The temple of Nike stands high above the city of Athens, cast in a foreboding grey as thick black clouds chase summer out to sea. It’s November, and our team is clenching every muscle, praying that Greece holds on to its infamous sunshine for just ten more days. We’ve got places to be. The route is marked, from the capital up to Thessaloniki and back, stopping at some unexpected spots along the way – the sort of trip only the locals among us could lead. “We’re going to bomb Mount Olympus”, we announce over breakfast on day one, “so we have to pray to the Gods it won’t rain.”
Words by Oisin Tammas
Shots by Sam McGuire
We head down. Athens is a city built for skaters. It’s antiquity brings marble, its contemporary crisis narrative brings ruin; together, this is home to countless urban subcultures. It’s got one of the most exciting underground punk scenes in the world, for example. Stages set up at random in the anarchist district, while street dogs mingle in between African drum circles. It also happens to be the most graffitied city in the world – the word graffiti coming from the Greek meaning ‘to write’. And while we’re on the subject of Greek, the percussive language affords this city a hip hop style which sounds like machine-gun fire going off in a performance of STOMP. It’s good, basically. When it comes to skateboarding though? Well, imagine a cross between the NYC yellow-taxi weaving street cruises, and San Francisco’s earthquake torn hillbombs, melted smooth by millenia of heat.
We’ve rented a van, but the amount of times we end up having to ditch it in layby, and bomb it to the spot, is almost funny. The streets are narrow and traffic is slow. Cata Diaz’s playlist of Naughty by Nature and ABBA is left behind, playing out to nobody, as our team of 10 – crew and riders from around the world – negotiate the most congestion on urethane, skitching the back of our filmer Evan’s motorbike.
We said from the beginning, this tour is as much about skateboarding as it about showing our new friends where we came from. Cata, Sarah (Meurle), Rianne (Evans), Agata (Halikowska) – Nike SB’s European sensations – have developed names for themselves thanks to their styles and outlooks on skateboarding. Travelling from all over the world, the reality of bringing them together in Greece is better than we dreamed. Each has their own way of travelling. Sarah, forever armed with her film-camera, disappears now and then, to be found standing on top of a roof somewhere, with express instructions on how we can all follow her up. “There’s a great spot up here.” Message received. Up we go. Meanwhile, we’ve lost Rianne, who has gone on a spothunt, looking for any bit of transition – an insatiable hunger she’s got hardwired.
Watching these incredible skaters make the city their own, leaving their mark at every spot along the way, is a privilege. We’ve been skating these streets for years, but there’s something in Cata’s Chilean eye that sees things a little different. On one of our many tourist-moments, she tells us: “It’s the perfect city to do this project. To show the world who we are, that we are women, and we can put our stamp on skateboarding in our way.” The temple dedicated to the Goddess which gave Athens its name – Athina – stands behind us, and we’ve all started taking the “Which Greek God Are You?” quiz on our phones. This juxtaposition is absurd, but then we just watched Sarah wall-ride a tree which could be hundreds of years old, so… welcome to the future.
Over beers at a local anarchist bar one night, Agata reveals she got Zeus in the quiz. Makes sense. Agata, hailing from Poland, is perhaps the least known skater in the team – but within hours of arriving in Greece, she earned herself the nickname σφυρί (hammer), from resident VX pro, Nikolas Lagos. She’s not only one of the most consistent skaters he’s worked with, but she’s also the one at the top of the biggest gaps day in day out, in spite of injury, mischievous grin and all.
The bad weather breaks, and we’re sopping wet, gunning it back to the hotel with our boards under our hoodies. In two days, we’ll all pile into the van and head north to Larissa. But the agenda says tomorrow we’re heading to Faliro, Athens by the sea, providing the rain disappears. We go to sleep wet but wake to the bluest sky, the sun bearing down between the buildings, drying everything within minutes. Off to the harbour then…
Rianne – usually more of a park skater – takes on one of the longest firecrackers we’ve ever seen; while Cata wrestles with a crazy nose mannie. It’s a day of struggles all round. Sarah earns herself heat stroke wallying into a stairset. “Get it Sarah!” call Evan and Nikolas unison, a meaningless catchphrase which, by the end of the trip, is the only thing anybody seems able to say to each other. Everybody is hungry and tired, but word gets around that we’re a short drive from a beautiful rock-jumping spot – so we settle for a dinner of fruit and protein bars from a kiosk, and gun it over in time for an unbelievable sunset.
No trip to Athens is complete without Galatsi. This DIY skatepark has taken many shapes since it was first built in YEAR. But the laid back attitude of the locals who build it has meant that today it’s got a surf-like flow that only true Galatsians can ride. Rianne Evans told us at the beginning of the trip that she’s always at home in a DIY. She lives true to her words, tearing the park apart before the rest of the team have even warmed up. Heatstroke is imminent again, with Sam McGuire (photographer, regretful driver and all-round cutie) lying on the hot concrete with his T-shirt wrapped around his head while Rianne gets a wallie back tail on the dodgy ledge. This is the heart and soul of skateboarding in the city – a park built again and again by local people – fit for long days sweating in the dirt, sipping on iced coffee and trying to get the trick.
Departing from Athens is as a breath of fresh-air – we can feel the dust of the city get left behind as we disappear into the endless mountains and forests. We’re heading to a small coffee-culture town called Larissa, where one of our crew actually grew up skating. One night in a five-star hotel and spa undoes much of the punishment taken at the hands of Athens sweltering marble streets, and spirits are quickly reignited. We take to the streets. There’s a story about Larissans: since so many are farmers, they work half the year, when crops are in season, and then spend the other half sitting in coffee places smoking cigarettes and juggling their prayer beads. They move from one place to another, and that is that. Sure enough, the countless cafes are brimming day and night, watching Cata Diaz tre-bomb the local college stair. Tags in the background read: “ANTI HOMOPHOBIA, ANTI SEXISM, ANTI RACISM”. And Evan’s disappeared into a tree. “I need the angle, man.” he explains. “Get it, Evan!”, Nik shouts into his VX.
After a night of Rianne playing with the local street cats followed by mischief in the corridors at our hotel, we are out. Larissa left behind, our sights are now set on Mount Olympus – home of the Gods. Evan’s preparing the drone, saying how he wants to get the hill-bomb from above. But the clouds have returned, and those roads are slippery enough as it is.
After a long drive on some of the narrowest and steepest roads imaginable, Sam gets us to the hill – a dramatic verge, with a slow dangerous curve with nothing but thick forests below. Using the van to haul the team up and down the hill again and again, Rianne, Cata, Agata and Sarah end up taking the hill half a dozen times, with Evan and Nik skating backwards behind them. Evan: “I need the angle, man.” Nik: “Get it!”
That’s a wrap! And we pile down into the forest to explore, leaving boards in the backseat of the van – under the guard of a stray dog who has somehow found his way to the top of the mountain, and made the picnic-spot carpark home. It’s getting dark, we’re getting lost, but we stumble across a waterfall which is so close to the source that it registers just 1-degree in temperature. Naturally, somebody ends up getting in.
Our final stop on the trip is Thessaloniki, Greece’s student city – and one of the best places to skate in the country. The days in Thess pass in a blur, with Evan and Nik starting to get nervous that we might have lost too much to the unpredictable weather. But their prayers are answered when the sun is out again, and all four of the riders pull out their biggest game – stacking trick after trick throughout the city. Sarah and Rianne reward themselves with a spontaneous trip on a pirate ship with onboard bar, coming back an hour or so later to find us skating next to a surreal public re-enactment of the fall of the Berlin Wall, with local children tearing up huge slabs of polystyrene concrete – and Bowie’s Heroes playing from marquee speakers. There’s something final in the air.
As half the team pass out in the back of the van, and Sam guns in back to Athens so everybody can catch their flights, it’s easy to feel relieved that we’ve made it through. Nobody takes two weeks of solid skateboarding without exhausting themselves, but Greece throws more than just spots at you. It’s a wild place, living in its own rhythms, both slow and unbearably hectic at the same time – it keeps you up late, excites you, and fills your days with strange and disturbing sights, all in equal measure. But while it’s easy to disappear into exhaustion, it’s also clear that we’ve all made something beautiful together. Showcased not just the incredible personalities and skills of the riders, but the incomparable character of the country – which is ultimately what a tour should be about. Not just about making your own mark, but taking something back with you too – a story to tell, to encourage more skaters to appreciate and explore the lesser known sides of skateboarding. Greece, a homecoming of sorts, is the first of many such trips that we have in mind.
Sam’s made a decision. There’s a natural thermal hot-springs on the way home, and we’re going – end of story. Perfect way to finish – and while the reality of a sulphur bath is that it stinks to all hell and turns all your jewelry black – the fifteen minutes we steal in the boiling water is the final decompression we’ve all needed.
A huge thank you goes out to Sarah Meurle, Cata Diaz, Rianne Evans, Agata Halikowska, Nikos Lagos, Evan Maragkoudakis, and Nike SB.
This story and many more, available in ISSUE 5.
