Filming with his new endeavor, Brown Cinema, in early 2017 in Japan, Keegan goes front board 270 on a unique feature with a sketchy runout. You can see this clip and more in Guys in Jeans “Gaijan.” Photos: Dominic Haydn Rawle The Snowboarder’s Journal: When was your first day on the mountain? Were you skiing or snowboarding? Keegan Valaika: I skied first. I think I was 3 or 4 when I started ski-ing. We were living in Telluride, CO. I was 8 when I first saw people snowboarding. My dad was snowboarding. I remember thinking, “Dude, c’mon, let me do that too.” But they couldn’t get boards and bindings small enough, so I rode my dad’s board at first, with ski boots in the bindings. We’d cinch the bindings down as tight as they could go. I was pretty much standing on a plank and just going straight down the hill, but it was awesome. I’m surprised your dad was snowboarding before you. So many of our parents were skiers. Well, he did both. Snowboarding was a new thing at that time and he was just starting out too. I remember learning together. He could do 360s and then one day I did a 360 and he was like, “Shit, you caught up to me.” Were you born in Colorado? No, I was born in Newport Beach, CA. I lived in Laguna and moved to Telluride and then we moved back and then back again. We were bouncing back and forth between Laguna and Telluride my whole life. Was it a job that kept your family moving? My dad’s business kind of took a dive and at that point Telluride was a pretty cheap place to live. It was a hidden gem. So, we bailed and I don’t think he worked for a year. They had saved some money and we were just living the mountain life, ski-bum style. Then a couple years later when my dad’s business started doing all right again we moved back to Laguna. Then after a couple years he started really missing Telluride and we went back. My parents have always been adven-turesome mountain people, but Laguna Beach is a really nice place. I think they like both and, depending on where business was and where they were in life, they just chose between those two. Best of both worlds and cool exposure to different cultures and environ-ments for you as a kid. It was really cool. Our parents would just drop us off at the beach and that was day care. They’d go to work at 8 a.m. and we’d stay at the beach all day, until dinner. What do your parents do for work? My mom was at McDonnell Douglas working on the space station as an engineer, but she stopped when I was born. My dad sells com-mercial real estate. Where did they meet? Stanford or somewhere in Palo Alto. That’s where my mom was go-ing to school and my dad went to Cal State [University,] Fullerton. They were both gymnasts. I think my mom was dating my dad’s friend at first, and then she ended up marrying my dad. It seems to be the way it happens a lot of times. They’re still homies and there’s no bad blood or anything. And you still live in Laguna full time? Yeah, I have a house in the canyon, near where Timothy Leary used to live. My neighbors always joke that there is a bunch of acid bur-ied under one of these houses. There is this book, Orange Sunshine , it’s all about the early ’60s and late ’50s, when Laguna was getting settled. People hung out in the canyon and for the most part it was kind of an artist colony. They had festivals. Jimi [Hendrix] and Janis [Joplin] played here. Describe Laguna to somebody who’s never been there. It’s kind of a bubble because there’s only the canyon road that comes in. It’s a sweeping, narrow two-lane road that’s pretty dangerous, ac-tually. That’s the only way in unless you come from Newport or San Clemente or Dana Point. It’s a little less blown out than towns like Newport, where the freeway comes right into town. My favorite part about it is the coastline. It’s like Northern California; there are these big cliffs and they jut in and out. There are crazy rock formations and are all sorts of cool underwater caves to swim through. And up Laguna Canyon it feels kind of rural. Definitely. I’m tucked up against the mountains. There is one house in between me and the big hill and I can’t see anything else. There are tons of huge trees around here. One fell on my neighbor’s Jacuzzi not too long ago and destroyed it. Everyone who lives in the canyon is really communal. Between my neighbors there’s a glassblower, a ring maker and three or four general construction dudes. So, when something like that happens, the neighbors come together and are like, “Oh, I’ll help you out. Here’s some beer. Let’s fix it.” 054 THE SNOWBOARDER’S JOURNAL
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