Barcelona is a skateboarder's paradise. Absolutely filled with spots and home to tons of other practitioners; perfect to get those creative juices flowing. With the city and culture being so new to me, I've really been taking my time to cruise around and explore. I've been taking photos of most of the spots I've been to or come across and really have been trying to not be such a tourist. With my clase de español in full swing, I've been practicing with local shop workers and otra personas. Troy and Maryjane have been helping a lot too!
My new friend Adam from England and his lady Chloe are also in my class. After getting a call from him, I skated off to try and catch him at a bank spot just down from our house. I didn't see him and decided to go try and find him. I pushed on the boardwalk along the beach to a remarkable plaza called Forum. This place was made to host a world's fair type event, showcasing Barcelona! It has a HUGE solar panel right along the water and massive flatground areas. Along the bottom are these amazing curved walls perfect for shredding!
With no luck finding Adam I decided to cruise back towards my house. After the 2 mile stretch home, as I rolled up Thomas and his homie Patrick were walking out of our flat, heading out for a skate. I joined them for some more!
Thomas took us to an AMAZING place called Canyelles, which I soon dubbed "Brick City" due to the massive yellow, red, blue, etc brick banks that covered at least a mile of downhill parks. It was straight up epic man! We just kept cruising deeper and deeper downhill through the never ending bricks! So much fun!
The next day we met up at Macba for a trip to Can Zam, on the northern part of Barce. This place is epic as well! Hillside terrain so there were escalators to take you up and up and up and up!!! At the top was a pristine view of the cuidad. Really special to see! You could see the solar panel at Forum, the Sagrada Familia, and everything in between and more! We bombed the hills to the bottom after! Super rugged ground but very fun nonetheless.
The skate scene never stops here! All day, all night I can hear the sounds of skateboards shredding across Carrer Ample (my street) mixed with drunk Spaniards and belligerent tourists. The night life is so rad here! Street peddlers every block trying to sell you "cervezas, weed, hashish", chicas that have been waiting all day to start partying, and drunk kooks stopping in their tracks wondering how a skateboard works. Even when we go out at night, you bring the board. Walking sucks when you can skate!
Troy has many friends here that he's been kind enough to introduce me to and take me out with them to party or hang or skate or whatever. A legendary local named Papaya hit us up to see this animation event just behind Macba, so we skated up the road and checked it out.. It was really fuckin cool! An American named Syd something showed some of his work that he'd done for DJ Qbert, Buckethead, and personal stuff. We bailed afterwards and had a beer at the ledges. We soon met up with Papaya and the guy Syd was with him! We cruised to a club that Troy decided would be best not to tell me what was featured there, which was quite a surprise. Lesbian mud wrestling! We made our way in to the club with cheesy Bloodhound Gang music blaring and Jane Fonda working out on the projection screen! Haha where were we?! All of a sudden sirens start going off and everyone heads towards a back room that had a kiddie pool and about 3 inches of mud water in it. A referee comes out with a whistle and a striped shirt and the 2 opponents come out with tiny clothes on. Everybody's cheering, taking photos, yelling and shit! The girls took their tops off, the red blows the whistle and they start going at it! It was incredible man! Another chick jumped in, a gay dude got thrown in, the ref was pushing the chicks into each other and ripping off more of their clothes while all these people, including me, were yelling and getting crazy!
After raging a while longer we peaced out and had a little night tour back to crib. Going to sleep at 4 am is almost the norm here... Yeeehaw!
MW