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So, check it out, my friend Jay and I were skating downtown L.A. and this cop tells us we better stop or else we'll "be eating through a straw for the next month." We were like, "No way, pig" (in our heads). This happens about every 10 fuckin' minutes in L.A., so me and Jay decided to find the cheapest place to fly to in the world and go skate there. After checking good places like Greece and Italy, we ended up with some place called Beirut. We didn't know much about it, but figured it would at least be warm. And there's no way it could be any more uptight the Stars and Bars, DOOOOOOOD! Our board sponsor, Sector 9 (thanks, dudes) had just given us some mini-gun decks with wide trucks and soft wheels. We also had a prototype hill deck and trucks, so we were looking for long hills, clean pavement, empty pools. Any canvas where we wouldn't get harassed. Dropping out of the sky into Beirut, it looked like our dreams might be realized. Lights dotted large hills that rolled down to the sea. Skate paradise from 30,000 feet. We left customs at 3:00 a.m. and set out toward downtown. The streets were empty and quiet, but from the looks of the buildings, a ton of stuff probably happened here. There were bullet holes in every building, so we got the cab driver to take us downtown, where everything was rebuilt and there were long hills waiting to be bombed. We jumped out of the taxi and took advantage of the pre-morning emptiness. The streets were clean and wide. Hills wound down at the perfect degree, and the pavement was so smooth that world land-speed records were only a stopwatch away. Under cover of darkness, we skated until we could skate no more. The morning light brought rush-hour traffic and that sent us to bed. Traffic is maybe the main thing that makes skating Beirut a gnarly experience. One time, Jay and I jumped into the middle of the main north–south freeway. We skated through the streams like Frogger. When we popped out, a hippie Swedish backpacker dressed like the American Taliban was standing there with a cross look on his face. He goes, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but what exactly do you think you're doing?" and Jay laughs and calls him Johnny Walker Lindh. Then he says something like, "I don't know if you guys fully comprehend where you are. This is Lebanon, and it's a dangerous country. There are terrorist groups like Hizbullah that kidnap tourists for sport. They HATE Westerners. You guys should really try to fit in more, and don't skateboard," etc., etc. We asked everyone we saw about Hizbullah (or is it Hezbollah?) and were told to check out a neighborhood they run called Burj Al Barajneh. When we got there, it seemed like any other Beirut neighborhood, save a few noticeable differences. There were pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini everywhere, and a lot of guys in fatigues everywhere. There were also video cameras posted at the main street leading in. Things looked pretty bleak until we found a nice gap right next to a waving statue of the Ayatollah that looked a lot like Sean Connery. The gap had a little lip that launched you over a grass hill, and if you had the speed, you ended up in the street 15 feet down. This was one of the best discoveries on the trip, but it didn't last. We had been skating for half an hour when we whipped out the cameras to document the occasion. In less than a minute, three large, well-dressed men were on top of us. One of them asked us (in English) to stop filming, and to please relinquish the film. We did. They thanked us and moved along. When they had rounded the corner, our photographer, a nice kid from Southern Lebanon, explained that they were Hizbullah and filming was forbidden in Burj Al Barajneh. Whatever. They didn't tell us to stop skating. We took our time exploring Beirut. There were just too many places. We found an actual skate park on the south side of town. This place was legitimate. There was a full vert pipe, rails, launch ramps and boxes. A large fence surrounded the property and was flanked by an army guard turret. We started climbing the fence, when out of nowhere came two large men with scruffy beards and black leather jackets. They started going nuts in Arabic, so we looked to the photographer for help. He translated: "You can't go in there." And we asked him why not. "It's off-limits," he said. And again we asked him why. The park was made of raw steel. What were we going to do? Bend it? We kept asking them more questions, but after finding out they were the Syrian secret police we were told to leave (they literally said, "leave"). Our translator buddy told us we should leave because the Mukhabarat, or Syrian secret police, were not to be messed with. Screw that, we just wanted to skate the pipe, and couldn't figure out why Syrian policemen were in Lebanon. It's like a Mountie telling you not to skate Miami Beach. 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