Shekel me not, road trip in Israel
November 08, 2007 @ 10:39 AM
Israel of all places is somewhere I’ve got to admit I never thought I would end up, least of all for purely skateboard related adventures. Skateboarding in the Holy Land? Do they even have spots there? Will they allow me and a band of 4 misfits all sponsored by a company called “Death” into the country in the first place? I have to admit I was apprehensive. For the first time in a long time I found myself with butterflies in my stomach as I boarded our 6am flight from Heathrow to Tel Aviv…
The crew consisted of Dan Cates, Carl Wilson, a super-stoked-on-life guy called Steak and a strange albino lad by the name of Boots. I’ve known Cates for years and I had bumped into steak skating the bowls in Marseille a few summers ago and they are both sound heads so I knew that regardless of how the trip went, it was bound to be good craic with these lads involved. it was a case of the blind leading the blind as soon as we arrived in downtown Tel Aviv and I was instantly shocked at how modern and built up everything was, I was half expecting dusty roads and camel rides from spot to spot but this was much like any major European city and from the taxi ride to our hostel alone we could already see that this town was definitely going to be amazing to skate. Did somebody say spots!? our one and only hook up in town was a friend of a friend of Cates called Avi (Huziasee Kp13-ed) and from start to finish the guy had our backs, he took the week off work and drove us from the back streets of Tel Aviv all the way to the dead sea stopping at every skateable landmark along the way. He helped us out so much and really we couldn’t have experienced the trip we had without him, so Avi- “big up! Big up!” its easy in the small world of skateboarding to just expect to land on your feet wherever you go and take it for granted but it never ceases to amaze me the lengths total strangers will go for each other from simply having skateboarding as a common bond.
A girl I used to live with used to joke with me that skateboarders are like some kind of weird secret handshake society and she wasn’t far from wrong. Tel Aviv has so much to skate, and it is the kind of place that caters for every kind of skater, we literally just went from one amazing spot to the next, stopping only for schnitzels, water, tales of lee Blackwell meeting 50 cent in Butlins holiday camp and Cates ranting on about how much he wished his best friend Dibble was here. Everyday without fail something rad would happen and Cates would burst out into his infectious laugh screaming “ahhhhhh I wish Dibbs was here!!!!!!!!!! He’s such a caaaaaannt!!!!” once Cates starts laughing it’s hard to hold back, he has this really high pitched grunt that he does when he goes into hysterics and it’s so fucking contagious that you can’t help but end up pissing yourself too. Also my Irish accent seemed to be a source of constant amusement for the lads too: Carl’s nickname is “potter” as he is a ringer for your man Harry potter from those poxy films but anytime I seemed to call him this Cates would erupt into uncontrollable laughter as to his ears I never said the word “potter”. It sounded like I was saying “patter”. (I know, what a tweeker?) At which point he would do this really shit “oirish” accent that only English people seem to be able to do so bad. I mean he was obviously the one with the speech impediment as he pronounced his name “pot- Ahh”!? Seeing as we are on the subject though Carl “potter” Wilson is a serious beast, I’d never met the chap before or even seen him skate but the guy is an animal. He skated like a horseman the whole trip and was just really easy company and a good laugh to be around in general. Not once did we hit a spot that he wasn’t into. Sound man, our Carl is.
The highlight of the trip for us all was probably our road trip to the Dead Sea via Jerusalem and the fullpipes in the desert. The pipes were literally in the middle of nowhere and inside them, skating in the afternoon sun was like skating inside a furnace. I’m sure there were parts of the metal where you could have easily fried an egg. This didn’t seem to faze the lads at all as everyone skated as hard as they could until all our water had run dry and our t shirts were soaked through. As I was shooting a photo a tiny boy on a rusty bMx appeared in my view on the road in front of us and stopped and stared up in awe as he watched the lads skate lines back and forth in the pipes. He looked like he was in shock as it was obvious he had never witnessed the likes of this before. He stayed for a few minutes watching intently and by this stage I was laid out on the ground with the last of the water we had held above my mouth literally trying to get the last few drops from it. Nobody noticed him leave but about 15 minutes later he re-appeared on his bike with a huge bottle of water in an old battered 2 liter of coke and just came up to us and handed it over not saying a word to anyone. Moments like this when you are far away from home really do make you feel privileged. Whatever that kid is up to now we salute you! For all we know he could be carving frontside past 10 o’ clock in the pipes as we speak.
Boots and Steak are both legends in very different ways, whereas Boots comes across at first as kind of shy, timid and reclusive he is actually the nicest albino I’ve ever met. He always seemed to bust out mad tricks out of nowhere and then seemed like he surprised himself at his abilities which is always refreshing to see in a world where most people think the other way around. Steak on the other hand is just a full-on stokage machine. This was his first real “tour” as such and he was as wide-eyed and happy on our final day in Israel as he was before we had even left the couch in Harrow. As he put it himself on our way home; “Fuck man, I wish could stay for another 8 days!” and he wasn’t joking either. Steak has the good-vibes coming out of his arse, constantly smiling, constantly shredding and the kind of person who is hard not to like. In all honesty Israel is one of the best places for street skating I’ve ever been to and the history and culture linked to this country makes it a place that is very humbling and well worth seeing. It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the ones on signs that say “no skateboarding” outside the many spots it has to offer. The trip could never have happened with out the help and hard work of the legend that is “the Avi” and also the aid of Relentless, Vox, duffs, Eastpak and Death. Get inspired, get off your arse and go somewhere ridiculous.
