issue / 12
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COVER: Kris Vile, nollie inward heelip. Photo Davide Biondani.
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EDITORIAL / 12
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ISSUE / 12
CONTENTS
FRAGMENTS BOOK / FILM 12 - FORMAT PERSPECTIVE
Cutting loose with / Niall Neeson PLACES / 12
CHINA
Turn your brain off in Barcelona The privilege of watching
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/ Barney
Page
Phil Zwijsen, wallie to smith grind. Photo Davide Biondani. a brief glance
EDITOR and CONCEPT Davide Biondani. (davide@abriefglance.com) ASSOCIATE EDITOR Guido Bendotti. PHOTOGRAPHERS Leo Sharp, Eric Mirbach, Kévin Métallier, Friedjof Feye, Marcel Veldman, Garric Ray, Alex Irvine, Fabio Montagner, Chiara Tiso, Marcello Guardigli, Eric Antoine, Alan Maag, Chiara Terraneo, Bertrand Trichet, Richard Gilligan, Benjamin Deberdt, Mark Whitley, Davide Biondani. CONTRIBUTORS Andrew Zolin, Francesco Paolo Chielli, Jonathan Levin, Leo Sharp, Oli Buergin, Mauro Caruso, Jerome Campbell, Luca Basilico, Ale Martoriati, Holger von Krosigk, Jeroen Smeets, Simone Bertozzi. DESIGN Fake Donkey Lab. www.abriefglance.com
GET ALL THE INFOS at:
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INTRODUCING
LINDEN
MORE INFO AT LAKAI.COM
CARLO
MORE INFO AT LAKAI.COM
L AKAI LI MI TED FOOTWEAR T HE SHO ES WE SKATE BIEBEL / JOHNSON / MARIANO / CARROLL / HOWARD / WELSH / ALVAREZ / GILLET / BRADY / JENSEN FERNANDEZ / TERSHY / ESPINOZA / HAWK / WALKER / PEREZ / photo by JT Rhoades / ad #153 / lakai.com + crailtap.com
RILEY HAWK
FRONTSIDE BLUNT
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www.abriefglance.com fake donkey lab
davide biondani photo.
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F
FRAGMENTS
Danny Galli, Fs stale fish. Photo: Davide Biondani. Italy.
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FRAGMENTS a brief glance
Ale Morandi, Noseblunt slide. Photo: Davide Biondani. Italy.
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Alessandro Bonacci, Tree nosebonk. Photo: Davide Biondani. Italy.
F
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FRAGMENTS
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FRAGMENTS
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Julien Mérour, Bs lipslide all way long. Photo: Kèvin Mètallier. France.
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" ! ++'ċ +)ĥ!0*%!/%0 (5 (1! %/0.% 10%+*ċ +)
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The privilege of watching
Barney Page “There are a lot of words I could use to describe Barney, but one word in particular sticks out to me the most: ‘Powerful’, for those of you who have had the privilege of watching him explode around a skatepark I am sure this word or similar.” Jerome Campbell
Photography Leo Sharp.
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BS SMITH GRIND. a brief glance
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OLI BUERGIN. Are you getting ready to move away from Exeter? I’ve been seriously thinking about it lately! I don’t know...
What are you going to miss the most? Your dog, your friends or the skatepark? Uhm a bit of everything but it will make it better when I go to visit I guess.
Are you considering to move to California? San Jose? I really don’t know at this point in time.
What are you up to with enjoi? We heard that you are working on a video part… I’m not sure again, just trying to film.
How was the recent etnies tour to Las Vegas? It was amazing there is just perfect ditch spots everywhere.
Have you always been skating everything? Looks like you were born skating transitions? Just skated the local park which has got a little of everything if you use your imagination.
BS NOSEBLUNT SLIDE
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FEEBLE GRIND FS OUT. a brief glance
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Barney Page a brief glance
...The privilege of watching...
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LEO SHARP. What was it like growing up with ginger hair? Did you get the piss taken out of you in school? Nah did I fuck, it was chilling... theres benefits to it ha ha.
Do you miss the old days riding for Motive? Tell us about riding for them? Yeah for sure man, that being my firs hook up ever! I was super hyped man and everyone on Motive are cool.
What was it like growing up in Exeter? Was it hard to find good spots to skate? It was all good a nice chilling place but there was definitely a lack of spots...
What is the average day in the life like for Barney Page these days? Uhm wake up, see how I’m feeling. Hopefully there will not be the weight of a hangover on my shoulders. Basically just try and have fun and skate I guess...
What did you do for a living before being a sponsored skateboarder? I was doing carpentry with my dad.
Favourite place you have skated in the UK? Favourite place you have skated abroad? Bristol and abroad its gonna have to be Barcelona.
FS FEEBLE GRIND.
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JEROME CAMPBELL.
You are on tour a lot at the moment who would you consider to be your trip buddy? I try and make everyone trip buddy, no haters ha ha... What has been your most memorable destination over the last few years? Scandinavia.
If your were only allowed to take 5 items on tour with you what would they be? Skateboard, money, shoes, toothbrush, passport.
As an Exeter lad are there any kids on the come up that the skate-world should look out for ? I don’t know! Just the people who I skate with. I don’t really know any young killers really.
Just to finish this off please can you tell me your favorite Raemers story ? There is many of them! Ha ha ha.
SWITCH FS HEEL FLIP.
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OLLIE. a brief glance
...the privilege of
BS 360.
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OLLIE.
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Cutting loose with:
Niall Neeson SPRING 2009, I WAS STANDING BY THE POOL ON A ROOFTOP OF A HIGH CLASS LONDON BUILDING. NOT EXACTLY FEELING OUT OF PLACE, BUT RATHER WEIRD. AT EACH SIDE OF THE CLASSY SWIMMING POOL ONE OF THE MOVIE STARS WAS RELEASING INTERVIEWS. A COUPLE DOZENS OF JOURNALISTS WERE SPARSELY LINED UP WAITING TO CONSUME THEIR 3 MINUTES TALK. EVERYONE WAS JUST DRESSED UP FOR GOOD, TO EACH ONE HIS OWN CHARACTER: STEREOTYPED. IT FELT SO FUTILE AND OUT OF PLACE I RESIGNED MY “JOURNALIST” ASSIGNMENT AND KEPT STROLLING AROUND WAITING THE 20 MINUTES INTERVIEW-TIME TO BE OVER. NIALL WAS THERE TOO: LACED UP OLD SKATE SHOES, SHORTS AND BACKPACK. WANDERING, NOT TRYING TO PLEASE ANYONE, LOOKING ALIEN, WAITING THAT GROTESQUE DREAM TO BE OVER. WE WERE AMONG THE FIRST TO LEAVE THE PLACE WHEN THEY OPENED THE GOLDEN CAGE. SKATEBOARDING WAS SOMEWHERE ELSE. LUCA BASILICO
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Words: Guido Bendotti / Luca Basilico / Holger von Krosigk.
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GUIDO BENDOTTI: What’s up Niall, how did you fall in love with skateboarding and skate mags? Hello Guido, how are things? I used to ride flatland BMX in the 1980’s in Northern Ireland. There was a friend I knew from school, a really creative switched on individual called Peter Flanagan. He was an amazing person- used to screenprint his own T- shirts, imported early rap records and all that. Anyway he was the first skater I met. He had a G&S Carl Heintzmann and out the front of his house he did a stalefish boneless nosepick and instantly I knew that everything had changed forever. Here was something that changed your environment from limitations to endless possibilities and it was like walking through a doorway of the mind, ‘this is the answer to everything you’ve been looking for’. And from then it never changed, I still rush to the window when I hear a rumble and I’m disappointed to discover when it’s just someone pulling a suitcase. The first magazine I saw was a Poweredge in Worthing on the south coast of England the year Neneh Cherry’s Raw Like Sushi album came out. 1989 or thereabouts I think...it had an interview with Allen Losi and it was just before vert died so the adverts were all these homo- erotic, dayglo pose-ups with Gator, Hosoi and those guys doing streetplants in Town and Country, Body Glove, BBC t-shirts. It all seemed so fantastically glamorous and otherworldly, but it was a hard look to imitate in Belfast let me tell you. The BMX magazine of that era ‘BMX Action Bike’ started to have more and more skating in it and eventually turned into RAD (Read And Destroy) which was the top UK mag at the time. It started out really well but eventually disappeared up it’s own Covent Garden derriere. At that time though, it really did a lot to show skaters what was going on around them and it was really inspiring. You’re the Kingpin magazine founder; how did this adventure started and why did you started immediately with the multilingual versions? Well, one of the many untold stories in the ‘official’ version of British skateboarding is that the idea of a panEuropean magazine was first floated by the Sidewalk staff back when I worked there. We all sat around with the owner of Permanent Publishing in Abingdon and told him that Barcelona was becoming a global draw for skaters and that alongside the rise of brands like Cliché
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the whole European movement was reaching a critical mass so somebody was going to do it and it should be Permanent Publishing to do it first. Jim understandably didn’t want all the extra hassle that would come with it and so the idea was shelved. I met Benjamin Deberdt at the Slap exhibition at the Lausanne Grand Prix and talked to Mark Whiteley there too and the rest is one hundred issues of history. A lot of people wanted it to fail but the publisher now employs a good chunk of European skate media so that went quiet smartish. Was Europe ready for that? Yes, it wouldn’t have made it otherwise- I think that things like Puzzle and the skate weekend travel culture which fuelled the Barcelona explosion showed that the European scene had reached a new level of maturity. You have to remember that for decades before 2002 Europe had been the backdrop for countless American media episodes- from Munster to 411 Europe to the Bones Brigade tours, the Mystic Cup becoming a fixed star in the global comp circuit and so on. A magazine was a natural extension of that; we could easily have just done a ‘Transworld Europe’, Hasselblad handrail hammers, digital Macba sequences and so on but Benjamin and I wanted to turn people’s preconceptions on their heads, which is why Javi’s Bertleman cover of issue 1 got everybody so bent out of shape. Skateboarding is secretly very conservative, don’t tell anyone though. Is European skateboarding still a ‘slave’ of the American skate business? ‘Slave’ isn’t the case, we are all sentient people. When you see the output from the Girl/ Lakai camp in terms both of the skating and just everything they touch from video to graphics, those guys deserve to be top of any pile anywhere. Everything they touch is gold and that brilliance transcends international boundaries. When I was at Slap I saw Thrasher’s distribution; 80% of their global sales were in California. Not America, but California. Skateboarding is actually part of the fabric of society there, much more so than Australia or anywhere else.
However the big American companies are definitely concerned about growing awareness among skaters. I was politely warned by the top people at the biggest board and truck manufacturers in the world about breaking the ‘magazine rules’. One took a copy of Kingpin and said ‘If you make critical comparisons between brands in your magazine this is what will happen’ and he started ripping out pages and dropping them on the floor of the hotel lobby. Whether that was a statement of fact or a veiled threat was left in the air. But to me pointless fanboy magazines are ultimately skating’s big problem, skaters just drift off from them and said so. John Bernards said ‘Good for you son, I like to see somebody stand up to those guys’. What’s your feeling when you see the mag you founded directed by someone else?
It’s hard to deny the legacy when something you created passes a milestone like 100 issues so I’m glad to see it continue. Kingpin flourished when others failed so I must have done something right to create and build something so solid . Kingpin succeeded, I did that, and now it’s up to Alex to continue what I built and mould it to his vision. There are things I like better about Kingpin now like the phone call thing and the Dig Your Own Grave DIY special issue, but ‘weartest’s, CC interviews, team manager awards... It’s up to the readership which ‘feel’ they prefer, but I’d certainly say you have more shout of getting in if you’re British now. Is skateboarding still fun? Nothing is more fun than skateboarding. Nothing comes close.
Streetgap ollie, London. Photo Richard Gilligan.
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LUCA BASILICO: Magazines worldwide survive off advertisers rather than a legit mix of sales and paid adverts. Does it really make sense to have this ‘journalism’ anymore? Woah Luca, big question! I read a book about the 1960’s by a guy called Richard Hargreaves and in it he said ‘Every generation has their moment of revolution repackaged, and sold back to them as style’. That is where skateboarding is today in it’s current cultural cycle. Here’s the thing: magazines generally aren’t consumed in the way they were in the 1990’s and 2000’s. It is a cultural shift that people blame on the internet but I don’t totally agree. If you ask me, the PR business has done more to destroy print magazine culture than the internet. There was a time when you could buy a cinema magazine and get a really candid, insightful interview with lots of gossip and scandalous little asides. That would never happen now because the stars or their handlers are so image- conscious that all the raw edge is ironed out. That is also true in skating. Image- conscious punks are everywhere. I’ll give you two examples: when we interviewed Boulala he talked about buying clothes from second hand shops so the designers went to one and bought some fabric for the design of the article. Lo and behold he let it be known through his acolytes that he wasn’t happy with it because it wasn’t punk enough or something. 2 weeks later Benjamin and I were with him at the Bon Appetit premiere in Lyon and he never said a word. Image- conscious punks. ‘JB want to see text’meaning Cliché want to have editorial control over what we print? Well, no. You say the words and we type the words and print the words, that’s how it works. Respect the independence of the media if you want a healthy culture. Same with Scott Bourne, or Pontus wanting to shape their own interviews. That ‘how come you’re so great’ stuff sucks ass big style. Journalism is ‘the fourth estate’: it is there to comment upon and reflect on the culture it documents. People who try to dictate that agenda try to turn the medium into the message, and skaters just go ‘this is nonsense’ and stop buying magazines. That’s why on things like the Nike Italy article I did an essay on mathematical probability in skating instead. A bit of substance never hurt anyone. Easy and affordable access to technology, extensive and low cost on line distribution, on line payments, Tablets. Do you think the corporate publisher model
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is still making sense these days? In a word, no. But that’s not to say that publishers suck, it’s just that as you say the ground is shifting underneath them. Pros are cutting away the industry by hiring filmers / editors and selling video parts via media platforms such as iTunes. What do you think about this “revolution”? I really have no idea if it works, to be honest. If Lionel Messi just put out video of every time he touches the ball, would it encourage people to support Barcelona? When you look at classic video parts they usually come within a wider context, like Mike Carroll in Modus Operandi most people could tell you who else was in that video, or Appleyard’s Flip sections.
The trouble is that skating has got so bananas that the pro’s are afraid of the am’s and the am’s are afraid of the unsponsored killers. So it’s very rare to see unheard- of guys come through unless they create their own route to market, like Abbe Nyberg. That’s why we did the Eniz cover with the ‘Never Heard Of Him’ strapline, kind of a comment on that attempt by brands to control who comes up. At the time we got shit for putting ‘randoms’ like Eniz in the mag, now he is the “reader’s skater of the year”. European national mags are struggling. Contributors are poorly paid or even working free. More and more photographers are paid by companies and contents flown free to the media. What’s your opinion on this “evolution” of the production process? I can only say that for my part, I insisted that we put a lot of money into the hands of freelancers. Every single issue of Kingpin I spent at least 4,000 euros on contributors either as retainers or payments. We could have worked like the Americans and said ‘you shoot with our staff or you don’t get in’, but instead I put that money directly into the hands of photographers and writers, many of whom worked on national magazines and in so doing helped them make ends meet. Funny how that get’s glossed over... if ever I came in under budget I would tell struggling photographers to send me an invoice for the leftover amount even if they didn’t have any photos run that month because I knew Factory would never find out. Robin Hood style, and I know photographers who will be reading this and know that what I say is the truth. Product placement, sponsored tour articles, advertiser’s team riders interviews, harmless texts... can magazines really survive like that? I don’t want to come across like my shit doesn’t stink, I am sure that I have been guilty of each of those things on at least one occasion. Can they survive like that though... well here in London Nike did a paid- for newspaper style thing which was all of those things at once but it was still a professional looking product. Maybe if they just dropped the pretence and called it branded content, or advertorial and gave it away free then possibly. But look: in France there used to be Sugar, Tricks, Chill, Frasher, Freestyler, Beach Brother...6 magazines in one country. Those days are gone forever. Wallride, San Francisco, 1999. Photo Mark Whiteley.
I heard people in the business referring to you as “harsh and hard to deal with”. I would rather say with a personal vision and “not keen to kiss ass”. Did this have a part in your parting ways from your previous job? Ah this old chestnut! It’s really very simple: My personality is who I am, my attitude depends on what I think of you. Most people who know me would say I am a nice person and a loyal friend, but I do not suffer fools gladly and I don’t like people confusing my being a nice guy with being a soft touch. Many make that mistake with me but they only ever make it once. So it was always held against that I never tried to court the ‘cool guys’ on the skateboard scene and when people tried to play me to their advantage they always came off worse. ‘Only shooting the interview with your mate’ are you? Best of luck with that. We didn’t put random UK shop bro’s in just for the ‘backing’ points, which was always held against me, but I couldn’t see why a plaza chiller in Spain would be stoked on any old UK dude stuck in there for the sake of fitting in. The skipsters thought ‘OK here comes this Irish redneck, he doesn’t know shit, they are based in London out of the loop, he’s going to try and do a big PR campaign to become everybody’s best mate’ and when I ignored them and succeeded anyway, their noses were all out of joint because it showed them up as being empty vessels. Who does he think he is? Ben Dietz from Vice once said to me ‘People project a lot onto you when you work for a magazine’. The fact that I didn’t politic and try to fit in is where the jealousy and resentment stemmed from, let’s admit it. As for the parting of ways, that wasn’t a factor because if Factory had their way I wouldn’t have left. They never change staff if they can avoid it; they just want them to act grateful for the job. My wife and I had two miscarriages in a row and I began to dislike travelling all the time as a result, but I resigned to show all the talented young people who make Factory what they are that they had choices. All that business of photographers not getting paid for months on end and so on just got embarrassing, everybody who has been owed money knows what that is like. The irony is that of all the people who said I was a loose cannon, none of them- none, mark it- have come back into Kingpin subsequently. So talk is cheap fellows. I didn’t start skating to join a gang, certainly not the industry cool- guy gang. It was never my intention to hurt your feelings by ignoring you. Two fingers, my friends!
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You did a magazine where text article where preeminent. In a world where most of magazines are losing significant text content in favour of glossy images, do you still think leaving a message to the readers is important? Yes very much so. That is what makes you dangerous. Like Place magazine’s article on homosexuality, how very brave. The funny thing is I hear people say the same things about Place as they did about Kingpin- pretentious, not enough beer and tattoos...but Sabah Haider that used to work for Transworld said an interesting thing to me once, she said ‘The fact that some skaters don’t read anything apart from skate mags makes it more rather than less important that you fill them with ideas and knowledge, you have a duty to do it’. Now there will be people reading this going ‘if I wanted to
learn I’d read a book’, but the fact that you read those magazines cover to cover looking for something to dislike tells it’s own story. What was it Nas said? ‘Made you look’. Do you think skaters are still willing to pay for quality skateboard journalism? Yes but not too much money. Skaters are broke ass mofo’s for the most part, and they are constantly being told they have to pay or it’s their fault if a brand goes out of business. But skaters are people too, they have to buy toothpaste, marijuana or whatever else too. A cold economic wind is blowing across the Western world now, it’s not our fault we don’t have the loose cash we used to.
Stolen wheel. Photo Benjamin Deberdt.
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HOLGER VON KROSIGK: Can you explain how your origins have shaped your personality, especially in the ways that it reflects in your work - or has reflected in your work at Kingpin? Hi Holger, first can I say that I admire what you have done with Place and consider you to be one of the best people I ever met through skating, Germany should be proud of you. My roots in skateboard magazines was writing for SLAP from where I took their real love for the culture of skateboarding above the ‘Smash Hits’ approach you see everywhere today. That’s why people like Puleo, Mc Kay, Montoya wanted to be in it as much as the Europeans did. Kingpin also reflected my love of soulful music. I basically only like music from the end of Tamla Motown, through Philadelphia International, disco, US garage and Chicago house music. It is my secret shame in skating, I don’t like the Wu Tang Clan or sausage party metal. Rory Milanes and Nugget from the Palace crew feel my pain. I like the idea of struggle and community in that music and in skating too. So you can see in covers like ‘Get Up To Get Down’, ‘GHETTOUT’ ( Mary J Blige), ‘Dust Yourself Off and Try Again’ (Aaliyah) ‘Everybody Loves The Sunshine’ (Roy Ayers). So there you go, ‘controversial opinionated’ Neeson is a secret disco citizen. Work it! Is print still the best medium for skate photography? If it is, why is it? Will this ever change, how could it change and what about the medium you’re being interviewed for this very minute? I like print because you can rip it out and stick it on your wall and every time you look at your wall you are transported into the excitement and escape of skateboarding. Beyond that I don’t really have a horse in the race, so to speak. I assume that this tablet technology will usher in a new era and I look forward to seeing it, but it is always those who stand to lose the most who complain loudest about change so I am looking at it with a child’s mind. Show me and then I’ll tell you what I think! What was your vision with Kingpin - what did you want to achieve? To help young people toward their dreams and hold the door open for as many talented people as possible to come after, as was done for me by people like Mark
Whiteley and Ben Powell. The magazine had to be a journal of the culture of being a skateboarder and not just the latest stunts at Bercy, Southbank, Macba, Kulturforum. That’s why we had ambient stuff in there, aping those amazing Alien Workshop sequeways, atmosphere as well as reportage. Oh, and silencing egocentric ‘photojournalist’s as I went! The imagery you created with Kingpin: it was a dark world, rough and more black-and-white than colourful. Why stick to this if the majority of skateboarders wants to see blue skies and perfect spots? Well let’s not make a virtue out of necessity: for the first year or 18 months we had a succession of awful printers including Italy’s own De’Agostini who British people will know as the ‘free binder with part one’ people. The printing in those early issues was awful, you can’t deny it. Then by the time we got that sorted out I had discovered the photographic genius of Sem Rubio, and black and white is his forte. If he preferred cross- processing then the mag would have been green and not black and white. But as I said before, it would have been easy for us to be the Barcelona Times, but we had to create a product which was visually different, and Europe is not just the Mediterranean countries. It is also Poland, Norway, Scotland, Bulgaria and countries where it is dark 8 months of the year. If you wanted to represent reality then that meant darkness as well as light. Where in this industry do you see skateboarding represented the way you believe it should be? I think The Skateboard Mag is the best magazine in the history of skateboarding. Can skateboarding remain loyal to its roots? You know, as long as people like you and Davide and Ben Powell at Sidewalk are leading the way then the answer is yes, and I don’t just say that because we are all friends. You have all sacrificed part of your lives for the love of the game. You should interview Ben Powell and Mark Whiteley! Skateboarding doesn’t deserve those guys.
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BOOK / FILM 12 - FORMAT PERSPECTIVE.
Format Perspective is a film by Phil Evans that explores the work, lives and opinions of six European skate photographers. Produced by Carhartt, the film showcases the photography of Nils Svensson (Malmรถ), Stuart Robinson (Belfast), Alex Irvine (London), Rich Gilligan (Dublin), Bertrand Trichet (Barcelona/Tokyo) and Sergej Vutuc (Heilbronn), while also giving us an insight into the different approaches used by this diverse line-up of photographers. Filmed completely on super 8 film, this project gives a behind-the-scenes look at the skating that these guys like to shoot, as well as the resulting photos that emerge from these sessions.
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“On a summer day I found myself filming a very stressed out skateboarder who was throwing a hissy fit that would put a two-years-old to shame. The guy’s theatrics were making me so depressed that I had to ask myself: “Why I’m filming him - in fact, why I’m even filming skating in general? I like to identify with people I shoot with, but this was giving me zero inspiration. Skating should be fun, but this was far from fun! It was then that my attention was caught by my photographer friend Stu, calmly sitting on the ground…with his camera inches away from his face. He had obviously witnessed this kind of spectacle before, but none of it seemed to faze him. He just patently sat there, letting the situation unfold, and kept his camera ready in case an opportune moment arose. I was both impressed and fascinated by the passiveness and perseverance of this man. I immediately felt inspired again, so I turned my camera and started shooting Stu instead of the skateboarder.” Phil Evans.
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Philip Evans (1982) is a filmmaker and artist currently residing in Bray, just south of Dublin, Ireland. This small town is where Phil discovered the magic of skateboarding and developed an inexplicable compulsion to produce a near-endless stream of skateboarding videos and silly images. His last video, The Scrum Tilly Lush (2009) documented the everyday skating habits of pro skateboarders in 11 different locations around Europe. Phil’s work has been exhibited all over the world and has been inducted into the Municipal Art Collection of Waterford City. He is part of the Human Pyramids Artist Collective.
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Turn your brain off in Barcelona Words Andrew Zolin. Photos Davide Biondani.
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While drinking a coffee, I’m trying to recollect how I spent those seven days, and a song immediately comes to mind that goes: “A city full of flowers, a city full of rain, I got seven days to live my life or seven ways to die”, genius. Actually all you need to do is substitute the word “flowers” with the word “spots” and forget about the rain to get a grasp of the general situation. Another article on Barcelona? Another skate trip to the most famous, most seen over and over again, most photographed and filmed Catalan city? Maybe. When problems start arising at home, new problems you’re not used to that you don’t know how to solve, problems of the sort that would make you grow a little, where resorting to drinking is too easy a solution, sometimes it is better to put your brain on the bedside table, forget your mobile phone in the basement, call a couple friends you don’t see that often, buy a ticket and leave. That’s how it started…nothing ordinary. Usually I like to gather information about the place I’m going to visit. Usually, but not this time…oh yeah! The city that was home to Gaudì, who died under the first tram that was put into circulation and was later buried in the crypt of the Sagrada Familia! Within this building you can drink horrible cappuccinos for extraordinary prices. I think I’ll remember sipping that boiling cappuccino while enjoying the view of the back of the building in a never-ending state of construction for the rest of my life. The first thing that comes to mind is the urban pavement; those typical little “toothbuster” square tiles all over the place… It’s a matter of habit. After three days the soles of your feet are on fire and your fingertips so worn out from the griptape that you reach the conclusion that you just don’t care. You’ll get over it! Another curious aspect is the presence of natural skatestoppers. To combat the infinite spots around the city, the local government relies on the thousands of seeds of these plants that fall to the ground in a “helicopter” fashion and that get stuck under your wheels just as you are about to ollie, causing lethal whiplashes. Talking about spots, if I were to find a definition, the one word that comes to mind is: embarrassing. There are just too many of them, and it makes you think back to how badly you craved for that spot under a brief glance
your house imagining you were at Pier 7 in SF doing the manual of your life. The question was always the same in Piazza Catalunya: “Is there a spot you’ve seen in a video that you’d like to skate?” “Of course not Mr. Phil!” A 40 minute train ride and when you get off: a neighbourhood, five spots, twenty banks. That’s the spirit! The number one question of the trip was: “Do skaters only talk about skateboarding among themselves?” Question that was asked us by a sweet, young, redhaired lady with a deep expression. She was a well known mandolin player from northern Italy we met at the airport on the day of our departure. We tried to convince her the answer was an uncompromising “no”, even though I believe that was what we talked about 70% of the time. Of course skateboarders talk about various things such as food, drinks, curse words, women, art, and other various activities… My conclusion is the following: a skateboarder is cool in a manner that is inversely proportional to the number of skate-related subjects he talks about. Ross McGouran for example, is good at pointing out places to eat low-cost sandwiches, Kris Vile comes off well in self-deprecation and Phil Zwiijsen…is a guy who acts instead of talking, cigarette in hand all the time and is always the first to skate spots. Number one! Countless laughs with Davide and Luca Crestani, nocturnal feebles with Ale Cesario at some spots right under the house, and Ghigo’s slams. The best thing about Barcelona is the emotional charge it gives you. It’s true that the city has been “massacred“ by skaters from all over the world, but once you’re there you feel like you’re in the right place, as if skateboarding was something accepted and respected by everyone. In Barcelona you can do it. It is the place to go. If you need to recharge your batteries Barcelona is the place to be. The only problem is the depression that kicks in the moment you get back home… In the end, by paraphrasing Rossellini, I’d call this excursion “Barcelona Year Zero”, a new starting point created by the atmosphere of the Catalan city… Thanks friends, thanks Barca!
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Luca Crestani / BS LIPSLIDE POLEJAM.
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Jonathan Thijs / FS KICKFLIP TRANSFER.
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Phil Zwijsen / OLLIE UP TO OLLIE TO FS NOSEBLUNT SLIDE.
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Ale Cesario / KICKFLIP.
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Ghigo / HALF CAB OVER AND IN.
Turn your brain off in Barcelo
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Turn your brain off in Barcelona
Phil Zwijsen / WALLIE TO SMITH GRIND.
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Mauro Caruso / CROOKS.
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Ghigo / FS NOSEGRIND.
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Ale Cesario / FS BOARDSLIDE.
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Kris Vile / KICKFLIP.
Turn your brain off in Barcelona a brief glance
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Phil Zwijsen / CROOKS. a brief glance
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PLACES / 12
CHINA
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photography Chiara Terraneo
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PLACES / 12
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PLACES / 12
CHINA
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CHINA
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PLACES / 12
CHINA a brief glance
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soul / Ross / The Brokendolls. art / Gallo / MTPT Studio.
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photo davide biondani
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issue / 12