Baku, Azerbaijan – Issue 52 Article

With the online release of Nick Vieweg’s ‘Fully Booked – Baku‘, his video from a crew adventure to the capital of Azerbaijan, it seemed like an apposite time to upload Filadelfo Kroon’s accompanying article from Vague issue 52.

Photography & Text by Filadelfo Kroon

Baku is fucking incredible; everything from the people, the hospitality, the food, THE SPOTS, everything about the place had something to it. It was a highlight-filled trip – nine days with a banging crew exploring a city that’s unlike any I’ve seen before and meeting locals, both skateboarders and curious onlookers. Everything really came together perfectly.

Watching the Atlantic Drift Kazakhstan video with Cillian last summer is what sprung the idea. Azerbaijan came to Cillian’s mind pretty quickly, and we started looking for clips. I think we found one video that night, it was a Baku Nike trip from 2012 with Janoski, Beasley, Angel and Piscopo. The only issue was that we could never find the actual footage. What we did find was a 90 second YouTube video from a filmer named Denis Rakhmanin, who I assume used to film in the city. He had been with the guys on the trip, potentially as their tour guide, but had filmed with his fisheye behind some of the clips. The spots in this video were really something else.

Return flights were £140 and accommodation was crazy cheap as well, which alongside all the spots was enough reason to really start thinking. A few days later I mentioned it to Jack, whipping my phone out to show him 25 spots that I had already screenshotted. He thought about it for a few days, and we booked the tickets during an evening Southbank session. Cillian had moved back to Ireland, but was still down, and I had also mentioned it to Nick.

Nick –  I received a video call from you, probably on the toilet at the time, as you usually are when you phone me.

Luke – It’s a very convenient time to make phone calls.

Nick – You were just really excited about the trip, showing me 10 or 15 spots on one road you found on Google Maps, alongside random Instagram clips of scooter kids. You could see that there was a lot of potential to make a sick video out there.

I was questioning it a bit because one, your organisation. Two, there’s not much information about it online, so it was a bit of a risk. It could either go really well, or we could get there and there would be no spots. But the thing that swayed me the most was the price of the ticket. It had a gnarly layover, but there were just too many positives. 

Luke – I had a great time on that layover.

Nick –  Yeah, I know you did. But I would not do a layover like that again. But that’s kind of your style, isn’t it? Gnarly layovers. 

Luke – Both ways. Everyone had a layover.

A few weeks went by and I spoke to Rio about the trip, added him into the group chat and began working everything out. 

Rio – Bro, when you called me about it, I was pretty ready to go.

We got our visas sorted and began looking at accommodation. CHEAP AS FUCK. With the flights, visas and accommodation for the 10 days it came to something like £325 each. At this point there were five of us. A couple of weeks before going I ran into Jacob for the first time in a while, mentioned it, and he booked it that day. 

Jacob – It was literally like 10 minutes after. I was like, fuck it, let’s run it, man. 

Jack – So on the way there, we flew through Rome and we had a layover of about 16 hours.

Luke – Initially it was less, but it was late.

Jack – We had a layover initially of 12 hours. Our flights were delayed for 6 hours and we had to sleep in the airport.

Jack –  It was me, Luke, and Nick. Nick went straight to sleep and me and Luke went on the hunt for alcohol. We went to 3 bars that all told us they couldn’t serve alcohol after 2:30 in the morning. Then we ran out of cigarettes. But we found a place on the top floor that sold beer until 4am. We chugged a couple, went inside, tried to sleep, and I woke up to airport staff lightly kicking my foot to wake me up, telling me to move out of the way.

Luke – You were asleep in front of the door.

Landing in Baku was insane, the airport is a glass temple, and the drive into the city feels like a video game. There were spots everywhere, everywhere we looked there was something. 

Jack – There wasn’t a skate stopper in sight. All the spots were amazing, and there were so many of them closely grouped together. There’s all these new builds in Baku, and all these new parks that are being built that are just full of spots. Cillian and Jacob landed first and they had sent so many photos to the chat.

Jacob – me and Cillian were there that whole first day.

Luke – It was your first time meeting, right?

Cillian – Yeah, that was our first meeting. We got there super early and I just hung around in the cafe, with a vague idea of what he looked like. I just knew his glasses were held together with a bit of sellotape.

Luke – What did you get up to on that first date? 

Jacob – We got there at night, I arrived at about 12 and we got a taxi to near where we were staying. We played a big game of chess, with the lifesize pieces. Then we wandered into the old city. By that time it was starting to get light, and I just started chatting to people.

Cillian – I was glad Jacob is the way he is, because if it was someone less outgoing it could’ve been a bit boring. He was chatting to everyone.

As soon as we got into the city, we met up with Jacob and Cillian. They were with all the local skateboarders from Baku, who came to help us with all our bags and get us through the city. They came up to the Airbnb and then took us out for dinner to this local Azerbaijani restaurant. 

The next morning the locals were ready! They all came straight to the city centre in the morning and took us to their main spot, this huge statue called the Statue of Fuzili which is surrounded by granite ledges and stairs. That whole street is something else.

Nick – There’s just one main road, Fuzili Street, which goes through central Baku. It’s just plaza after plaza after plaza.

Jack – And at the end of it there’s all these new parks which are full of spots. 

Luke – Yeah it was banging, we started at that square and then skated to one of the new parks. They had these slightly downhill pathways the whole way, and the only skatepark in Baku.

Jack – Yeah, split into 3 different parks. There’s three different quarterpipes, all on the same downhill path, spaced out as you go down. That was actually fucked.

Rio landed that evening, and it was sick to have clips from day one to show him. 

Rio – We were looking through the footage and a lot of the spots that I wanted to skate were mad government buildings and stuff. 

Once again we went to eat locally, I cannot stress enough how good the food was. Everything was so fresh and the combination of cuisines surrounding them creates such an interesting local menu.

Luke – They handled business out there. 

Rio – It was real handy the whole trip but especially when we went up to that war memorial spot; Elkhan sorted the bribes out, shit like that, which was banging.

Rio – When we went to the big bank that first day, the police pulled up saying there was a drone watching us.

Luke – Drones, police and army everywhere, and they are terrifying. 

Rio – Oh my god bro, we were so lucky to have the boys to translate.

Baku itself was pretty hilly, but the hills created crazy spots. The roads out there are so wide that it creates spots and space. If it wasn’t for cheap taxis we would’ve been walking up a lot more hills, but coming the other way is so much fun. The huge parks, the wide roads, the spots along the way, it was sick.

Jack – It’s probably a 10 kilometre path and the whole strip is just full of new spots. We’d skate bits of it more or less every day. There were these crazy downhill drop ledges which carried on down 6 or 7 really long mellow ramps, I loved those. But we skated these manny pads one night, these perfect plates held up by a tiny little foot underneath, and I hit the floor so fucking hard. My side hurt for the whole trip. 

Luke – Everyone got smoked at some point, except me.

Jack – Yeah, me, Cillian, Rio, Jacob, even Nick got smoked.

By the third day everyone was finished. They all went so hard straight away, and it was so banging. We had a couple photos, we had quite a few clips already, but days 4-6 went understandably slowly. We scoped out a few spots and those who could skate did. One of those mornings was drizzly, so we took that chance to go do some touristy stuff. We went to the Old City of Baku and had a walk around its narrow, windy streets. It was like its own small community; there were clothes shops, cafes, restaurants, bars and loads of traditional Azerbaijani shops. We stocked up on local products, the fake shops were sick too. If anyone sees Jack’s Goyard wallet, just know it’s from there. 

The locals really showed us Baku. There was so much to skate and Elkhan, Ziya, Tunar, Vaghif, Matrix, Maqa and so many more were there everyday. They helped us on so many occasions. Then the one night we went without them, we got schemed…

Nick – What happened at the bar?

Jack – Yeah Luke, what happened at the bar?

Luke – Ermmmm… So me and Rio went to a bar the night before and it was banging, we spent about £30 each, and we thought it would be fun to go with all the homies.

Nick – I stayed home.

Jack – I wish I did.

Luke – Well you didn’t unfortunately. We went to this bar, and because there was a large group of us they gave us a table. They didn’t stop – they brought sparklers, confetti, drinks, shisha, everything, and they didn’t stop!! 

Jack – You and Rio left.

Luke – We went to go get cash because the night before it was a cash only bar. And in that time while we went back to the Airbnb, you and Cillian got held hostage by security for a decent sum of money. We all paid up and left. Then me and Rio went to another bar after you guys went home, and got schemed again.