FLIP: "Fuck USA!" - skating team tours Barcelona

Thrasher Magazine, Sept, 2001 by Michael Burnett

Barcelona and most of Europe is pretty much crammed with this kind of stuff (except the baseball). You could barely see the clouds, as the sky is so crowded with old people staring thoughtfully out of ancient windows, paint peeling. It made me dream about all those A's I could get if I only had the time to re-enroll.

Now even though the trip seems like a voyage tantamount to that final blessed updraft to the Pearly Gates--our junket to Barcelona, no matter how perfect seeming--was not immune to the dreaded road-trip boundary, The Seven-Day Hostility Threshold. This threshold, when crossed, is especially dangerous for those traveling in close quarters, especially on skateboard trips, and can cause even the closest of brothers to turn on each other after seven days of living and breathing in one another's farts and personality quirks. It's kind of like that Bugs Bunny cartoon where they're trapped on a life raft and start seeing one another as giant, succulent chicken legs. Except when you stare at your tour mates, instead of seeing them as delicious snacks, all you can see is that part of their personality and/or behavior which annoys you the very most.

"Is it absolutely necessary for you to play pocket pool 24 hours a day?"

"Do you have to smoke that now?"

"Will you stop farting in my lifetime?"

"No, I love the way your feet smell! Leave your shoes off!"

"Great, your dog's biting me again!"

"Will you just put a CD on and leave it?"

"Yes, you did that trick perfectly. Let's talk about it some more!" "No, I love your snoring! Maybe I'll sleep better in the hall."

"WILL YOU PLEASE STOP COMPLAINING?"

Things came to a head just prior to our leaving for Lyon, France (not coincidentally on the eighth day of the trip). Lines were drawn: The smoker rappers versus the nonsmoker rockers. In all fairness, Enrique would probably be best categorized as a non-smoker rapper, but with that exception, these were the factions formed under the strain of the freshly burst Seven-Day Hostility Threshold. I'm not sure exactly what transpired, but we were packing the van in front of the hotel and I went back up to the room to grab something. When I came back, Mr. Hand was heading back up to his room with his luggage and Bastien was angrily unpacking his gear. Apparently, in the few moments I was away, a rumble had gone down between the smoker rappers and the non-smoker rockers! I'm still cloudy on the details, but apparently at one point, Fred put Bastien in a head lock.

With a somewhat smaller crew, we resumed the mission to Lyon, Fred's home town. More of the same hassle-free action as in Barcelona except now I was mumbling and pointing in rudimentary French instead of Spanish.

OK, here's the on-the-scene section of intense skate journalism-- a reward for anyone who's stuck it out this far into the article ('specially considering all those parentheses and 50-cent words). We're in Lyon and we go to this crazy gap-to-ledge down by the river. For the true skate nerds among you, it's the ledge in the Cliche video, not the multi-kinked one that Jeremy Daiclin does the crazy-grind through, but the one right next to it that he o]lies out to ride down on. So it's like, five stairs down, a few feet of fiat, and then a 10-stair hubba ledge. It's gnarly and Geoff wants to ollies out to backside 50-50 down it (the thing on the cover). You have to go really fast cause it's easily seven feet from the top of the stairs to the top of the ledge. Also, the spot where you'd want to get on is all chunked out so you have to go even farther than that. So the first try Geoff's going so fast and ollies out and lands in this weird wheelie on top of the ledge. He's flying already, and then he's in this Lazy -Boy-angled wheelie and he's going even faster. He's leaning back all crazy and gets totally blasted out at the bottom. The first-try jitters are broken, and he bounds back up the stairs. The second try he completely locks into the grind, I'm sure he's got it, then the board flips off his feet at the end and he lands on it Primo--smacking the ground so hard I figure he's knocked out or dead. It made a horrible slapping sound, like if you threw a suitcase full of ham off the roof. We run over to him and he's lying there with the wind knocked out of him and bleeding out of several big gashes on his left side. I figure it's over and maybe we'll need to take him to the hospital and then he says, 'Well, I better try it again before my muscles clench up and I can't move!" He limps up the stairs. I'm not sure if we should try and stop him or what Is this an appropriate time for an intervention? Has he had enough? Is he punch drunk? And then the next thing I know, he's flying out, there's that ultra-tense second from when he ollies until the point of contact, I'm holding my breath and God knows the ridiculous face I must be making; the stoke-out face. When looking at the photos, Geoff actually appears to be smiling. Look at him! He's grinning! The click, the pause, and then the dull screech as he lays it into a perfect 50-5 0, rocketing off the end and cruising finish-line style down the tree-lined lane.