Zaturdays: Barcelona...Overrated?
Posted on Friday, June 3, 2016 by Paul
So two weekends ago Schaefer and I went to Barcelona for the SLS Pro Open to host/ commentate the webcast that you hopefully watched. And as a skater you’ve probably heard about Barcelona like, what, one hundred thousand times? Everybody always talking about how great it is, saying stuff like “It’s as if the city was designed for skaters. By skaters even!” The question I’m here to answer for you is this: How much of all the hype around Barcy is just hype?
We stayed in a hipster hotel on a nice street where there were always a lot of people walking around out front. But that’s how it is all over in Europe. Hipsters hoofing it. These colorful skateable blocks surrounded the hotel, on all sides pretty much, just waiting to be Suciu’d.
This mellow up ledge sits here all day, pining for a grind. It’s sharp though so one wrong move can send you to the hospital with a shin gash that’ll make the bone show. You don’t have to bother with spots you don’t like in Barcelona though, because there are tons more right around the corner.
You’ve seen this spot before. Here Joey Shigeo gives it a thumbs up. What’s funny about it is that we pushed right past it on the way to another spot, never even touched it. That’s Barcy!
Marek Zaprazny is from the Slovak Republic but he’s been living in Barcelona for the last couple years. He just bought an apartment for a fourth of what it would cost to buy the same place in LA. They call it a flat in Europe though so maybe it’s different somehow. And that’s the Bones Wheels filmer Jared Lucas behind the lens, he’s ripped. Jared brought up a good point when he asked, “Have you noticed how every day in Barcelona feels like Sunday?” It’s true, the atmosphere has a lazy vibe, so getting sparked can take a little extra effort. But either way, this ledge spot is ridiculous and Marek got a tech hammer that you’ll see eventually. There are like 50 of these ledges an they’re made out of about half inch thick steel, they sit along the edge of a marina that is full of boats and rich people. It’s a great place to take a nap.
Back at the hotel. I forgot to mention that in addition to the blocks laying all over the place there were also these bumps that had me wondering….DID skaters design this place? Here we have the Santa Cruz TM and host of the SLS TV show Andrew Cannon blasting an ollie out of one of them. Wait sorry, I meant to say sogging an ollie.
Right around the corner from the hotel, in a lonely alleyway sit 700 skateable flat bars. Cannon redeemed himself with this switch crooks. Just kidding, he had blisters and couldn’t skate so he posed this for me because I said I needed a photo for the blog. #BAIL
Cannon and I went “spot hunting” with Geoff Rowley. He scoffs at flat bars and ledges. He looks for manly stuff that’s like, well like this triple set hubba of death.
This was the next “spot” Geoff pointed out. If Daniel Harold Sturt had been with us I’m pretty sure Geoff might have gone for a front lip on the hubba, if you can call it that.
This photo has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Barcy is overrated. It’s Kevin Bradley; he might be the nicest dude in the world. He was staying at our hotel, along with every other pro that was in town. Big ups.
And here’s me doing the corner pocket on this quarterpipe to vert wall thing. Shigeo shot it and put it on Insta and I took a screen shot of it. Total ABD of course but when you’re 100 you take what you can get. Some info on this spot: I think that this was actually designed to be like a mini skatepark but it’s hard to tell, as I mentioned earlier, in Barcelona there’s very little difference between public art / sculpture, and skateparks. The bottom quarterpipe thing is perfect, but the vert wall part is set back about four inches behind the coping, and there are these weird slits in the wall that catch your wheels. If you’re regular footed and going frontside you can bomb down the smoothest sidewalk in Barcy, carve in and blast up the wall. If you’re going backside it’s a different story and you need to run and throw down. Either way, it’s a simple enough thing to get to the top of the vert wall, but doing an actual trick up there and riding out of it is an entirely different matter. Anything you do you’re going to have to pop out of so you don’t hang up on the setback section. When you’re standing there looking at it and thinking of tricks like Haslam’s rock n roll kickflip fakie it’s like, NO way is that possible. I’ll say this; you’re only going to do a trick on the top of this thing if you’re really good. OH, and you might as well be skating the edge of a razor blade, so beware.
In summation, and to answer the question posed at the start, Barcelona is the best city in the world for skateboarding. Period. You don’t need to go to MACBA or any of the other famous spots and you can still skate your face off. There are amazingly rad spots everywhere you look. Not to mention they have the best coffee, the coolest architecture, a super efficient and easy to use train system, great vibes, and on and on and on. You should go.
