There is no such thing as offseason in skateboarding. But thankfully, the rest of the world is strongly gravitating towards certain times of the year when they travel to certain places. Cities, islands, even whole countries build their tourism industry on these pillars that are holiday seasons. The world should be glad there are skateboarders. I wouldn’t go as far as calling skateboarders heroes for bringing in some extra cash during these harsh months, but what else would you call it? It’s a win-win. We get to skate empty plazas, closed hotels, and vacant city centers while we support the local economy by paying low season prices. A nice side effect is that you get to experience the place for what it’s actually like. You get to see it before it puts on the high-season makeup with the fake smile.
Featuring: Marek Zaprazny, Alex Elfving, Pascal Moelaert, Joscha Aicher, Schianta Lepori & Davide Holzknecht.
FILMED BY DENNIS LUDWIG & BENNET RAHM
EDITED BY DENNIS LUDWIG
PHOTOGRAPHY & WORDS BY JOHANNES SCHÖN
Offseason, the topic of Pocket Vol.7 is built around high-frequency places during the holiday season. Maybe it’s a German thing, but the place that comes to mind first is Mallorca. There is no place like this one when it comes to German tourism. You have German street signs there and it is not unusual that people will approach you speaking German. Pretty odd for Spain’s biggest island.
Funny enough, I have never been there up to this trip. With a ton of party island images inside my head, I was wondering what it would be like in the offseason when the island calms down and turns more into what it actually is, a very beautiful and peaceful place.
So with the mission to find this out, we curated a squad, booked a nice place from the homie and best spot guide Pancho, and went for it. Usually, it’s the plan to escape the cold and the rain. Well, this did not go exactly how we thought. You might not be able to see from the images, but from the 11 days we spent on the island we got about 2 days of good weather.
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No jokes. Most days we did not get to skate more than one spot or sometimes not at all. So many spots on the island, but on this trip we could not pick a good spot, we had to pick a dry spot.
Everyone became hobby meteorologists judging where the clouds are going and looking at the weather map. Then it was on me to drive to the corner of the island that looked promising. Some days there were no chances of skating at all, so we just went bowling and did whatever we could do to keep ourselves entertained.
At night we would walk to “Conto Corrente”, a 7/10-rated Italian place (judged by the Italian squad members) to get some carbs. One of my favorite things on this tour was the idea of putting all our phones on top of each other and no one was allowed to touch their phone during our stay at the restaurant.
The effect it had on our conversations and the overall mood was crazy. So crazy, that we actually fired up a party at this (very nice and slightly pricy) place. Resulting in an Aperol Spritz Fest followed by a visit to a karaoke bar. The hangover was real and, of course, the weather was perfect on the day following our escalation. Rookie moves right there.
Props to the whole crew for staying motivated and in a good mood even though the weather really tested our sentiment. The next one will take place during summer, promised.
MORE OFFSEASON STORIES IN POCKET VOL.7 – OUT NOW!
