RICKS SAC - Barcelona, Spain 2007

Earlier that day we wanted to relax and enjoy our last moments in Barcelona at the beach. A nude one. Can we say maaaad titties? It seems as if everyone in Barcelona is pretty confident with their bodies and don’t mind sunbathing neeewwwwwdddd (nude). I’m not gonna lie. Watching titties bounce freely made me giggle a little here and there. But then it kinda killed it when we ran into some dudes sunbathing. Let’s just say, “No Homo.”

SEVER MSK

After picking out a spot to chill we plopped our old, tired asses on the sand, enjoyed the scenery and actually relaxed for a minute. The pic below reminded me of a pretty damn funny story actually. The heads that actually went to the beach were me, HAEL, RUETS, POSE, EWOK, & Keegan. We sat down next to these girls that were sunbathing nude whom we thought were Swedish and didn’t speak English. So we kept talking about them while they were only 3-4 feet away not knowing that they understood everything that we said. Boys will be boys. What can I say? Funny thing was she went up to us after about a half hour later and said, “Are you guys from around here? What are you guys doing tonight?” Hahaha! Whoopsies! We ended up exchanging contact info but nothing ever happened afterwards.

RUETS - Getting a back massage from an Asian mistress for 5 euros.

MOOBS (Man Boobs) for days…

East LA Loc hanging out in Barcelona, Spain

EWOK and his new buddy

Poaching…

TRIK x KZAMER

For the last day of the trip we decided to go out with a bang. With the leftover paint that everyone had combined we decided to go to this abandoned building where there were walls surrounding the whole block. (The whole squad that went that night ended up covering one side of the block from left to right.) I don’t know what the place was called but the heads over at the MONTANA shop actually have a catalog/pamphlet that gives you exact locations of all the famous skating & painting spots and how to get there. After the beach we went back to the hotel to grab the goods.

Then it was one long walk to the spot. By the time that we arrived it was about 2am and everyone had to catch the flight back to the states in a couple of hours. With that in mind we were still able to produce some pretty quality work at a pretty fast pace. Per usual I was rocking the same letters and couldn’t flip it like the rest of the guys so I experimented with the fills and added an European touch to them. They’re my infamous “Pizza Dots” that you see in alot of my current pieces now.

RICKS SAC

HAELER AL, LOD, OTR, MSK

CEAZE MSK, AL

POSER D30, MSK

REVOK AWR, MSK - REVOK didn’t feel like piecing that night so he ended up doing a throwup and watched all of us paint instead. Might have been all those other nights he sneaked out of the hotel to paint while we were all sleeping. This guy is a non-stop machine.

EWOK HM, MSK, AWR

RICKS SAC - Pizza Dots. Looks like Pepperoni Cheese Pizza towards the left and Pepperoni Anchovies towards the right!

RUETS PDB, AL, OTR

The RETNA & REYES is huger than it looks from the picture. If you wanted to compare them side by side I would say it would have taken 2.5 of mine to fill up 1 of theirs. That’s how huge they were. The pictures don’t do it justice.

RETNA MSK

REYES MSK

After all that was said and done we all caught separate taxi’s back to the hotel and arrived just in time to pack everything back up and catch the next flight back home to California safe and sound. Much props to EKLIPS from The Seventh Letter for inviting me to this trip. This wouldn’t have been made possible without him. Stay Grindin…

After a few days have passed some of us were kinda running out of money. Some type of scheming had to take place. Fortunately for HAELER, he was a couple steps ahead of the game. He heard through some of his friends that the Europeans eat up anything that’s American. Meaning that they will purchase anything that’s from America for well over retail price. So he brought a suitcase overseas dedicated to nothing but American graffiti supplies. This suitcase contained a couple bottles of Etch Bath, Hello My Name Is stickers, WAR42 DVD’s as well as huge sandwich bags full of tips. At first, I thought this fool was trippin and wasn’t going to be able to sell shit. I mean who the hell would buy that right? Especially in Europe where they have everything and anything created specifically for graffiti. WRONG! After hitting up only 3 stores HAEL sold everything. He was able to sell the “Hello My Name Is” stickers for about 25-35 euros each per packet! (That’s equivalent to $40-$55 for a packet of 100. You can purchase these for about $6-$9 at your local KMART.) Can we say retarded? Let’s just say he came up on about 600 euros ($900) by the end of his 3 hour trip throughout the 3 shops he visited.

HAEL x Estevan Oriol

Our first stop was this LOWRIDER shop that purchased about 1/3 of the contents inside HAEL’s suitcase. All the DVD’s and Magazines were gone. Nice doing business with you.

The Suitcase

After selling all the products to the shops and re-upping on paint we knew of a wall that some of the Seventh Letter heads had already painted and decided to stop by to see if there was any room left to smash. While we were walking we saw one of the many throwups that the homey REVOK did. Check out the sign off, POSE & RICKS. We were keeping lookout for each other that night to paint shutters in the alleys of Barcelona. I had some myself but never took pics of them. Last time I heard they were still running.

Here is the wall that everyone painted earlier during the week. This place was an illegal spot but safe enough to paint during the day if you were sneaky enough. Everything was pretty much rocked by REVOK, RISK, POSER, RIME & POESIA but we were still able to find some space on the other side by chopping down some bushes.

REVOK MSK

RISK WCA

POSER MSK

RIME MSK

POESIA LORDS

RICKS SAC

HAELER MSK, AL, LOD, OTR

SEB FMK - We actually met this dude in the yard while we were painting. Super cool cat from Paris, France.

VIER

GNAT

VIZIR

PLOTE

BENER

TPICK

PLOTE

TPICK

GIANTS

RAEF(?)

RISKO WCA

Here are some additional photos that I benched on the way back to the hotel from the courtyard spot.

ALOK

PUSHER MSK

UTAH x CAUZR

EKLIPS MSK x PUSHER MSK

PUSHER MSK

CHARM AL x HAELER AL

EKLIPS MSK

ECHOE

CEAZER MSK x HAELER MSK

After painting the beach spot yesterday and wildin’ out at the clubs all night in Las Ramblas again, we woke up the next morning (or should I say a few hours after) to go paint the Barcelona “Wall Of Fame”. I was told that everyone that visits BCN comes here to go paint. Upon our arrival we saw alot of well known writers from the USA that have already left their mark, artists such as Mike GIANT, EGOS from Philadelphia and a few others. This time around I had to think hard with what I wanted to do as far as my letter structures go. Basically this was a legal spot and everyone had time to chill, relax and bust out one of their best pieces. Since I don’t consider myself that much of a piecer I started doing a basic outline of my usual stamps but flipped it around so that it looked like a piece. I had a variety of colors of each can to work with but didn’t have enough for a solid fill. I needed to make sure that I used my limited paint supply wisely. The end result was a combination of 3 sectioned off pieces collaborated into one with the similarities of my old letters with shadows going towards 3 different directions. You can see the finished piece near the bottom of this blog entry.

RICKS SAC - Barcelona, Spain 2007

POSE & REVOK

REYES x CEAZE x STEEL

RUETS wasn’t feeling to up to par that day but he still ended up painting. Must have been all the walking around town and late night painting & partying.

RIME & ECHO x RUETS x REYES

RISK & Estevan Oriol checkin out the scene.

POESIA x HENSE x SEVER

REVOK MSK

POESIA LORDS

HENSE MSK

SEVER MSK

STEEL MSK

CEAZE MSK

RICKS SAC - This is the finished piece. if you look at it closely it is broken down into 3 sections. The Left section has the shadow going towards the Bottom Left. The Center section has the shadows going towards the Upper Left. The Right section has the shadow going towards the Bottom Right. If you also look closely enough you can see that I used alot of my fills to blend into the outline of the letters like the Bright Orange that goes into the bottom section of my R and K. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take flicks of everybody else’s finished pieces, but I’m sure that you can find it circulating somewhere on KNOWN GALLERY.

Cigarette Break

Alright enough about this legal painting that I’ve been describing to you. Let’s take it to the realness and showcase some of the illegal street bombing that went down. After painting the Barcelona “Wall Of Fame” we decided to start heading back to the hotel to get some much needed rest and maybe scope out some spots for the night. Along the way we benched some of the street bombing that took place a couple of nights prior.

POESIA LORDS - Alright. This is NOT legal. I don’t know how he pulled this one off but he did. Just look at the crazy fill and outline. Props to him for that one. He’s a real chill dude too. I remember he spotted me a huge silver MONTANA can to tag around town one night and I never got him back for that.

RUETS - You’ll be seeing live footage of this when the Letter’s First Documentary drops soon. My boy Keegan Gibbs said that it’s almost done. Looks like he ran out of black midway bombing?

RISK WCA - If you’re into the graffiti game and don’t know who this guy is then you should quit already. RISK is basically one of the OG kings of graffiti of Los Angeles back in the early to mid 80’s. Real recognize real son. In 2007, he’s still going on strong and has the heart of a lion. I remember keeping lookout for him while he painted this piece. That’s why he signed it off with LECHE aka Estevan Oriol & RICKS. I kinda sidebusted him with a huge ass East LA gangster styled tag on top though. Didn’t think that this spot was going to run that’s why I only did tags instead of letters. But I heard that it ran for a good 2-3 weeks. Not too bad for being in a pretty centralized area of Barcelona.

RICKS SAC x RISK WCA

While RISK was busy painting that wall I found a pretty cutty lil fenced in courtyard wall that I wanted to hit. So I tried hopping this wobbly, 10 foot high fence that surrounded it and thought to myself, “There’s gotta be an easier way to get in?” As I walked around the spot some more, I found a huge hole in the fence where I just casually walked in. Go figure. I proceeded to paint the wall with drunken people walking in and out of the alleyways distracting me, but I ignored them. I figured that the quicker I do this the less of a chance I’ll get caught. I’m not trying to stay in no European jail. If cops were to roll up on me here I’m basically SOL (Shit Out of Luck) cause there was only one way in and only one way out. I pulled it off pretty quick with some German Pink Dots though. Quicker than usual. Those things spray like craaazzyyy. Did my fill in probably less than 2 minutes.

RICKS SAC

On the way out, after RISK & I were done, they started walking towards one direction and I went the other on a solo mission. I wasn’t too tired for some reason even though I was extremely exhausted from partying too hard the whole week. Might have been the adrenalin rush from painting? Who knows or Who cares. I was on a mission to get another spot with my leftover scraps. I didn’t want to disrespect any local writers in town so I had to find some good spots that were available. Guess what? There weren’t any! Everything is crushed out here. Either you’re gonna have to cap someone and hope that it runs without them going back over you or you need to find a tiny ass spot like the one below. Looks like refrigerator magnet letters. Hahaha. Off Topic: The dude OLAE next to me KILLS Barcelona by the way. He has mini burners like that throughout the city.

OLAE x RICKS

CEAPS - Heard that this dude is from San Jose, California. Saw a couple of his throwups while I was out there.

SONIC

OLAE - Another OLAE burner I was telling you about. I can honestly say that I counted about 35-50 of them while I was walking around Barcelona.

CEAPS

RIME MSK

ECHOE - Just love how she extended her E from the shutters to the building. Yes, ECHOE is a chick.

Alright, now that you’ve heard enough about Bread & Butter I’ll finally blog about some graffiti content that went down while we were out there. After the show’s success we had about a good weeks worth of free time to do whatever we wanted with all lodging paid by the heads over at Royal Elastics. So we decided to go to this famous beach spot where they had unbuffed walls that extended for miles. As tourists we didn’t know anything about this place, so we heard that it was legal and then it was illegal. Fuggit, we came to crush so we went. But before that some of us had to go purchase some paint.

STORMIE AWR x RICKS SAC - Barcelona, Spain 2007

We stopped by the local MONTANA store that was about a good 1 hour walk away from the hotel. Along the way we caught slaptags and little streaker tags here and there. I must say this walk was pretty beefy since we’ve hardly been sleeping and walking around everywhere drunk out of our minds late at night as well as dabbling into “other” things. Upon our arrival we had to wait for yet another hour cause I guess the workers out here can take breaks whenever the fuck they want? They just go out on random 2 hour lunch breaks and come back anytime they feel is necessary. WOW. Life has got to be easy out here. Good skating, painting, woman, and simple, stress-free living. Maybe the USA can learn from them since our dollar is worth shit in Euros!

Luckily, after waiting for 30 minutes, a worker came in and let us into the shop and we started choosing our colors. I know I spent a good 80 euros on paint alone at that store just so that I didn’t have to go back. At this point I was wondering what happened to ALL the paint Mr. REVOK brought back in the van from the MONTANA headquarters? Hrrrmmmm…. someone’s holding out! Hahahah, jk.

After getting our paint situated and loading up our backpacks we get the insider info from some heads at the MONTANA shop that there was a 50/50 chance getting caught painting at that beach spot that I mentioned earlier. We just went anyways. After another 30 minute walk from the shop, we see the spot and hopped over some fences while not knowing our way around and a security guard pops up! Startled from it all we quickly start hopping back the way we came from. The security guard came running at us yelling, “Hold up, Hold up! You guys are going the wrong way!” I’m like, “WHAT THE FUCK?!” Aren’t you going to bust us? He kindly replied, “Here let me show you how to get there.” All of us were TRIPPIN. It seemed like he already knew that we had cans concealed in our backpacks and grocery bags ready to paint this spot? Hahaha, how many times in your life has a security guard actually escorted you to the right way to get in to paint?! LOL! I guess that the coast is clear after all.

The security guard (In Highlighter Yellow) showing us the easiest way to get to the spot. Hahaha!

Walls for miles my friend.

Not only was this spot absolutely chill (SAC), we had spectators watching us paint. Directly across from the wall is a busy loading dock for cruise ships to stop by and load/unload passengers. You can see HAEL here posing for my camera and STORMIE AWR leaning on the embankment like a little mermaid. Hahaha, jk man! NO HOMO, Dipset…

The wall was absolutely fun and exhausting at the same time. Summertime in Barcelona is pretty hot. It’s kind of like Los Angeles without the dense smog and a couple degrees hotter. Our line up included the whole Seventh Letter squad and additional special guest appearances.

These guys took a dive into the ocean…

Fishing and Painting. Life is good….

Dirty Hands

REVOK AWR, MSK

Painting this spot had me trying to step up my game a lil bit. It was my first time actually painting with The Seventh Letter heads (I didn’t have a chance to paint at the Bread & Butter show.) so I wanted to come off fresh and correct. I originally wanted to do a tech piece at first but said to myself, “Nobody can see that shit from far unless you go up to the spot and view it up close. I wanted EVERYONE to be able to peep it including the heads from the loading dock across the ocean and from the street about 1/2 a mile away. I decided to bang out some huge, slanted, block letters which eventually became my new freight stamps for a good minute. Simple And Clean (SAC) that’s how I always thought. You can’t tell from the picture below but the letters are pretty huge. It took about 6 big montana blacks and 4 big montana whites to fill and only one purple for the shadows. The yellow SAC was just done with some scrap yellows and golds. (Bet you can’t see the gold can you? It’s there. Believe me.)

RICKS SAC (Peep the SkateAllCities.com plug)

SELEKA

DAVOT(?)

Guess who we ran into the same time that we were painting? The famous OS GEMEOS twins. If none of you have ever heard of them then you’re sleeping. They’re basically twin brothers from Brazil that pretty much put Brazil on the map in the graffiti world. Check out some of their work here at Lost Art. (I think it’s their website but not too sure. ) Seems like EVERYONE was traveling to Barcelona around that time of the year.

OS GEMEOS

After being one of the first ones to finish I went ahead and started benching the rest of the wall. Unfortunately I didn’t get to take pics of everyone’s finished pieces afterwards cause by the time I walked back from flicking everything else, my camera battery just took a shit. Don’t you just HATE that? Below are the photos that I was able to take though. Enjoy and more to come to this 7 part series. We’re more than halfway there!

By this time during the trip there was alot of shit that had happened and was left undocumented. Either my camera battery died and needed to be recharged or I just never brought it around to take photos while we were out. I mean who plays cameraman all the time? All I know is that an abundance of VIP partying went down at the clubs on Las Ramblas (The main strip of Barcelona. It’s somewhat equivalent to Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles, CA) that we never took pics of, as well as late night painting missions. (Doesn’t this sound somewhat similiar to our most recent European trip just this past May?)

AROE x REVOK

On the day that these photos were taken, it marked the official opening of the Bread & Butter show. Basically it’s an all out 3 day/night party & business event. Everyone and their moms come here to check out the new fashion that’s coming out of their favorite clothing brands. Skaters, Writers to Business Owners from all over the world were here. Don’t forget the mad local hotties as well. Barcelona woman just have that something to them that makes them so attractive. Maybe I’m just horny right now? Just kidding.  I get mines. Back to the topic at hand, imagine pure pandemonium & alcohol mixed together with a bit of everything and anything in between. That’s the best description that I can give you about what goes down at Bread & Butter. Can we say, “Ricky was almost having an anxiety attack?” Here are some photos of the finished pieces the other day that the Seventh Letter heads did. Some applied finishing touches to their pieces while some were already done.

AROE HA, MSK

Character by AROE

www.REVOK1.com

RYS by REYES MSK

HENSE MSK

PUSHER MSK

SEVER MSK

After everyone was done painting there was a second group that had to paint. The wall wasn’t big enough to have everyone rock their pieces at the same time and have it running throughout the whole event so they had to go over each other. Next up was RIME, RUETS and a couple others. You can see them doing their outlines and barely filling in right here in front of a huge audience.

RUETS PDB, AL, OTR

After having a short attention span from watching the homeys paint we walked around the area. Our first stop was the MONTANA booth. They had an installation that looked pretty similar to a bathroom with white tiles surrounding it. They had markers and cans laid out for everyone to get up on. Looks like someone got the best spot over towards the right though. Next to the Montana reps table where everyone that’s interested in purchasing has a meeting at. Strategic Placement is Key my friends.

After the MONTANA booth we stopped by the New Era booth to see what types of new and upcoming fitteds that they had in store. Here are some of the ones that we spotted. I’m not that much of a baseball cap collector and don’t know what makes a hat limited or not (besides the hype) but the ones below caught my eye. Remember that these blog entries were from last summer in 2007 so I’m sure that these are probably already released and available at your favorite cap store by now.

New Era Booth

Los Angeles

San Francisco

RIME MSK

RUETS PDB, AL, OTR

KRUSH MSK

The photo below reminded me of a pretty funny story. HAEL (seen below) and I were looking for some food over at the Reggae Tikki Shack looking thing in front of him. They were BBQing chicken and had a long ass waiting line for 8 euro plates! That’s equivalent to about $12 in the USA. Ridiculous pricing. That’s what happens when you’re in events like these I guess. After all the confusion that was going down from massive people ordering food we got tired of waiting and just swooped up the 3 plates on the counter without them knowing. You snooze you lose. LOL! Free food anyone? Hahaha, smooth move HAEL. Then we went back to watch CEAZE, POSE, STEEL & EWOK bust.

CEAZE MSK

POSE MSK

STEEL MSK (Westside Vandals)

EWOK MSK

Handstyles by RETNA

EKLIPS from The Seventh Letter created these paint buckets full of Limited Edition stuff and was giving it away at the BBB show. I think that there were only 100 made or so? Not quite sure on the quantity but everyone gobbled it up like savage chickens when they were tossing them out. Just check out the crowd in the pictures below. Everyone was feening for one of those Seventh Letter paint buckets. I should have grabbed one myself before they even tossed them out. I wasn’t even thinking. Probably because I was lacking sleep!

After the hectic product toss we all gathered up and decided what we were going to do that night. I think we went to a VIP party that the Royal Elastics crew was throwing. Full Bar and Hip Hop music.

More to come tomorrow…

After partying all night and catching tags around town till about 4am, we rounded up the crew the next morning (aka 4 hours later with no sleep) in front of HOTEL JAZZ near the Universitat De Barcelona district to go handle business for Bread & Butter. The Seventh Letter heads were hired by Royal Elastics to do a live painting exhibition on top of an artshow called “Letter’s First”. Earlier that morning, REVOK had the opportunity to go towards the MONTANA headquarters and come back with a van full of paint. No exaggeration. Shit was ridiculous. I can honestly say that he took about 500-700 cans from a variety of colors. After everyone divided the paint accordingly we caught the METRO to BBB aka Bread & Butter.

Rounding Up the Troops

SIDENOTE: While walking just about 400ft away from the hotel, I spotted the 3 Long Black Marble Ledges that are in all the skate videos. Wow, I swear everything is within skating distance. (Wish that I had pictures to show you what I’m talking about.) Damn was I stoked. Had to skate it but sorry no pics on my camera.  I know that some of the photographers that were documenting the trip took a sequence of me doing a Manual to Kickflip out on one of those. Hope that I get around to getting a digital copy of that one of these days.

Upon arriving at the BBB tradeshow, I was amazed at how big the location and display was for just clothing. I guess that I don’t know jack about fashion? (I always either racked my pants/shirts or got the hook up someway somehow for cheap.) The spot is basically GIANORMOUS! (Giant + Enormous) If any of you have actually been lucky enough to attend this event then you know what I’m talking about. This building can easily cover 2-3 blocks with buildings scaling up to 3 stories high or more.

Just one of the many entrances to get into BBB.

This was the front entrance of the building and all of The Seventh Letter heads had to paint the white wall towards the right for the live painting exhibition.

Just look at the floorplan. Everything highlighted in yellow were sections where the clothing brands were at.  The list under it were the people that were there.  Looks like a good 300+ brands!

Here’s an action photo of REVOK & AROE putting it down towards the left and REYES & HENSE towards the right.

Royal Elastics Booth

People setting up for the big show tomorrow.

The place had sections and sections of booths as well as different floors.

LRG & LUXIRIE Booth

The center of the building had a courtyard with all kinds of stuff such as a pool (Seen here.) and a miniramp that I got to skate with some of the European CIRCA heads.

Here’s Estevan Oriol taking photos of REVOK MSK.

PUSHER MSK x SEVER MSK

HENSE MSK

RYS by REYES MSK

AROE HA x REVOK MSK

RETNA AWR x RISK WCA

Mixing up some of that GROG Ink for our mops!

After everyone finished painting their pieces it was time to go back to the hotel and cause some ruckus aka Party & Paint!

I was sifting through my old hard drive today looking for some pictures to blog and noticed that I had a “Barcelona, Spain 2007″ folder contained in there so I decided to share them with you broken down into 7 parts. Don’t know if any of you know this but back in the Summer of 2007 I was lucky enough to travel halfway around the world to Barcelona, Spain for 2.5 weeks with the World Famous Seventh Letter crew for a tradeshow called Bread & Butter. (Bread & Butter is basically one of the world’s largest tradeshows that showcases all of the clothing brands that you can think of. From The Hundreds to Marc Jacobs, they had it all in one huge ass area.) It was an honor for me to roll out to Europe with some of the best, west coast graffiti writers in the USA. That’s something that I would have never imagined. Let me remind you that this happened about a year ago (before the blog was created) so the stories behind these upcoming blog entries are going to be based on my (short-term) memory. So shall we begin? Then let’s take a trip down memory lane…

Switch Ollie Over Barrier - Barcelona, Spain 2007 (Sants Station)

Let’s see, where should I begin? Well I had a 4am flight out of LAX the night that I was leaving to BCN so I was thinking I had 2 options: 1.) Stay up till 4am and sleep on the plane? or 2.) Sleep early around 9pm and try to wake up to catch the flight and be bored out of my mind for the next 14-16 hours in the air? I ran with Option #3. To party all night long and catch the flight out of LAX at 4am and stay drunk out of my fucken mind till I passed out so that I didn’t remember anything. Hahah. So that’s what I did. My first stop that night was at a rooftop party on a loft in Downtown Los Angeles at my boy DREOS house. (Sorry no pics.) After that it was about 2am so we went back to my homegirl Nicole’s pad to grab my luggage and go pick up my flight partner RUETS. But before leaving LA, we had to drink some more, just to celebrate. (Not that I wasn’t faded already.) We ended up doing beer shots out of a ghetto makeshift beer bong from a 12oz water bottle. What better way to start off a European Summer trip right? Savageness!

Gabriel, “Come back and guzzle this brew kid!”

Asian Glow & Chicken Legs

Cruising down the street in my Six Four…

After picking up RUETS and flying for a couple of hours we had our first stop. A 3 hour layover out in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While waiting to exchange flights we just walked around the airport and took some random photos.

RUETS - Philadephia, PA

I remember being super tired and semi-drunk still while taking this photo. This huge black dude was falling asleep and snoring right on his seat so I told RUETS to sneak up on him and sit next to him to take a pic.

After getting on our flight from Philly to Barcelona we finally arrived and saw this advertisement at the airport. Look at the hand sticking out of the wave with what looks like a can of yellow paint! Montana can I’m assuming? You know what that means right? They’re letting us know that it’s ok to paint in Barcelona! Especially Big Orange Bubbles! Hahaha, just kidding. But seriously, I thought that this advertisement was pretty cool. It was the first thing that I noticed. It’s alot larger than it seems but I didn’t have a fisheye lens to capture everything. Just my trusty old 4 Megapixel Canon Digital Elph SD400. It looks like an advertisement for one of major beer companies in Barcelona. OBVI….right?

View of the Airport Traffic

After grabbing a quick snack to eat, we find out through our itinerary that the rest of the crew won’t be arriving for another 8 hours! (FYI: Alot of us took separate flights.) So we had time to spare and ended up riding a tourbus aka The Double Decker! On our way towards the bus stop we saw some pretty abstract Barcelona graffiti. If you’re a skater and/or writer then this place is pretty much the place to be. There’s not a block or area where you can’t find a place to skate or paint. It’s nuts over here. The street culture and people are amazing.

After catching a train from the airport to the center of the city, we randomly stumbled upon the famous Sants station in Barcelona! For anyone who skateboards then I’m sure that you’ve seen this spot before on ALL of the skate videos. Anyone and everyone that visits from out of the country stops by here. You know I had to skate this shit. Soggy Legs, Hangover, 50 pound Luggage and all! You can’t see where I stashed my luggage in the photo but I have a medium sized, 50 pound, black suitcase and a backpack with skateboard that I had to lug around town for a good 8 hours until the Seventh Letter heads arrived and got us our hotel rooms.

Ollie (My legs were soggy from the flight so I wasn’t trying to bust sucka.)

After skating we hopped on the next available Double Decker bus and cruised around town. You can see me taking photos on the top deck of the bus below. An amazing sight of a beautiful city for sure. In fact, I’m thinking I need to go back and visit right now! (Note To Self: Barcelona Summer 09)

Barcelo Hotel Sants

Took this photo for ANDR SAC.

We caught some racial graffiti with a NAZI symbol in the alleys of Barcelona. Don’t remember what it said but it wasn’t nice. Haha.

After finishing the tour on the Double Decker, we went back to the airport to go meet up with The Seventh Letter heads. We waited for an additional 4 hours (on top of the previous eight) with a total of approximately 12 hours due to some complications with customs. Evidently the artwork for the Letter’s First show was causing problems at the airport and everyone had to get searched. Ouch! I mean, you can’t blame airport security. Just imagine 20-25 writers deep on a chartered plane to Europe with huge wooden crates! It’s gotta look suspicious. After all that was said and done though we all finally regrouped and caught another bus into the city to settle down into our hotel rooms compliments of Royal Elastics. Royal Elastics is a shoe company that sponsored the event and rented out the hotel rooms for all of us. Basically they’re the shit. After getting our rooms situated we went to the 12th floor and had a private rooftop pool party.

Loungin…

Some pretty famous graffiti writers pictured here but we won’t list any off.

RISK WCA

To Be Continued…

After getting home at around 2am and passing out last night someone had to wake up at 9:00am the next day to reserve a spot out by the beach for a birthday party/bbq! Guess who the lucky contestant was? Yours truly. It wasn’t all that bad actually. After arriving at the spot with a huge hangover, I was able to sleep on top of the bench table playing sitting duck waiting for everyone to bring the food at around ohhhhh….12pm! Nice 2.5 hour nap with the bums causing ruckus with their boombox just a couple of tables away. By the time it hit 12pm people started to roll by from up and down the Cali coast to celebrate my Dirty 30th and it was smooth sailing from there on out. We had some bomb ass carne asada on the table with spicy pico de gallo as well as one of the best guacamole dips in the business compliments of my boy Carlos. By the end of the day we were pretty much FULL & BURNT! Thanks to everyone that came through. Sorry if you guys didn’t make it in the group photo. I know we left out alot of you on here.

Family

www.1girl6dudes.com

www.7dudes.com? (NO HOMO) Just kidding. Breaking off some PATRON that my boy AWSM brought over. Everyone had to take a sip!

Time to put the bottle away! Done Deal in less than 5 minutes.

After eating our 1st plate of food and waiting for the cake we decided to play a lil bit of 4 on 4, 2 Hand Touch, Football. Oh you know that’s trouble when there’s also alcohol involved. Football Bloopers for days! Besides throwing the football directly on the hood of that black Mercedes, the most memorable experience was watching YOUNG HUCK (Seen here tying his shoes.) going for a catch that Gabriel threw to him and ran into some bikes, stacked and did the Skorpion on the grass! Now that’s what I call “Taking One For The Team!” At least he made a touchdown! Hahahaha. For anyone that doesn’t understand skate lingo and has no idea what a Skorpion is just imagine watching HUCK falling face first into the grass and his two legs coming up from behind him up to his head like a stinger from a Skorpion! Hahaha. Everyone in the park did the “OH!” face for sure. Too funny.

Thailand vs Japan

The Birthday Cake! (Thanks Carlos!)

Slicing A Cake (SAC)

After grubbing on the cake we decided to play a Game Of Skate with everyone on the bike path.

Frontside Flip by Bockchoy (Peep the Skate All Cities bikes in the background.)

Come on! Let me ride this thing CHUKS!

This was me after grubbing on a fat meal and wanting to go to the beach for a dip.

SACface (Limited Edition Crew Deck)

This past weekend, after grubbing on some Thai food for dinner, we randomly ran into my boy George Nagai walking down the street with his DJ equipment. He told us that he was djing at some club called TONIC and asked if we wanted to roll. Without anything else to do that night we said, “Yes.” George kindly got all 5 of us in free of cover along with a round of drinks! (Thanks George. Good looks!) The scene was kind of dead at the beginning but after my 1st Rum & Coke and 2nd/3rd Jaiger Bomb it was ON and poppin like Mary! These random girls from what looked liked a bachelorette party rolled through the club with blow-up dolls and started gettin pretty ridiculous. I remember one of the girls bent down and her chonies were showing. All bloody and gross. Jussstt kidding. Masaki’s red tomato ass was gettin wild and dancing around to some T-Pain and by my 5th drink things started to get a little messy. After getting too wasted and in dying need of going home to puke we decided to leave. After arriving home safe & sound (Thanks Rinny.) and feeling a little bit “more better“, someone (We won’t mention any names: SWAY.) decided that they wanted to grub on some pizza but didn’t have any money to pay for it! Smooth Move… So the poor pizza guy stood in front of my door for a good 10 minutes waiting to get paid while everyone ignored him and passed out! Hahaha, that’s fucked up. (How I wish I could have walked up to the front and take a photo of him for this blog entry.) Unfortunately (or fortunately) I was knocked out by then. Ahhhhhhh, good times. Thanks to Michelle for taking the pics!

Table Service Anyone?

That Dude x Rinny x Baby Sway x DJ Nagai

What’s going on here? Are we trying to set up an audible?

Bockchoy x Masaki

These were the blow-up dolls that I mentioned to you earlier. So hilarious! Some girl had the detachable penis section and was waving it around the club that night as well but I never got around to taking pictures of it cause by that time I was way too drunk.

The End