It had ocurred to me that Alvaro sounds almost exactly like my homie Dave Davison (they also have almost identical noses) and I played him a Maps and Atlases (Dave´s Band) song which he immediately fell in love with. I told him I thought we should record him singing it and send it to Dave so as to blow his mind. Alvaro writes songs and plays guitar and is into weird poppy stuff, like M&A. He said he´d do it if I helped him with the gammatical content of his English lyrics. When we finished going through his jams, I shot a bit of him singing on my phone and sent it do Dave. The entire rest of the day I walked around with that song stuck in my head. I was kind of pissed that Dave was able to write such a catchy and good song with only 4 chords, yet with varied melodies. More is not always better, Seahearse. Or maybe it is.
On my last day in town I was able to go to an okupa called La Astilla(which had been recommended to me by more than 2 people for bike fixing) which was a huge warehouse space with a heavy steel door in the gate that led into an outside corridor covered in graffiti. There didn´t seem to be anyone around, but I kept on and found a giant indoor skate park and bike shop/ print shop, where, after explaining that I was ¨a travelling bike mechanic interested in okupas and is there anything I can do to help yáll?¨ I didn´t receive the warmest welcome, but maybe that was due to my fumbling for the right words upon introducing myself. What would you think if some dude from #1 privileged country came to your squat to try his hand at helping out your community? Maybe I´m reading too much into all this.
Anyway, I was invited to help sort a pile of tiny parts that had been dumped on the floor (just like in my shop!) and then sort of wandered around until I asked if there was anyone I could help and I was directed to an 11 year old kid whose bike was missing some important parts (chain, rear brake and lever). He was patient with me and my shitty spanish. I was successful in explaining why he couldn´t turn his silver spray painted mountain bike into a single speed without the use of a derailleur to act as a chain tensioner due to the verticle drop outs!
Then hung out with a 35 year old guy named Juan who kindly offered me a cigarette from his pack, with one in his lips. He was trying to fix his cantelever post which had been damaged in a minor crash. I asked what he does and he said he used to be a moto and car mechanic, but no longer and is hoping to open a vegan community center and food store/restaurant, but is held back by lack of money. He said it will cost about €400 a month for the space and utilities which doesn´t seem like a lot to me to operate a business, but everyone here is strapped, it would seem. I can sympathize with his anti industrial-meat ideals, especially living in a city where there´s really no such thing as local &organic and there´s such a huge meat culture. What with the myriad pig legs hanging, literally, everywhere. There´s local, but there´s almost no organic food and that which is available is super expensive. I think all the produce I´ve eaten here (tons of bananas, clementines, walnuts, giant bell peppers, onions) is all conventional. The produce that is available at little corner produce markets and big supermercados is incredibly inexpensive, at least compared to the Alberta Coop, but I´m sure it´s chock full of quimicas and pesticidas. I´ll do a mean bentonite detox when I get back.
For my last night in town, I met up with Alvaro and Pep and we went to what was possibly the shittiest bar in town for terrible, like fucking horrible, and expensive tapes. In Spain, you can´t really complain because no one gives a shit. Either that, or Alvaro and Pep didn´t want to make a scene. Then met up with Cris where we ate sandwiches on white bread in another bar. After hugs and kisses we parted with Cris who told me to tell her what I thought of Andalucia and their accent. As we walked away from her I kept looking back and waving. Aww.
I had ended up staying in Barcelona far longer than I had anticipated, but my homies were good enough reason to stay. I knew it was time to go when I was spending my days walking around for hours without anything interesting happening. And so I skipped Valencia and took an overnight train to Granada. After wandering around all day, I met up with Pep, Alvaro, and Lucia for one last beer and tapes at a bar which was near the train station and much better than the last one. I hugged them all goodbye and headed over to the station.
The train was so fucking hot due to the blazing hot heater at my left foot and there was no AC or even fresh air. When I escaped to the dining car and asked the nice train maidens to turn on the AC and they said the mechanic would get right on it, but that it was impossible to switch off the heater (rrrrrright). Then at 330 AM an elderly couple got on the train and started having a boisterous conversation that woke me from my uncomfortable sleep and I got up to ask them as nicely as possible to shut the fuck up, which they were cool with. How the fuck can you have a normal volume convo at 330 in the morning with 60 people trying to sleep??? Preparation for INDIA! When I woke up, the train was empty, except for one dude who was grabbing his bag who confirmed that we were in Granada!
Put that in your stiff-jointed skull-bong ´n smoke it.
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