. All that was missing was an empty pool.

What were your first contests outside Chaumont?
Before getting into contests, I made an eye-opening trip to Paris in 1980. I hadn’t been able to go there before because my parents wouldn’t let me go on my own. If I told my dad I wanted to go skate in Paris, it would have been a slap right in the face! So unfortunately, I wasn’t able to skate La Villette or Béton Hurlant, which was one of my dreams.

Did you go by train?
Yes, Chaumont was on the Paris-Bale (Switzerland) line, so it was direct. I initially went there to visit, not to skate. I didn ’t even have a board with me. But once there, I realized I had to ask people if they knew of a skatepark somewhere.

Where did you ask, at a skate shop?
No, I asked random people in the street and bumped into someone who knew where the « Jardin d’acclimatation » was.

Stroke of luck!
Yeah, the guy gave me the directions and I was on my way. Once there I met this guy called Frederic Michel, we started chatting and he lent me his board. I began to do my airs and hand plants, and guess who shows up? Christophe Betille. (One of France’s only 2 only pros from the 1980’s, passed away in 2008; RIP) It was our first encounter.

That’s crazy.
He showed up with his parents, a brand new board under his arm, a G&S sidecut with Gullwings and Rollerballs. For me, it was the kind of board you only saw in magazines. I was in shock!

Well it was definitely 1980, That’s when the Rollerballs came out.
Yeah, they were just out. He wasn’t too much into skateparks at the time and when he saw me do my hand plants he went « wow, can you do that? try my board ». So I kept skating with it, and completely thrashed its nose. I slammed it into something. I remember it like yesterday. Anyway, that was our first encounter. (laughs) After that, I stayed with Frederic Michel and we got on really well. He took me home to show me some stuff and tell me about what he was doing,his skate club and so on. I think it was called the PARIS starboard club. He asked me if I wanted it. Of course, it was the ultimate for me, finally a real deck so I bought it and we kept in touch from then on. He suggested I should join his club so I could enter national contests. And that’s how I started entering French championships and French cups.

CONTINUES ON PART 2