Independent Trucks in Lisbon – Unfinished Business
First it was San Francisco, then Philadelphia, next was Barcelona, then New York City and so on and so on… Through the decades various locales across the globe have become well-established skate meccas in their own right. Whether it’s the hills, the granite, the plazas, the cellar doors or the nightlife you’re after, these metropolitan cities have delivered. And if you’ve been lucky enough to visit any of these places in their skate heyday, you understand their appeal. The problem is everyone gets the same idea… Thousands of skate tourists come to town, spots become a bust, locals get pissed, shit gets knobbed and before you know it: “Oh this spot again! Over it!” and the scrolling/clicking away/tuning out commences. So when Alan Glass reached out about an Indy trip to, of all places – Lisbon – it’s safe to say I was a little concerned. With its mild climate, inexpensive cuisine and spots-a-plenty Portugal’s capital has been a hot spot for a hot minute. But when Rafski sent the photo previews over, to my astonishment, I only recognised one or two of the spots from the whole lot. How did they do it? Hours on end doing Google Street View preparatory research? What was the secret? “We’ve got several Portuguese skaters on the ground there (João, Madu, Gabi, Bruno, etc.), the filmer was local, and Carlos, our sales rep guy, obviously is local. He’s always been my fixer guy, and between them, they’ve got spots forever.” Alan told me. Well there you have it, it’s not fucking rocket science – just make sure the locals are part of your crew.
Introduction by Will Harmon
Photography by Rafal Wojnowski
Captions by Alan Glass
Gabriel Ribeiro, backside smith grind.
That kicker basically wasn’t really even much of a kicker. Gabi had to channel his inner Nick Matthews to get up there. He’s not doing himself any favours wearing all black in a photo at night though. It reminds me of when I used to film for Heroin, me and Nick Worthington went filming once on Halloween and he was wearing all black. I’m filming a line in the dark in this school yard, and it was just like, “This is ridiculous, you’re completely in the dark!” He’s literally like a floating pair of hands and a face and it’s on Halloween, nearly midnight. Very odd.
Barney Page, backside lipslide.
This was a real bitch this day… This was the first spot of the day and we went to this marina area. That building behind is a tourist information centre or something like that. And the guys from there were straight out on us right away, just like, “No, you can’t do that here.” And we’d already driven half an hour to get there. But Barney managed to get in a back lip real quick before more security arrived. It’s one of those things where you’re trying to explain to someone in a foreign language. I mean, obviously the Portuguese guys do all the talking for us, but I’m there hoping this guy understands English. Like, “It’s literally just a lump of concrete. It has no purpose, like, there’s nothing there. Just let us skate it.” But long story short, after they kicked us out, I went on to Google Maps and gave the visitor information centre a one star review. Then it asks you loads of questions, if you’re a regular reviewer, to contribute more. So it said, like, “Tell us about this place…” blah, blah, blah and then one of the things was, like, “Is it permanently closed?” So I said, “Yes”, and ticked that box, haha.
Simon Hallberg, frontside 180 fakie 5-0 pop-out.
So Simon apparently has this trick on lock. We’ve all met skaters with certain tricks on lock, but this isn’t one of those ones you usually find that people have dialled like that. So, yeah, he gets up on the wall, he’s like, ”Oh, I think I’m gonna try this.” And I’m like, “Huh?” Okay, how the fuck is he gonna get out of that? But he’s just got it like that I guess. After he’s front 180ed and landed in it, he’s already popping back out again. And I don’t mean it’s a short grind, I just mean he does it all in one motion. It’s in his muscle memory, like walking down the stairs in your own house in the dark, like he knows if he lands on his back truck in the right position and he’s already popping out, it’s gonna work. So this didn’t take him as long as you’d think. Out of all the tricks to have on lock… What do we call this? 180 to fakie 5-0? Frontside Pupecki? Maybe it should just be called a Simmpa grind from now on.
Nisse Ingemarsson, hippy jump.
Raf sees this and he’s like, “Holy shit! You don’t get this very often, like an actual natural hippy tree jump!” You can see that it’s crushed this handrail next to it, but yeah, the point of this story is that Portugal had pretty much a month straight of storms, like horrendous weather. Rained every day, and everywhere we went, there were trees down, advertising billboards down, etc. There was shit on the news of cars being washed away and stuff. When we landed at the airport, you could see that the country got the shit kicked out of it for the last few weeks, and then, literally, the day we arrived: perfect weather forecast for the next 10 days. So yeah, this was literally the calm after the storm and we get the perfect blue sky sunshine photo out of it.
Jan Hirt, frontside hurricane.
This was at a uni. It’s the same place where Gabi has the back smith photo. There was a Student Union bar just across the street, and all these students were hanging out there having some beers. And, you know, college is finished for the day, and I was just mostly distracted by the two guys smoking a little hash joint next to me and wishing I could join in. We got kicked out, but the guy said o just “come back in 10 minutes when I clock off.” It didn’t take very long for Jan to clip up.
Barney Page, ollie into slant.
Okay, so I think sometimes maybe I’m losing my bottle when it comes to skating street spots and getting kicked out; I’m less comfortable with it than I used to be. I imagine that’s because I’m older, maybe more sensible, but I see everybody else’s point. Like, of course, we want to skate, we want to get this done, but when there’s angry people and they’re calling the cops and so on, it’s pretty easy to see their point of view as well. And we literally just got kicked out of a perfectly mellow plaza by the cops. Someone’s obviously called them, and then, as the genius of skateboarders’ strategy, “That’s alright, we’ll move literally 50 yards up the street and skate a church.”
I’m just there rubbing my head like this isn’t going to go well, surely. And sure enough, some guy comes out, kicks off. The cops don’t get called, or at least they don’t show up, and Barney gets the trick. I mean, Barney doesn’t have what I just talked about, he, like a lot of skateboarders, will be like, “Well, no, we’re just gonna fucking do it, like you literally gonna have to come along with a load of cops to get me to stop.” Whereas I’m like the old sensible guy like, “Maybe we should leave this one,” but that’s not how you get shit done. So I’m glad that for every scared old guy, there’s a bunch of young guys who will still be like, “Fuck this… Let’s do it!”
Simon Hallberg, gap to frontside nosebluntslide
That was the first spot, first day. First day vibes are usually really good, right? People were on their P’s and Q’s and skating to the best of their ability, especially on trips where not everybody knows each other. When everyone doesn’t know each other, it brings out the best side of people.https://images.freeskatemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/02092623/dsc3121.jpg
So Simon does this within minutes of meeting some of the other skaters. Amazing spot, no room to move… Raf was backed up against a wall, with his camera stuck right in his face, trying to get this. It’s over one of those grills where you can see all the way down, two floors or whatever. And I’ll never forget my mate in New York telling me that, you know the ones where you walk over the subway and you can see it below the pavement? His uncle literally fell through one of those ones. So I’ve been a bit freaked out walking on these grills ever since. You don’t want to end up in front of the L train or something.
Jan Hirt, boardslide.
That’s Jan in that really lairy Indy jumper from a few seasons ago. I think Sebo Walker designed that. I remember Raf at the time going, “Yeah, that jumper was a bit of a challenge,” but it’s there in
the photo. This was one of those where you go to one spot and then someone goes, “I found something else around the back.” And I think that’s what happened on a previous trip. And this was the spot that didn’t get skated last time. So Jan was like, “Okay, I found this spot last time we were here…” And, yeah, I mean, a double rail is always going to be sketchy. It’s always a challenge and a bit scary to watch, but he handled it fucking easy. That’s probably the best run out in Portugal too. Like all the locals don’t give a shit… You and I look at that stuff, and because it’s all so uneven and the stones are quite sharp, like the sort of rocks that they use to do that stuff… I’ve always thought if someone’s going to slide across that on their skin, it’s going to be nasty. But actually, everyone’s pretty used to riding away on that Portuguese cobble now, weirdly.
Madu Teixeira, Bennett grind.
Madu just looks asleep at the wheel. He’s extremely talented, but when you’re watching him try something, it can come off like he doesn’t really want to do it, like he can’t be bothered, but then he’ll land some incredible shit and ride away with the style we all wish we had. You know what I mean? That not trying style…
Nassim Lachhab, nollie kickflip.
Nassim… He loves to fucking jump, doesn’t he? So many skaters these days aren’t down for jumping, and Nassim is like, “Yep, okay, fine.” This is his comfort zone, hurling himself down a… What is that? Five-flat-six or something? Most people are like, “I don’t want to risk my heels, legs, knees hurling myself down this shit.” But Nassim is just straight in there… Also Nassim brought with him the Moroccan man flu. And he was sitting right next to me in the van, doing the map reading and stuff, up front sniffling and coughing. And sure enough, it was going around the van within a few days. Look, we don’t blame him for that, obviously… A couple of other people got stomach bugs and stuff as well. It was just like, “Great. This is a sick trip.”
João Allen, gap to 50-50.
Both the Joãos that I know in Portugal get called by their surname:
João Neto and João Allen just get called Neto and Allen. So being on this trip with João Allen I was constantly turning around whilst people go “Allen!” and I’m like, “Yeah?” I don’t know why all the Joãos run their surnames instead of their full names, but yeah, this is a very weird kind of spot where you have to ollie down across a gap and land on a marble wall that was really slick. When you land on it there’s a nine foot drop to fall backwards on your head if you fuck up. João handled it though, and the footage looked banging. That’s one of those moments where you go: “I’m really glad I brought this filmer (Camille ‘Fruga’ Benard).” He got the fisheye angle, and I was shooting from miles away, getting a long lens shot. But yeah, the fisheye was the one.
Jan Hirt, bluntslide to fakie.
This spot was very hard to film and photograph, but he bluntslid up it from over halfway up. You can kind of see at the bottom of the bank, it’s a like a slight hip, a little bit at the bottom there. It’s all downhill towards it and at the bottom of the photo you can see there’s not much run up. There’s actually gravel before that, so you have to put your board down, run across the gravel, and then jump on and give it a couple of pushes to get speed. But this was all 100% better than Jan’s last visit to this spot, because we took him there a year or so ago, and he fell from the top onto his head, which made the most horrendous sound, and gave me a near panic attack. Like, “Oh God.” out of all the injuries to deal with, you know, from a tour manager’s point of view, I was just like, “Please not
the head.” But this time he nailed this easy. Jan’s a trooper. He was just like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll go there again.”
João Allen, boardslide.
This was not easy. The wall was only just thin enough to slide on top, made out of Weetabix concrete, really harsh. It needed waxing but then that downhill part really didn’t benefit from being waxed, because when he turned that corner, he’s suddenly going 50 miles an hour, and he had no idea how he was going to pop out. So whilst stressing and shouting to himself in Portuguese, a lady who was waiting over the road in the bus stop shouted something at him, and I was like, “What’s she saying?” And someone said, “Oh, she’s saying that he’s clearly had no education because of his foul language.”
He heard that, so the next go, he went even crazier and shouted even more nasty shit. I was just standing there thinking the whole time, right if I spoke Portuguese, I’d pop over to that lady and go, “You do know he’s got a Master’s from the University of Technology in Portugal,” or whatever it’s called. And he’s getting shouted out and told that he has no education. I thought that was pretty comical. Also João put himself out on the second day, slammed really hard, made his foot go black and didn’t skate for the rest of the week. And then on the last day, he met up with us and did this.
