ROOMMATES ON THE ROAD // 11.1

Story by Jake Cormier // Photos by Ryan Lebel

After spending a few weeks here, you become very accustomed to the European lifestyle: staying out late, leaving the house by 2 p.m. or later, eating amazing food and drinking great coffee—the convenience of buying street beers on any corner—and, of course, skating all the dream spots.

This trip consisted of talking parrots, a van engine that stopped working mid-drive, Milkas, and us losing ourselves in Eminem’s mom’s spaghetti. This was my third time in Barcelona, and our Airbnb was always around the corner from this street gap spot. Every trip, we would joke about skating it. We attempted to once and got kicked out instantly. We didn’t think it would be possible to skate due to heavy foot traffic, speeding mopeds, and angry neighbours throwing unknown liquids down. We got lucky this time.

I’ve been traveling with Charles for the past few years, and we’re also roommates back in Montréal. We always have a great time. It’s good to travel with a group of people who are all on the same page. We like to roll with very little planning, and everyone was okay with that. We’d follow the light and see where we would end up. Ice-cold showers in our dungeon of an Airbnb, and drinking at least four coffees before starting out skate day was our ritual.

Basking in the sun at MACBA, we decided to make a quest for food. “Then she proceeded to top it with lettuce, lentils, corn, tomatoes, feta cheese, cucumber, red cabbage, olives, and bell peppers.” We read this review on Yelp by a lovely lady about this chicken sandwich joint called Bo De B. We had to have it. After navigating our way out of the narrow streets in search of it, we stumbled upon this this statue spot glowing in the sunlight. Seeing that it was waxed, but having not seen footage from it, we decided to peep. We were all starving, but Charles got sparked and put down this Backside 50-50 to Slappy Crook within a few tries. We then continued the quest for sandwiches, and our basking in the sun at a “grass station.” 

Adilson Pedro is the good homie from Portugal. We met him a few weeks before on an Empire trip to Lisbon, and he invited us in for the Christmas holidays. We felt blessed, so to return the favour, we kidnapped him and brought him to Barcelona with us. Having never been there, MACBA was a dream spot for him. He had this trick in mind before arriving. Putting in some work, he did this Heelflip Crooked Grind—twice.

It was the last day of our trip. Waking up early, we found our van window had been smashed overnight. On our way to get the window fixed, we realized we were near this spot. First spot of the day, no warm-up, Charles had no option but to just go for it. The rain was approaching the hills and the neighbours were not happy about us. One lady came out to call the police, time was crunched and the rain was starting. A grumpy neighbour came out with his dog, mumbling that Charles had only one more try. Respectfully, we knew we should leave, and under that pressure, Charles gave it one last go, and this bump blaster to 50-50 went down.

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