Yellow Is The Colour Of Sunrays. Down the back streets of Malta.
September 03, 2007 @ 5:14 PM
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“A man makes a picture
A moving picture
Through the light projected
He can see himself up close
A man captures colour
A man likes to stare
He turns his money into light to look for her
A man builds a city
With banks and cathedrals
A man melts the sand so he can
See the world outside
A man makes a car
And builds roads to run them on
A man dreams of leaving
But he always stays behind”
U2- Lemon
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The side windows of the car had been pouring in yellow for days, as we traversed this enchanted isle from corner to corner, landsharking. Everything seemed to be yellow there. Tons of churches in the villages and cities were yellow. Every house surrounding them were made of yellow stone. The ancient walls that surrounded them were yellow. Even the rocks of the coastline around Malta are all yellow. Everything else just gave up to the amber reflection, as if Malta was a giant bulb that ended up radiating everything.
We had spent all day in the only spot with good ground, a kind of prison yard in the middle of a roundabout in Msida, where the sun was burning fiercely. The yellow air started to get into the lungs. That prison yard had some ledges and flatbars, self- made by the locals, but after a while we started to see more possibilities there. There were movable fences and barriers, and then somebody found a good gap over a flatbar, over flatbar and gap, and a potential pole-jam spot as well, but this one didn’t last longer than that day. Some citizen-hero had bought his ticket to heaven by calling to the cops to warn them about the danger of the pole, whatever that may have been.
Our map was really nice: it was all full of tiny childs drawings with the main attractions of the island, except the skate spots (but we were already doing that job with similar drawings): this monument here, Popeye village there, etc. That made it fun to check, because when you tried to stay serious and focus on the map, the drawings wouldn’t let you. It was the happy-smile-map, and I believe it was cursed.
In the meantime, driving up and down the island, we got to see and know a bit more the place we were visiting. We didn’t have regular water in the bathroom, it was salty. That was especially funny when brushing your teeth. Eating was really expensive, but on the other hand you could buy fruit every 100 metres in any road, and it was really cheap. Beer was cheaper than water. So it was an easy choice: fruit, beer, and no shower.
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This much is true about Malta: even though it lacks resources it seems to have been doing really good lately. The island has been more handled than a private dancer. Despite being small, its geographic situation has made the island a treasure in the Mediterranean, desired by all its neighbours.
It’s been Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arabian, Sicilian, Spanish, French and finally English before gaining independence. So it’s like a paella of cultures cooked slowly through the centuries. Maltese language comes from Arabic. All the churches you see were built during the Christian dominion of Spain, and Maltese people are deeply religious to this day. Even divorce is forbidden by law. But what is more obvious is the influence of the British, probably because it was the last one. I’m fine with Maltese using English as second language. I’m fine with finding red phone boxes and eating fish and chips. But why do they have to drive the wrong way?? Thank you, Little Britain, for making us feel clumsier on the wheel than an old-schooler skating switch at Macba.
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The view was not really optimistic. Our best bet was Msida University, besides the main local spot mentioned before. Besides that, we found massive sets of stairs, unworkable handrails and ungrindable ledges. The island seemed to finish before we expected.
When we arrived at our haven in the northern part of the island, we went to get some food in a bar. The lady served food and drinks, and after asking for the bill she asked:
“What brings you to Malta?”
“We came here to skate…”
“To Skate?? You can’t do that here!”
“Uh? No…ermmm… don’t worry madam, we are not going to break anything…”
“No No No…I mean you cannot skate here, because there is nothing to skate… are you sure you came to the right place?”
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Enough. Time to alcoholize yourself.
On the way to our den, it seemed to be a show downstairs called
‘Fiona: Female impersonator’. For sure it was a chick with a dick. We all took a look and Andi got closer to Fiona who casually was walking toward us on his/her way to the stage. When Andi started a joke about his/her artificial boobs, Fiona grabbed one and pressed it, something liquid that came out from that boob that went straight to Andi’s (now all serious) face! Ha!
On the subject of Andi’s face, he took a face-plant skating a kinked rail he found. The rail was (of course) painted yellow, and Andi’s face went as yellow as the rail. We all thought it was over and were thinking about the nearest hospital when Andi woke up all staggering, grabbed his board and walked up the stairs again. Two tries after, he landed it so perfect. Later the puking, sickness and headache came, but landing that trick after that horrible slam is one of the weirdest- and bravest- things we’ve ever seen.
Down south we drove, to a small plaza with ledges, which we all skated until the last light of the day reddened slowly. There were huge ships on the horizon, and a small old dude was pissing with his hands on his head. He was doing some kind of drunken dance at the same time, or maybe he was trying to write something. I couldn’t read it though- it may have been in Maltese.
The ships unloaded far away, and the water between us and the ships seemed like a balsam of oil. Suddenly the island changed her light. As the night clouded over, the yellow extinguished. Amber streetlamps remained as the only witnesses of the day’s picture. But all the sea and all the sky fall over the island. And then everything turns blue, dark blue, and black.
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Locals met us many days, once they discovered where we were on the island- and that was not too hard. Malta has a really strong and tight scene: we saw several kids with so much potential and skills. I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear some echoes one of these skaters soon in Europe.
We were not worried anymore about finding spots during the last stage of our stay.
In Malta there were neither Macbas nor Flushing Meadows, but being able to skate something you didn’t expect was starting to become unexpectedly creative and fun.
And right there, when we relaxed about the spots and decided to enjoy what we had, we found our lost path of the yellow stones.
The thing is: we had it in front of us all the time and we didn’t see it. Malta is what it is, it’s not a land of thousands of spots, and the few skateable ones are full of imperfections of all kinds. But there is something good about that: how able are you to adapt? All the riders on this trip were real masters of adaptation and that explains why they are where they are in skateboarding. Adaptation is what propels history of human kind, and by extension, the history of skateboarding. Adaptation is what measures talent, and what marks evolution within skateboarding. Sitting down and saying there are no spots is not an option for survival. That might be one of the reasons why many of the best skateboarders in the world always come from places where “there is nothing”.
Just like Malta, there might be more than you see at first sight.
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