Something miraculous has happened the last few times I've been away: the Internet at wherever I am has blocked my access to my website. On one hand it's frustrating, but on the other I sort of wonder if it's a sign to take a little break and disconnect for a while. I'm going to go with the latter for now, as I'm currently sitting on Sandra's couch feeling nice and refreshed, happily distanced and disconnected from the stress and mayhem that led up to my trip away. And then there were the joys of the trip itself.
Doing these press trips can be kind of a crapshoot because you never know what kind of mixed company you're going to wind up with. On the whole I've been pretty lucky to travel with some really cool people, some of which have wound up becoming friends. But I don't think I've had as much fun on a press trip as I did wandering through the interiors of Portugal and Spain. For one, I was traveling with Jessica and Tim (the former I met on an Azores trip, the latter on a Tahiti trip.) For two, I met two other people who proved to be shining examples of perfect travel companions (Jessica's photographer Rohan and a freelancer named Paul, both of whom are British and brilliantly whipsmart.) And for three, there were Chavs.
read more ↓
A little back story: press trips can be grueling at times, especially with large groups. There are a lot of different energies, sensibilities and activity going on just within the clique you're traveling with, but when you take that and mesh it with a full schedule, it can sometimes be a bit much. One way to counteract such stressors is to find a little bit of escape when you're feeling yourself running out of steam after seeing your 90th cathedral... which isn't to say that I don't love seeing cathedrals, because I do. But sometimes downtime is just as enriching as scheduling every moment when you need to refresh your desire to write about your surroundings.
Anyway. One of the great ways to combat the down moments is by reverting to behaving like a pimple-faced adolescent. For example, on the trip through the Azores Jessica and I amused ourselves with numerous double-entendre conversations about the nuts I would carry with me for backup in case we went somewhere where I couldn't eat the food (try traveling with wacky food allergies - it's a fabulous exercise in patience.) It spiraled completely out of control on the last night when pretty much everything or everyone we saw became something delightfully dirty. And that pretty much happened on this trip too, but most of our attention was taken up with something Paul had introduced us to in passing: the Euro Chav.
Paul had been making comments about them here and there for days, and by day four I finally piped up and asked him what the hell they were all about. And though I'm still struggling with the perfect definition (though you can find about a million websites about them), the gist of it is this: they're a faction of Brit hoodlums that are lazy and leechy, prone to leaning against things with their thumbs hooked in their jeans pockets, talk on their mobiles to their dealers, partake in a range of relatively petty crimes (with a little of the ultra-violence thrown in for good measure), and tend to wear sparkling white sneakers and gold chains. It's essentially the English version of a Wigger (is that un-PC? I'm unsure. But that's the best way to describe it.)
And so the game started: how many Chavs could we spot in a day? But I felt it necessary to document everything in photographic form so that I could further prove the theorem when I got home. (Which is to say that pictures will be forthcoming when I get back to my desktop and have the chance to properly resize everything in Photoshop.) This evolved into taking pictures of Chavs on the run with my travel mates in the foreground so as not to scare them off from their petty drug dealing and slackjawing. There are some particularly brilliant pictures, if I do say so myself, but one of the better ones was of Paul breaking the fourth wall and interacting with our subjects, doing the Chav lean with his hands in his pockets right next to our intended photographic targets. Priceless.
I don't think I can give you an accurate number in terms of how many we saw, but there are certainly my favorites, such as the future Chavs of Spain on a school fieldtrip in Salamanca - they were like mini Chavs in action, dreaming of the day they could drop out and get on the dole. Then there was the trio of Chavs that wandered through the main square in Avila, only to be outdone moments later by a genuine Chavmobile driving by (picture a compact car painted electric blue with a fin, tinted windows, decals and loads of bass.) There was Count Chavula, an older, more portly Chav to whom we paid homage by kissing an imaginary gold-plated cross on an imaginary rapper-chain around our necks. The tall-can Chav, who skulked the streets carrying a plastic bag full of beer, looking sullen and pallid from hours spent in front of a TV screen smoking pot. The dealer Chav, who managed to walk with both purpose and apathy as he roamed the Segovia Aqueduct looking to make a score, with hair so greasy and stringy that it was surely leaving an unsavory film on his sparkling white tennies. And last but certainly not least, Papa Chav at the Madrid airport, toting around his young Chav sons in matching Chavwear (essentially, spotless tracksuits.) It was a fascinating.
Naturally, once the rest of the group caught wind of what Paul, Jessica and I were doing, Paul was immediately elevated to professor status and repeatedly questioned about Chavdom, almost as if he were a Chav historian (to be fair, his nephew is quite proud to be known as "The Chavmeister" and has traced the evolution of Chavdom in an effort to get closer to its roots.) And so began the second part of our Chavucation: learning about what they do and don't eat, whether they travel in packs or alone, their preferred brand of trainers, their preferred strain of pot, preferences of the female Chav (also known as a Chavette), the politics of footie, and so on.
Ahh, the Chavs. So many of them, so many memories, such good times. I've tried in vain to spot them in New York, and have yet to see one. I fear I'm suffering from withdrawal. Will I never Chav again? My heart weeps at the thought.
(Yes, I'm mildly jetlagged. What's your point?)
↑ close
