History and longing for the irreverent ‘skateboard’

There’s something magical in the ‘skateboarding‘ which is difficult to explain. Because after the repetitions, the falls, the stretched out dolls, the bruised ankles and the million sighs, there comes a day when you do something different and the ‘ollie‘ comes out for the first time. It’s the mother trick, like learning to lift the wheel front of the bike Is about raise the table kicking the back part first to immediately do the same with the front part. quite a baptism. From there, fly. Much more than a sport, ‘skate’ has been since its inception in the 1950s, but here, starting in the 1980s, a urban culture generator. For most, a concrete and unforgettable stage of life. For a few, an eternal way of being and existing. This is the case of Sören Manzoni, a Barcelonan of Italian parents and a Danish name who owns in Poblenou -the Manzoni’s Garage– one of the biggest collections about ‘skateboarding‘ from all over Europe. He’s put the thing in a bit of chronological order and has moved scraps of all his material to the Seat House in Barcelona. If the reader skated in his younger years, this is a luxury excuse to lick all that magic.

But this is a ‘Barcelona‘ and the relationship of the event with the city is imposed, “the world capital of skateboarding as Hawaii is of surfing,” says Sören. This is so, to a large extent, thanks to the urbanism of hard squares of the time of Pasqual Maragall -with Oriol Bohigas, among others, at the controls of the design-, which filled the public thoroughfare with jumps, boxes, cambers and perfect floors for the kids on the boards. many years ago we unseated san francisco as a mecca for ‘skate’. It happened thanks to the configuration of the streets, but also because of the weather and, above all, something that has gone from less to more, “for the permissiveness“. You are fine, the setting is ideal and the police is not so strict as in other places.

silent number 1

Losing that gang point generates mixed feelings. Because on the one hand the romanticism of knowing that you are doing something forbidden has vanished, but on the other, always according to the story of this veteran skater, “it tastes bad that Barcelona does not take advantage the fact that it is the place where all the ‘skaters’ on the planet want to go”. “Is the city council aware that we should brag about it? Why don’t we rub it in the other cities’ faces?” Madrid, for example, does not have this gift. Questions from Sören that would surely force – this will not be the place – to open the thorny and politicized debate about what kind of tourism we want for the Catalan capital.

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about ‘skateboarding’ and Barcelona is the Macba Square, popular name of plaza dels Àngels, in the Raval, which may seem very modern (its current appearance dates from 1995) but its origins go back to the 16th century. The current image is that of dozens of young people sitting on their different levels. Having a drink or chatting. And many other dozens, with his skateboard, rounding off all the protrusions in the environment with the axes or with the board.

The Macba has it all: a Bicing stop, close to public transport, in the rogue neighborhood but not far from Eixample, with some public restrooms on the corner, next to a monumental building that gives greatness to your videos. But like all divas, this ‘spot‘ (as the points for skating are called) generates conflicting opinions. Place of pilgrimage for many, but also globalization symbol ‘skater’, from unnecessary overcrowding. Manzoni, who turned 50 last year, is in this second group. you perish”the Lloret and the Benidorm of ‘skateboarding’ in Barcelona”.

It is curious, and surely a case worthy of study, to observe how the so-called Barcelona urban model, whose main objective was to tidy up marginalized areas through the monumentalization and the sponging of public space, ended up turning a good part of the city into a ‘First Order Skate Park’, In addition to transforming the neighborhoods into showcases that over the years would be a silver platter for a concept, amply addressed by this newspaper, which was unknown until a couple of decades ago: the gentrification. Regarding the former, the unforeseen use of urban design, such was the skating fashion that in 2013 the famous xgames were held in the Montjuïc Olympic ring. They had to return in 2014 and 2015, but the organizers, the ESPN network, canceled the European adventure.

tourism on wheels

Many tourists, especially asiansThey come only for contemplate and touch the Sagrada Família of Gaudí’s disciples. Others travel (or used to travel…) thousands of kilometers to attend a barca match. Well, it turns out that those who get on a plane or a train with an assault backpack and a skateboard are also legion. Y A couple of friends, of course, because this is, too, a big family. And they roll to the Macba, the park of the Three Chimneys del Paral·lel, the charming Plaza de la Universitat, the ‘skate parks’ of the Mar Bella, Nou Barris or Zona Franca or the endless Forum. Also the award-winning (neither more nor less than a FAD in 1984) plaza de los Catalan countries, but it is so dilapidated (its reform requires a carom between Adif and the town hall) that hardly has charm anymore even to destroy it.

And it’s a shame, because as Sören recalls, it all started in Sants and it was this neighborhood that kept the embers of ‘skateboarding’ alive during the years of tremendous slump, at the end of the 90s. Hill Park (mythical was the store Skate Only of the Vía Wagner galleries, the second to open in the city after Free Sports) or Gaudí Avenue, the first ‘spots’ in Barcelona. So the motto was ‘skateboarding’ is not a crime (skateboarding is not a crime), but since it is now almost as accepted a practice as taking out the garbage or raising an arm to order a taxi, the curator of the exhibition jokes with the desire to recover that criminal essence. “It should be ‘skate’ is a crime.” Sören, in short, misses being what a graffiti artist is today.

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‘Wood and Wheels’

What has nothing to do with criminality -let’s go back to the origin of the text- is the exhibition ‘Wood and Wheels’ which can be visited at Casa Seat (Cinc d’Oros square) until the end of February. It offers a chronological journey through the history of ‘skateboarding’ and derivatives: clothes, movies, music, stickers or arcade machines. Everything, taken from Sören’s ‘vintage’ Diogenes syndrome, which has kicked tracks from all over the planet but has also found pearls very close to home. As the tabla Natas Kaupas that a friend saw in a Barceloneta balcony. “It was there forgotten, between a pile of junk“. They got it and it is one of the things he keeps most affectionately, that is why he has not dared to take it to Casa Seat. If he had not recovered it, he would have finished in a container. “The number 1 enemies of ‘skateboarding’ are the parents who throw it all away,” he jokes. There is no Natas Kaupas de la Barceloneta, but there is a historical review of a disobedience that is no longer so.