Read about the Rukus in Baton Rouge

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If you’re a longtime Baton Rouge resident—particularly if your teens overlapped with Y2K—you’ll recall the stickers that started popping up around 2001. On telephone poles, street signs, bathroom walls, guitar cases: RUKUS.

Rukus is, in part, an idea. It’s a riff on “ruckus,” a disturbance of the status quo. But it’s also the name of Baton Rouge’s locally owned skate shop, operating for nearly 20 years now.

There’s a notion that skaters have a “screw the establishment” attitude, and it’s true in some ways. Younger kids end up at the shop because they prefer it to the mainstream of organized athletics; adults get on the board despite anyone’s opinion that they’re too old for it.

Fully restocked on @quasiskateboards 🌀🌀🌀

A post shared by RUKUS103 (@rukus103) on Jul 13, 2018 at 9:55am PDT

But the customers at Rukus do care—about their sport, about their community, about one another. About owner Ronnie Saurage, a man who has grown into a patriarch of the local skate scene.

“I’ve never had a bad day at work,” Saurage says. “I hope I get to do this until I die.”

A California native, Saurage moved to Baton Rouge in his teens, then settled down in his 20s with a telecommunications installation job that had him commuting regularly to New Orleans. He was making more money than he knew what to do with—but it wasn’t what he loved. So he took the money and ran. Opening Rukus in 2000 was a risk, but he was willing to chase a crazy dream and hope it worked out.

And it has. The shop has become the hub of the local skate community, with outreach projects around the city and product collaborations with Nike, like the famous crawfish sneaker released in 2014.

@vansskate Authentic Pro Checkerboard “Desert Sage” Sizes 4.5-11 🥝

A post shared by RUKUS103 (@rukus103) on Jul 25, 2018 at 1:42pm PDT

For Saurage, all the success comes down to the customer. He remembers the intimidation he felt as a kid with no money in his pocket walking into a pricey shop for gear, and he swears no newcomer will ever feel that way at Rukus. Every person who steps through the front door gets a friendly “what’s up” or a high five before figuring out how to meet their needs.

Skate culture, he says, isn’t exactly what people think. He explains that a boarder will fall a hundred times before successfully completing a new trick once. They’re hard-working, resilient and dedicated. Those traits just happen to manifest a little outside the lines.

Finally hitting that one perfectly executed move, though. That’s what got Saurage addicted years ago. That’s what started it all.

“If you knew how that felt,” he says, “you’d be on that skateboard too.” rukus103.com

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This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of 225 Magazine.