My first skateboarding trip to Naples happened a long, long time ago now (2003) and was notable for a number of reasons: primarily because said visit to Napoli happened during a Clown trip that also saw Chris Oliver 5050 a never-before-skated handrail on the nearby Amalfi Coast, but also because I’d never encountered a city quite a contradictory as Naples prior to that visit.
The juxtaposition between incredible food, beautiful architecture and friendly people with the insane levels of traffic, pollution and outright poverty that we encountered left a lasting impression on me and remains to this day one of the most jarring experiences of European travel that I’ve ever had.
Fast forward a decade and Naples has become something of a hot-spot for skate tourism, presumably due in part to the semi-chaotic nature of this beautiful Italian city, which lends itself perfectly to the equally chaotic nature of skateboard excursions.
Chances of you getting kicked out of spots are fairly low, (even when wallriding on somebody’s window), whereas the chances of you being pick-pocketed if you act dense and/or treading in dog shit are fairly high but hey-ho – rough with the smooth and all that.