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Budget flights give skateboarders extra impetus to travel the globe,
reports Tam Leach
WHEN Chris Thomas goes on holiday this year, he’s planning to visit the
dodgier parts of
Barcelona.
His tour will take in housing estates, random office blocks and industrial
districts.
He will ride to the end of subway lines and spend hours wandering the
streets of the suburbs, with no more than a vague idea of what he’s looking
for, and incomplete, word-of-mouth directions. And he will sample foreign
soil from the kerb up, from the day he arrives to moments before he leaves
through airport security.
Chris is not an architect, although he has a keen appreciation of their
work. Chris is a skateboarder. And Chris is not alone. Skaters have always
travelled. Like their surfing forebears chasing an endless wave, skaters
devour skatespots like bookworms tearing through a library. No matter how
good the local options, each new skatepark, marble ledge, transitioned bank
or set of steps throws up a new challenge.
“Travel is the nature of the beast,” asserts Niall Neeson, editor of
Kingpin, a pan-European skate magazine with editions published in four
languages. But whereas long-distance travel for British skaters once meant
trips to Southsea skatepark, the hijacking of family holidays to
skate-friendly destinations and cash-starved expeditions to California, the
birth of the budget airline has led to an explosion in the number of skaters
leaving the UK for new spots and the certainty of dry days.
For the past few years, Barcelona has been the leading destination.
Hordes of skaters from around the globe flock here for the weather, the
generally accepting attitude of citizens and officials, and the abundance of
objects on which to skate: ledges, banks and other blips of stylised street
architecture.
The Spanish tourist office refuses to comment on this element of
Barcelona’s tourist economy. Yet the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
(MACBA), just off the central Ramblas, is so popular with visitors who come
to appreciate the museum’s striking external architecture, rather than its
contents, that it has an official position on the matter.
Public space, it asserts, is defined by all those who use it and skaters,
therefore, are “equally legitimate owners” as every other group using the
space. MACBA’s policy is to negotiate the activities of skaters with the
needs of others, which means keeping skaters from scaring off visitors
during opening hours, but permitting them to use the ledges and steps at
other times.
Cities such as Barcelona quickly become known, as skaters tend to
videotape their best locations and often send them in to magazines. “These
days we’ll get an amateur video sent from a small town such as Market
Drayton with 20 minutes of Barcelona footage in it,” says Ben Powell, the
editor of Sidewalk, one of the two major UK skate magazines.
About 30 per cent of Sidewalk is devoted to tales of pro- British skaters
on trips abroad — and where the pros go, other skaters soon follow.
“I get loads of kids mailing me and asking about various places that
we’ve covered,” adds Powell, “particularly
Prague and
Barcelona.” The numbers belie the public perception of skateboarding as a
teenage fad.
Sidewalk boasts a monthly circulation of 20,000-30,000, Kingpin of
60,000, and Powell’s “kids” is a loose term: increasingly, skaters keep
rolling throughout their twenties and well into their thirties. This is a
group that has time to travel and a disposable income.
“I tend to spend the exact amount I’ve got, plus my overdraft,” says Lev
Tanju, 22, who works casual retail jobs to fund his sojourns abroad,
visiting Barcelona five times in the past few years.
His accommodation has ranged from rented apartments or hostels to the
couches and floors of locals. “Skating lets you meet a lot of amazing people
that you wouldn’t normally meet. You are accepted by skateboarders all
around the world.”
Ian Munns, 30, adds: “When I see what I’m getting for my money it makes
me laugh how people will pay £500 each for flights and accommodation for 14
nights at Playas de las Americas in Tenerife.”
As well as Spain, the 30-year-old operations manager has toured
Switzerland, Belgium
and “virtually every skatepark in
France”, as well as visiting
the US. His friend Dave Hawkins, a 32-year-old IT engineer, has “taken more
than 50 trips.”
Both split their trips between skating and more traditional sightseeing.
“People in my department at work were amazed that I had driven 3,527
kilometres (2,200 miles) in two weeks around France and Spain just to skate;
they didn’t understand how I could call that a holiday. I don’t understand
how people can call two weeks in Tenerife a holiday when they’re surrounded
by English people, English culture and English lifestyle.”
Skating might be the motivating factor, but it’s the opportunity to
experience different places from a citizen’s perspective that skaters cite
as the most rewarding aspect of travelling with a board.
Even in Barcelona, skating through the city brings a sense of exploration
and integration. Whether lying in the gutter in a suburban street, gliding
through a dodgy ghetto in search of a particular spot, or being yelled at by
the police, skaters slip sideways into the local landscape.
Sexy only when used to sell mobile phones or video games, in real life
skateboarding is generally viewed as noisy, dirty and the domain of useless
kids; hence those who do it are ignored by the majority and welcomed by
their own.
As Niall puts it: “You get to see a culture from the inside. You eat with
the locals, meet their families, drink where they drink — even if that’s an
alley.” |
