Lesque, an underground Japanese skateboarding company, strives to both be authentic but also escape their current situation of precarity by catching the eye of a major corporate sponsor. The few men who make up Lesque come from displaced backgrounds, many whom have worked long hours for temporary factory contracts (citation?) and faced years in cramped bunkhouses before pursuing a non-traditional employment or recreation as a semi-professional skateboarder. As the men of Lesque film their promotional videos, they seek to attract large corporate sponsors to for fiscal revitalization, to support their meals so they are no longer eating the almost expired boxed foods out of convenience stores (stolen). But at the same time, in proving their authenticity, if they were to land a major contract, would that ruin their authenticity? Major skate companies (and capitalist enterprises) have sought out peripheral sources of labor in an effort to stimulate and push forward personal agendas of growth and increased revenue. However, these interplays of authenticity come at the cost of the skaters, not of the companies. The cost of physical labor for these skaters comes at the price of having their bodies literally on the line, just like the factory laborers. Itoshin has gone from laboring with his hands and arms to with his feet and legs, practicing trick after trick just like in the factory, doing the same repetitive task over and over again.
The men at Lesque have leveraged heavily their networks of individual social capital, traveling from japan to international skate parts but also to regional skate parks to derive inspiration and show off new tricks. The Despite their precarious situation, their work of individually marketing their apparel, and gear to small skate shops across Japan and (maybe internationally?) has become the alternative for them to the industrial or corporate lifestyle. Their flexibility is the cost of an unpredictable and unstable socioeconomic life untraditionally led by typical Japanese men of this age. Notably, when the men at Lesque first moved into a house together, neighbors were baffled and even scared of the assumed cultish appearance of Lesque, harboring foreign skaters and with men constantly streaming in and out of the house.

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