For Lesque, being based in Japan means having limited to no visibility within the tightly networked and dominant matrix of the skate industry arrayed along the West Coast of the U.S. Technological innovations, new tricks, influential personalities, and, perhaps most significantly, fashions, seem to emanate from and at least are pulled into the authorizing and taste-making orbit of California’s skate scene, from where they are put into global circulation. YouTube has provided Koji a medium to beam carefully edited representations of his riders outward toward an international audience of fellow skaters. With luck, Lesque’s riders will get noticed within skateboarding’s metropole of California and become sponsored by a company situated at the center of this cultural and economic matrix. This arrangement would give the U.S. company a local connection and presence in a lucrative market while extending a heightened authenticity to the Japanese rider and thus to Lesque, insofar as the rider would then be recognized by the legitimizing force of a Californian hegemony.

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