• barcelona

He surveyed the scene. The desolation was total, the warriors had left a trail of deshtruction as far as the eye could see, the night had been long, the final charge, two pronged and lethal. Two had been left behind to continue the fight, but for how long?

I am getting ahead of myself. The final day we awoke to another day of wetness, but determined to skate through it. We advanced into the city, searching in earnest for a place to smite with our rollerskates. Soon we came upon a triple drop kink rail, never before graced by our plastic. Carlos Pianowski took no time in de-virginising the steel, and proved that there is no stunt he can’t do. Shortly after we advanced to some new ground, where Jeff Stockwell promptly skated for as long as it took for the police to capture and fine him, confiscating his skates in the process. The fine tour manager immediately snuck up behind the police, and replaced Jeff’s skates for his own, sacrificing his skating for the rest of the day so that Jeff could go on to get one of the best photos of the tour.

That tour manager is a fine chap.

Note to skaters, CANYELLES has some of the best spots in Barcelona, however DO NOT SKATE THERE. Look, but don’t touch, this is the 3^rd time skaters have been fined, and their skates taken from them.

We continued to a cement park, where Jeff’s beautiful alley oop fish was masterfully captured by the Forst.

The crew continued to the Cemintary ledge, where Jeff, Vinny and Farmer coolly executed their tricks, much to the appreciation of the camera men.

The night finished at some street humps, with Sagona and Farmer completing a great day of shots and footage.

Cristina then took us to a fantastic restaurant where everyone practiced their Spanish and beer drinking techiniques, whereupon we returned home, to pack.

At 4 in the morning the tour manager filled up his car, and drove the first batch of skaters to the airport. On his return he almost fell asleep. On arrival he played rolling with Carlos Pia for about 2 hours, in some kind of a delirious state, whereupon completion he filled up another car of skaters and returned to the airport in rush hour, everyones favourite time of the day to go out and get stuck in traffic.

But one of them didn’t wake up.

One of them had no intention of waking up.

One of them had decided to start a new life in a new country, the decision having come at 7 O’clock in the morning.

Thoughts on the tour? It was the most exhausting 2 weeks one could imagine, the vibe was tremendous, the skaters were happy, working well together, the output was fantastic. Photos, film, late night conversations, late night adventures in the centre of the city.

Yet another successful week in Barcelona.

I want to thank especially Cristina and Chino and Philipp Forsnter for all the driving they did, Tina for looking after the needs of the team and offering, I want to thank all the skaters for skating so hard and working so well, for the respect and the great output, the filmers and shooters, Jero, Philipp and Matt Wattky, the Spanish skaters and shops, Zodem, Inercia and Todoskate, and Barcelona for being Barcelona and everyone I forgotted. Above all thanks to Matthias, Bauer, Sagona and the Conference for making this tour possible.

Oli.

Well well well, it’s time for a little update, what did the sweet dudes do on Monday and Tuesday I hear some of you asking, figuratively not literally

Well Monday we got up bright and early and went to a porno shoot. We thought we were going to a Conference shoot, but when we got there we were presented with a big bag of huge dildos and some blow up dolls, hand cuffs, and posters of nude models and porno. This took all day of course.

We managed to get some skate related photos taken too, and Philipp did an incredible job with them. Juiced to see the next few ads, that’s for shizznizzle.

So after that some of the conference’s sweetest went shopping, the rest home, shortly to be re-united for another night of Conference mayhem, beef smell included.

So today Tuesday, even though in real life its Wednesday, we awoke from our blissful rest of a couple of hours to find the terrible sound of the pitter patter of rain.

The day was filled with the desire to go skate, hopeful moments and pirate movies. Sadly the rain continues, and we are now all playing “rolling” the game, as none of the Yanks had ever had the pleasure, not even Vinny, who features as a character in the game.

So whats new, winter weather is thwarting momentarily (we hope) our BCN deshtruction yet none theless, we just got a package from Powerslide and we feel like its Xmas.

Hopefully tomorrow we can sweat into our new gear.

Oli.

Buenas noches muchachos! Its my turn to let yall know whats kicking in the world of a Conference tour Barcelona. Today, Sunday some of the crew were feeling pretty ill due to them having to share my humble home with another 70 international immigrants and a dire lack of personal hygene. We started the day with a shop stop which took us a good while to find matty watky is a babe….

The last sentance was written by Matt and im gonna let it stay. We went to skate with the locals at Villa Olimpica, and after a wizzle we went to the most insane rail nearby because I been wanting someone to do it for ages.

Ok, its time for plan B. This is a MAC computer. I dont like MACS much. Its also a Austrian MAC. Now I have great grammar and spelling, but I spent about 30 mins typing the last 10 lines as i cant handle this keyboard. So from now on im not going to check the text im writing, take it as it is, im exhusted!!!

We skated the beach ledges and then moved on to thos rail, wher carlos killed it first and second time, first time (makes sense to me)

Then we went skating down by the beautiful bechline, skating all we found, it was looovely and then we went to the infamous dowledge at montjuic and vinny and chino skated it hard, whi´´th ome fabulous tricks.

i cnt handle this keybord.##

aí have not seen my computer since mondaz, with all these immigrant bastards wuth their myspace, facebook, gaynessonline, poker, scrabble, tetris, gmail, titsareus.com, youtube, weeds, i am legend, etc etc, i dont get near my darling computer.

Tour Summary:

WE GOT SOME GREAT SHOTS TODAY. MY HOUSE LOOKS LIKE HIROSHIMA MIXED WITH A 3 DAY RAVE SQUAT PARTY, PROFESSIONAL ROLLERBLADERS SMELL REALLY BAD, NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO USE A SHOWER CURTAIN (A WHAT???) MATT WATKY HAS ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW TO SPEAK ANY LANGUAGE ESPECIALLY ENGLISH, CARLOS HAS BEEN ACCUSED (PERHAPS UNJUSTLY) OF SPREADING SUPER FART POWERS BUT WHOEVER STARTED THE MOVEMENT WAS SUCCESSFUL,THIS HAS SPREAD LIKE A VIRUS, AND NOW EVERYONE HAS ULTRA SUPER TOUR FARTS, EFFECTIVELY CONVERTING EACH OF OUR 4 CARS INTO INDEPENDANT AND LETHAL GAS CHAMBERS (CHOOSE YOUR FAVOURITE COLLECTION OF PRO-FARTS). BILLY HAS IRON LEGS, SAGONA HAS THE DEVIL IN HIM, PHILIPP HATES UNTIDINESS, JEFF AND A GUITAR IS A GREAT COMBO, VINNY IS ALWAYS HAPPY, FARMERS HAIR IS MADE OUT OF COPPER WIRE, ADE WALLACE THINKS HE CAN BUY FLIGHTS ON THE DAY FOR THE PRICE OF A CUP OF FART.## ##

So now you know the crew.

Viva PC.

QUOTE OF THE DAY.

CARLOS PIANOWSKI. AFTER BEING ASKED WHY HIS ITUNES IS 105% BRITNEY SPEARS:

“She is way more hardcore than any metal band, she is fucked up.”

He then proceeded to sing a load of her greatest hits.

Stay tuned for more mini cats, as moma cat is about to pop them all out. POPOP!

Oli “hey come destroy my house” Benet

Alright we kind of slacked in the last days with our update. So here you go straight out of Barcelona. 3 days ago I arrived in Barcelona, where one day before Billy crashed with that car. However I can just repeat that Billy is fine under this circumstances, although he got one cast and has to walk with crutches. Besides that everything seams fine here in BCN. The weather is nicer than it used to be before I came over here and we get out everyday to get something done. Friday was an successfull day and we got couple of stuff done at the forum. Yeah, these spots are played out and shot million times, but just watch out for the footage in the next Be-mag Print Issue or somewhere at the Conference. Late friday we went to the Riot video premiere at some skateshop in BCN which was cool. The video is an awesome local video and especially the intro turned out really good. Also Jefferson Santanas section was awesome too. Saturday was more a chill day. We went to a skatepark where a contest or something like that went down. However, we stayed there for like 3 hours, skated the park and than tried to go street skating, which turned out as a bad idea as there weren’t any cool spots around. So we went to that bridge where Jero handled one nice shot of Jeff.

After that it was party night so almost everyone went out to party BCN. Later today Jero gonna fly home so does Adi Wallace. We all gonna show up in the city to go street skating with some kids. I hope we all not getting ill, as everyone of us got a super bad throught. I don’t know whats wrong in this house, but I was fine before I came over here and everyone else too…

Alright this is it so far, check out the photos and have fun…further down there is an sequence of Carlos from the forum ledges…

Carlos Pianowski with Soul to Savanna at the Forum Ledges.

To clear up the Billy situation.
I was checking around and people seem pissed about how we put this clip online.

Basically if you think about it, we wouldnt publish it if it was serious, if you were here with us it would all make more sense.

We have it all on film, all the ensuing action too. Billy is OK. He has 2 twisted ankles, so he cant walk, but he is fine. We were all laughing about it, he wanted to put that clip online, we spent all evening with the police and the hospital, everyone looked after him, we are a great supportive crew here at my house and to be honest we were all sitting around watching it and talking about how lucky he was.

He is in great humour and we werent using it as an advertisement, or promoting a DVD, we just wanted to share what happened with everyone, because it was a miracle escape.

Im really sorry people are offended by it, i understand it though as we ourselves still see it and cringe, and at that moment we all wanted to die…

Billy is sitting here by my side watching “Jay and Silent Bob strike back” and is laughing away.

-Oli.

What seemed like another promising Barcelona day filled with some more sweet blading, this ended up being one of the most horrific days of my life. Things were great, I mean… it´s Barcelona. We woke up a bit late, took our sweet time, ate a nice meal, then we all piled up into the cars and headed out for another day of perfect spots and great skating. So we get to spot one, which is a nice little set of transfer handicap rails, and the filming is awsome, the photography emaculate, and the skating absoultely world class. Fish, Farmer, Vinny, Adrian… all just absolutely destroying. The cops even came, and still let us roll about. Perfection. Then…Death. Spot two. It´s a kinked rail and set of stairs, with a kinked bank next to it. So Billy, Carlos, and I start roll about pumping the bank and gapping into it. Billy and I huck a couple over the set into the bottom bank, then Fish decideds to start getting loose and steps it up. Out comes the 180. If only you could have been there, because shortly after he lands and rolls back into the street, the absolute worst thing ive ever seen on rollerblades follows directly after. Fish rolls fakie, into the little side street, then over a curb, then realizes hes going into another street right after, where he tries to stop and ends up sliding into the street full of traffic, where he barely has enough time to throw his body to the floor before a car comes at about 30mph (50kmph), smashing into Fish, and sending him out of sight, the impact throwing him over one and a half cars away into the middle of the street….
-Dom Sagona
pics by jero

You want to see the clip? Keep your eyes peeled to www.theconference.org

So everyone is already pretty beat up from the German excursion (aka the Winterclash Freak Fest). We´ve all just arrived into Barcelona with absolutely zero sleep the night before, and everyone is pretty hyped to get out and about for a skate. Barcelona is basically one huge skatepark, if that gives you any idea as to how sweet the skating is. Around every corner are dream spots filled with perfect kinked rails, endless amounts of banks, and ledges you would only dream of. I´ve been all over the world for skating, and I can safely say this is probably the best city in the world for rollerblading, hands down. Its going to be an insane week.
-Dom Sagona
-pics by Vinny Minton and Jero