brijuni for popguide magazine
we wrote a short piece for popguide magazine september’s issue called sweetless september and we also took the picture…
The first time I visited Barcelona, I did so with the same enthusiasm that thousands of European students and tourists share, hoping this city will meet their Erasmus, music festival, spring break and art fair expectations. After the Olympic Games, which I watched on TV, hundreds of events have been held at the Forum: Sonar, the Year of Gaudí, Construmat, and many more, which bring to mind a mixture of sweat, skin, beer and music, leaving me at a loss as to which I love most: the narrow, shaded street of the Raval, the numerous charming plazas of the Gracia district or the bourgeois boulevard of Paseo de Gracia and its aristocratic side streets. I take the flight from Madrid to Barcelona weighted by the street art that has tainted the beautiful Lavapiés, Chueca, Austrias and Malasaña districts, creating a Duchamp-inspired chaos of cobblestones and spaypaint. A city where the traffic has made cycling a hazard and a bother for those who regard it as a “city with too many hills.” A city that longs for a beach, even at the banks of the river, and threatens to equal its rival as an Olympic city, while waiting impatiently for the enormous Bici Crítica musical bicycle parade, which floods the streets on the last Thursday of each month, to pass. Sitting on my bicycle, I type goodbye.
