Skateboarding in Barcelona
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barcelona has became hugely popular amongst skateboarders from around 2002 and has since been considered the best city to skate in. Foreign skaters far outnumber the city's own, travelling here from all over the world. This has led to the introduction of an anti-skateboarding law, which came in effect on 1 January 2006.
The city is known for many different spots, and the most famous ones are shown in Satva Leung's video Streets of Barcelona. Along with very diverse architecture, skaters are drawn to the city because of its warm weather and good party scene.
Part of the popularity is in the fact that many professional skateboarders rent flats for longer periods of time while filming for their video parts.
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[edit] Spots
Barcelona has an unusually high percentage of skateable terrain and most of the famous spots are easily accessible via underground train. Before 2006, people never got kicked out of spots or given a ticket. Another very obvious difference between Barcelona and USA or elsewhere is that very few spots are "skate-proofed", which is the hindering of obstacles from being skated on.
[edit] Videos
One of the first tricks filmed in Barcelona and featured in a major skateboard movie is Jamie Thomas' kickflip down the famous MACBA four in "Thrill of it All".
In recent years, hardly any skateboarding movies would not include some footage from Barcelona. This is so apparent that the intro to Bootleg's video Steady Crushin among other things lists it does not include any footage from Barcelona.
[edit] Future
Due to masses of skateboarders which visited Barcelona every year, most of the spots became "blown-out" (a skateboarding term meaning that almost every trick has been done on it) and watching the same spots again and again became repetitive. Skateboarders are looking for a "new Barcelona" and though some have claimed they have already found it, Barcelona still is the most popular.
It is now widely believed among skateboarders that the overwhleming masses "destroyed" Barcelona, giving skateboarding a negative image among local inhabitants.
