London Longboards

96 attending on our event, and that’s only the longboarders. This will be sick.

Been putting writing this post off since Saturday night, because writing it would mean that the time I’ve spent with the new additions to my family is over. But all good things must come to an end, and the memories and new created these past few days will forever be precious… Ok enough of that rubbish.
Let’s talk about some AWESOME SKATEBOARDING !!! More Moyano, more sunshine, more longboard girls, more sangria !!!
Thursday was easily the best day in my longboarding life, then Friday was BETTER than Thursday, hard to believe. The rest of the weekend blew my mind. The scale of these events and the amount of planning that went into them is astounding.

After 2 days of staying in Spain, I was keenly aware of a phenomenon known as ‘Spanish time’, for instance - ”meet at Moyano at 10” in Spanish time usually meant we got to Moyano anytime between 10.30 and 11.30, which was helpful as there was supposed to be a cruise at 10am (normal time) for forresteros through the city. As this was Madrid, cruise meant all/most downhill unlike in London where cruise means pushing with a bit of pushing and pumping.

We had a hearty breakfast in casa de sonso cooked by Sanchez (below) of longboard stockholm and we were EN GORILLO from all the stoke of the night before.
We skated to the meeting point and were greeted by about 50 new faces. Most had come over from outside madrid/spain, it was really great to see the effort people put into making it there.

The cruise was awesome, a bit tamer than skating the streets of London and it wasn’t as exciting as the taxi’s weren’t trying to run us down, also the lack of double decker buses really took away from the danger element I’m used to, but the WARM sunshine and happy girls skating around kept the stoke high. We took some really nice group pictures which I will be posting on here later. We kept picking longboarders along the way, so what was supposed to be a quiet cruise past some famous Madrid spots became a takeover of some famous madrid streets by 100+ very very stoked skaters, everyone was cheering and clapping and generally high on life. It was awesome. The best part was when there was a police car and in the middle of the road obviously trying to troll naughty drivers and we just bombed this MASSIVE hill past them and they must have been thinking ”gosh these people are so cool, I wonder if they will pose for a picture with me… or race my police car” 
We were supposed to cruise further downtown but (wait for it), all of a sudden we found ourselves by Moyano and we ALL just went up to it. That spot is like some sort of drug. Words cannot describe how nice it is to skate. Ok they can because I am writing some - ES LA MEJOR MIERDA ! Yeah my Spanish has really improved this weekend.

We grabbed some food, headed up past moyano into the park to eat and siesta in the shade of the trees then watch some awesome skating. The boys from Barcelona were skating that hill hard !! 
Ok so everybody who longboards knows that Madrid is the home to a special group of longboarders who we all love to watch skate - the longboard girls crew ! They had organised a meeting close to the spot we were - Palacio de cristal, that’s Spanish for Crystal Palace ! It’s funny because, in case you don’t know, we also have a great spot called crystal palace ! So anyway, yeah there were girls, on boards, skating, lots of them, it was great. The number was three times greater than the girls meet last year ! The organisers were very very happy. There’s a great picture from there by Juan Rayos, have a look around for it !

Had a lot of great conversations with some really really good people from all around Spain/Europe and it was great to see people who shared the same passion and vision for the future of our great love. What was also funny was talking to people who went to KnK longboard camp/Tuxient/Insul and seeing if they met anyone from the London crew there. I heard some funny stories. What happened in KnK did not stay in KnK. After about 7 hours of skating in the park, we went down to Moyano (again yay ! :-] ) and people were really going for it. It was great to chill a bit and watch some amazing freeride. The style, oh the style, there’s a guy out there called alberto, he makes such sick videos and it was hard to see that he was an even better skater. My definition of ‘freestyle’ is forever changed. I always thought freestyle/dancing = an aversion to downhill, but the way these guys gracefully shred hills on their Bhangras blew my mind, Mowgli and Tana as well. I’d never seen a girl kickflip a bhangra before. I had to wipe the drool off my chin. Alas as happens when people are really having fun, nobody was recording any of this madness. You’ll just have to come to Madrid next time to see them. I reckon there could have been 5 videos just of people riding moyano. Either of the tallest longboarder I’ve ever seen riding a penny, or Jorge and his super complicated tiger claws, or of the girls bombing the hill and pulling off massive co LE mans (as they say here).

So after 12 hours of riding, the main event was about to start ! We skated down moyano toward a HUGE bowl/park it was huge, it was awesome. The assembly started at 10pm and Ra said thanks to everyone for coming and the rest was in Spanish. Then we got our tshirts ! Alas from afar all you can see on them is NEGRO in big black letters, so I will not be wearing it to work anytime soon. 

Then the cruise ! The mighty cruise, I stood up after 400 shirts were given out and looked around and just gaped, there was a shitload of people. An actual shitload. we skated to the first meeting point, under a bridge and juan (again) got a really nice picture from the top. The roads we took along the river were beautiful, and for some reason - really deserted, so it was just us. We take the first group picture at this stadium looking place and then it really starts to hit me, just how many of us there are there ! there were 6/7 rows of around a hundred each. It was stupid, the cheers, the laughs, it was awesome. We skated towards the city centre and took some more pictures and then lo and behold we ended up at everyone’s favourite spot (if you don’t know what the next word I’m about to write is - give yourself a knock on the head) - Moyano !!

And here begins the highlight of my night, for the first time in all 3 days of my stay there I really really pushed myself down that puta hill and WOW was it good ! Using my amazing super ability I pretty much knew everyone who had been there since Thursday and I was really starting to feel like one of the family. We skated down the hill in packs and I pushed up the hill (to remind myself of happy London times) and I must have done between 20 and 200000 runs of the hill. I did my first pendy !! and again and again ! Damn I was stoked. So bloody stoked. Made friends with a crew of 5 guys from valencia who fashioned themselves after mario puzo’s Godfather - the Longfamily and their crew logo is the puppeteer stick controlling a longboard, yeah they are cool puta madres ! It was so so SO good.
Everyone, absolutely everyone was there and just laying down the ‘thane, it was beautiful. Then it got interesting. The 5 people with Penny skateboards started doing Penny runs, then the Bhangras, then the Spartaco (not his real name, but he is awesome) and the hill bombers, then a little 5 year old kid - he/she got the biggest applause. Then Puto Toti and his 540 shuvits then the girls, then these crazy freerides doing STUPID 5 foot heelside slides. Oh and the future of longboarding - this little kid called tasio ! He is a beast.
Sadly for you, not a lot of this is on tape and I’ll stop now because I can hear you coming. Maybe next time you won’t miss out on THE BEST WEEKEND OF YOUR LIFE !

I had such a good time. Made friends for life, I was genuinely sad to leave the next day. So erm… well I sort of missed my flight, and 2 hours later the group from Sweden missed theirs. This was a coincidence. Another night in Madrid ! Whoop. Spent the next 24 hours with my new longboard family the dutch ones, the spanish ones, the CRAZY one, the wonderful frostys (and Chus) and the canadian one. It was good to rest after so much hard skating. Spoke a lot about longboarding and Tool and Rage against Machine, bacon, the right liquid to clean your bearings, next year, films, venezuela and Trent Reznor.

And wonder of wonders I started to miss London ! Maybe I was missing the feeling of exhaustion after pushing from marble arch to waterloo or maybe I’m just mad. Anyway I left with lots of new special people in my heart and a london shaped hole  

 I’ll just use this oppurtunity to thank the Madrid Longboard Crew for opening their homes and hearts to a group of weird londoners and showing us the best time in London. And Ra. You beautiful bearded man! Thanks for making the weekend happen. Sonsoles et loco !! You’re the best.