Earlier this year as the winter came to an end, a few of us decided to escape the tendencies of British springtime towards inclemency and spend a long weekend sampling the transitions, beers and karaoke bars of Madrid. Me, Macey Sherman, Harry Jarvis and Jack Moorhead flew out to meet up with Amanda Perez Cicala and her crew to hit a wide array of concrete, plus Madrid’s shiny new vert ramp which lay next to an incredible looking bowl which unfortunately had been waxed into oblivion by the local rollerblade infestation. I’d like to say this was a throwback peculiar to a suburban corner of Madrid, like those Japanese Army soldiers who were found up until the 1970s in various remote locations with the belief that World War II was still ongoing, but unfortunately I saw a pair of the twats at Peckham Rye leaving their ectoplasm all over the miniramp two days ago. Legazpi Skatepark was similarly slick, but thankfully the bowl itself had somehow avoided falling victim to the eight wheeled plague.
The Spanish capital is a city long known for its plethora of street spots but isn’t short of options for the determined bowl trowl. We hit a couple of other fun parks over the weekend, but the main focus for me was Alcobendas AKA Nepal Skatepark; a place I’ve been set on visiting ever since the ‘LBP’ part of Howard Cooke’s section in Heroin Skateboards’ Live From Antarctica. It didn’t disappoint, I spent the whole day skating the oval red bowl and could have probably kept going for another couple of days, as long as I was given free reign to fall asleep in karaoke bars at will.*
Cheers to all the Madrid crew we skated and boozed with!
Music:
Orden Mundial – Estas en la Mierda
Slobheads – Whip It karaoke
*In the interests of journalistic integrity, I should probably state now that, not long after filming Macey and Harry AKA Slobheads covering ‘Whip It’ and quite soon after me and Amanda somehow got stuck in front of a group of pissed Spanish women with only the vaguest of ideas about hitting notes, the combination of all day sun washed down with Mahou had me fitting in a solid nap, in front of the still busy stage.
