my very silly lockdown project is finally done. Vin Diesel‘s Alternative Guide To Barcelona is a genuinely informative documentary about the city’s history and culture, told through the avatar of 2009's Wheelman himself. i went a lil bit insane making most of this back in May. i blame tim for suggesting jokes of this scale are possible (ps pls hire me). special thanks to my friend Vin for participating, so nice of him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6w6ltizoY
this is stylish!
this rules
I‘ve only watched 5 minutes but I’m learning so much! wow!
just finished watching this, it's really incredible. great job!
Great stuff. Incredible prescience from the person who decided to film the urban revolution of the Olympics. I remember from a trip to Primavera Sound one time that some neighborhoods of Barcelona were pretty dodgy, like El Raval, but since you mention heavy gentrification at the end, it might have changed in the past decade.
@chazumaru#2607 el Raval is the biggest failure of the gentrification project. it used to be called “El Chino” and is what‘s heavily featured at the beginning of the documentary part. it used to have a lot more narrow streets, which made it the criminal neighbourhood. in the 70s it was really wild. prostitution and drugs everywhere. my mom said a friend of hers worked at a coffee shop there where the waitresses were topless even during the day. before the Olympics they tore down large parts of it, kicked out a bunch of people who had been living there for decades (this process is beautifully documented in the film En Construcción), built the Rambla Del Raval, a big hotel (both featured in the video), a huge Contemporary Art Museum, Univerisity of Barcelona buildings, a national film archive and cinema, they changed the name of the place cuz why not… but it’s still quite narrow, and inherently unsafe because of how the streets are structured, and the flats are mostly dark and small, so it‘s not really appealing for tourists at all. instead a huge immigrant population has settled in, and… i don’t know i guess they're betting on pricing them out eventually, along with everyone else.
thanks for the compliments everyone ^^
This is extremely good!! When I went to Barcelona I could see that big cylindrical mall from my window - I wound up going there to look for games, but they didn‘t have anything I wanted, and the prices were super high. It was a bit too late for them to have old PS2 games, and there wasn’t much european-specific media there that I wanted, though it was interesting to see all the Spanish variants of games like Disgaea and whatnot all over the place.
@exodus#2628 from when i was 11 til i was 16, i lived in a flat that overlooked Mercat de Sant Antoni; during the week it‘s a normal market, but every Sunday morning it turns into a second hand sorta thing. around 200 stores from all over the city have temporary stalls there. it’s mostly old books, collectibles of all kinds (huge Magic: The Gathering scene) and like 25% videogames. every week i would go down there to browse and swap games. you could exchange one recent release for 3 or 4 old ones, and because i eventually got to know all the guys there, i basically could swap those 4 for a different 4 endlessly.
it was completely packed unless you got there before 12. all the prices on the boxes were bullshit, everything was up to negotiation. they loved to haggle, singing the praises of whatever i was interested in and shitting on whatever i brought to trade it for, they would make you work for a good deal. i would go to every stall and see who had the better offer, or lie to them about what the others had offered. if you overheard a negotioation for something you were interested in, you could step in and try to convince them to sell the game to you instead. it was a real fun time, and i got to play a ton of different PS2 games without really knowing much about them. it was extremely influential on my appreciation of videogames.
i went there last year to sell all my PS1 and PS3 stuff (keeping the PS2). some of the same guys are still there, but the selection seems a lot more homogeneous. most stores that aren't GAME franchises have closed. since games are multilingual now, people buy them on Amazon or other international websites, where they're cheaper. the people that are there now seem to know the exact value of what you're selling, because they have seen it on ebay or something. idk, i felt like it was much more rigid. i ended up selling the PS3 and a whole bunch of videogames to a young couple who were just starting to get into them and happened to be there. that was nice.
That‘s a great story! When I went the GAME style place was the only thing I could find, but I was also on a time crunch (I was meant to be attending a conference). I’ve had this sort of haggling/different stalls experience in Poland, India, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, and of course the US, and I like when you come away feeling like everyone was a winner.
[P.S. @tombo vin diesel's voice makes my dog bark]
official cover
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This is terrific !!
when we get the insert credit site back running I'm gonna put this on the front page
@exodus#3699
I was looking for some Barcelona mentions as I'm going there next year and wanted to see if there were some posts recommending things to do or see and then I ran into this.
This documentary was so great. It made me see the city and some events like the 92 olympic games in a new way. It made me connect my own local history with that of Barcelona, the idea of buenrollization of underground/progressive/radical groups and the constant fabrication of a more atractive past for an already interesting place made me think of the revisionism and stagnation of the post-dictatorship years in Chile and how those periods feel like explosions of hope and then disappointment.
I need to be able to see this video! I lived in Barcelona for three years and miss it a LOT so anything related to it is nice to see or hear.
@“safetypads”#p127176 What sort of things are you wanting to see or do? As there's a bit of everything there for everyone, from Catalan history right up to partying until you forget where you are (Which happened. More than once!)
@“tombo”#p4403 I loved the market there in Sant Antoni - my first weekend there I wandered around the city for hours and just discovered the collectables market by accident. Was blow away by how much was there and how this seemed so natural in the city where it was.
That was incredible. Well done.
@“TomoftheFog”#p127376 I mostly wanna see odd stuff, historical spots, get some comic books and magazines as I grew up hearing spanish message board posters talk about them and hopefuly find a couple of vegan spots to check out. It will be my first “real” vacation with a trip and all so I'm not really sure what to expect besides just resting and having fun.