A while back, when Marc-Alexandre Barbier and myself were out filming and skating in Marseille, the guy who owns “Chill or Die” (Baptiste Besse) called us and wanted to know, if we would like to spend the first week of April in Praha (Prague). We didn’t really need to think about it, we were immediately down to go.
That’s how we ended up joining a crew consisting of a total of 5 guys: Vincent Coupeau, Matt Debauche, Baptiste Besse and of course Marc-A and myself.
Because Marc-A is scared to fly, everybody got on the bus for a 15-hour drive out to Praha, the journey was long! But we had fun and drank a lot of booze.
What can I tell you about our destination? Praha is the capital of the Czech Republic and the countries largest city. I would say it’s a cosmopolitan city and according to our research (clubbing), we found out that there are large groups of foreigners amongst the city’s population. Since I landed on the subject, the night life there is pretty cheap if you compare it to most of the other capital cities in the western part of Europe. As you can imagine, we fell into the city’s dark side pretty easily, this meant Matt was at his absolute best! And Marc-A was able to show everybody that he is indeed a killer on the dance floor.
The only spot we knew before going there was the world famous Stalin Platz, which has a similar function as the Republique Square in Paris, the only difference being that it is better than Republique. “Why?” you might ask… Because there are simply more things to skate, you can grind, slide, fly down some stairs, over and down gaps, do wheelies and skate handrails, which was the object of Marc-A’s first trick of the trip, a 50-50 grind up and down a long rail followed by a lengthy firecracker down some stairs!
Like most main spots you get sucked in quite easily and we did film a bunch of stuff there but we didn’t want to hang out there for the whole tour.
So we went into the city to search for some street spots that could enhance our “street cred ” (laughs).
During one of our first spot-hunting missions, Marc-A had the brilliant idea to grab hold of a very nice Porsche! When the driver finally noticed him he brusquely stopped the car, jumped out and wanted to engage in a fight with Mr. Barbier. The guy had such a bright red face that I started to doubt if it was anger or alcohol that had turned his face strawberry-red.
In the end, we managed to find this cool little square with multiple skate-able benches, after we seshed it, we found out that the spot was only two minutes away from our apartment. From that point on almost all sessions ended at this little peaceful square, and Praha being as cheap as it is, these moments where naturally accompanied by a nice cold beer clenched between of our fingers.
Photos by Vincent Coupeau
Text by Augustin Giovannoni