Over the recent years, Flip rider and Hawthorne loc-dog, Louie Lopez, has been annihilating everything in his path. Street, tranny, ledges, rails, whatever…is it’s there, Louie’s down to kill it.

CCS caught up with Louie as he was waiting on an order of hot wings and picked his brain about some basics. Have a read and see what one of skateboardings gnarliest Ams on the rise has to say.

So Louie, how old are you now? I’m 16.

You’re doing the home school thing, right? Yeah. It’s cool. It’s really cool; I get to skate whenever I want and stuff.

When do you do your homework? It’s just basically whenever. I can make my own schedule and just do it whenever.

Do you ever miss going to school? Definitely, I miss it for certain things, but the way things are now, I like it much better this way.

Have you been traveling much lately? I was in Europe for a Flip trip. It was like a month long trip and now I’m just chillin’ until Maloof Washington DC.

When you travel, how does it work? Do your parents have to accompany you? Yeah, it’s either my dad or my mom; it’s just whichever one has a good schedule going on at the time. But I think I’m at the age now where this is the last year that they have to travel with me.

Are you looking forward to being able to travel solo? I guess. It’ll be different but it’ll be good. But I like having my parents there with me. It’s real cool. My parents are like friends of mine, you know. So it’s just cool to share a new experience with someone when you come back home and stuff.

Does your Dad skate? He skates but he just does it every now and then. He just cruises mostly though.

You’ve been riding for Flp since you were like 11, right? Yeah, around there.

Didn’t Lance get you on? Yeah, I was skating the Orange County Vans Skatepark and Jeremy Fox, the owner of Flip, and Lance were there. They saw me skate and ended up asking me if I wanted to ride for Flip.

Right then and there? Well they asked me and I was like, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll let you guys know.” And then I told them the next day. I was like, “Yeah, I’ll ride for you guys” [laughs]. I was instantly in shock.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo of you without a hat.Ever push around without one on? I really don’t because hair always gets in my face and it’s just harder to skate. So I always have a hat or a beanie just to keep my hair out of my face.

How tall are you? I’m not very tall at all. I’m like 4’9

You’re a pretty small kid and you skate a ton of rails. What’s the secret to you getting on some of the higher rails out there? When you’re shorter I guess you just have to go faster and gap out more. The more you gap out, the lower it is. So, I guess I just try to gap out more or something.

Do you ever find yourself at a spot with someone like Arto, who’s a giant and can skate just about anything you put in front of him, and the ledge or rail is too high to skate? It happens all the time. It’s cool, if it happens I just sit down and watch them. I’ll just kick back and just witness a sick trick go down.

Skating with your teammates, Andrew Langi and Lance, do you get to roll around a vert ramp every now and again? Yeah, I used to actually skate vert, but I just liked to skate street more. I used to skate both vert and street and then I went through this tranny faze. But I just came back to street. Streets just too fun. But I’ll skate it with those guys sometimes.

What do you do when you’re not skating? Chill with my homies, chill with my family. Hang out and rest.

You enter a lot of contests, how do you feel about them? Contests are fun. You just get to skate all kinds of different parks with your homies and just skate. And if you don’t do good, it’s all good. It’s just all fun.

What’s next for you, Louie? Just Maloof Washington, DC and the Volcom Madness trip and that’s about it, that I know of right now. 

Images by ARTOPHOTO.

Get the boards Louie rides now at CCS.