Eligens (Look de Luxe) Barcelona: Ricky's streetwear emporium

You might remember my visit to Chikahitsu in Barcelona, where I was furnished with a pair of Visvim Shaman Folk after following a trail through the maze of streets in the Gothic Quarter which ended in an Alladin's cave of Japanese streetwear. It actually was a cave to all intents and purposes, because Chikahitsu was located in a basement, which had only just survived being flooded out by recent rains.

At the time Chikahitsu's owner Ricky was talking about his imminent move to a street-level unit - a new store stocking the finest street brands, Japanese on one side and American on the other.

After months of sweat and toil and stocking up, Eligens (Look de Luxe) as the new store is called, has been unveiled, looking fine and fully loaded with Visvim , Neighborhood ,W-taps , Head Porter , HP + , Original Fake , Uniform Experiment , Sophnet , Terrem , Rocky Mountain , Arc-terix Veilance , Pendleton , Patagonia , Stussy Deluxe , Yuketen , Viberg , Wesco , White , Abington, and a few more labels.

You'll find it on Carrer del Duc.

I think I might be visiting again soon.

Barcelona: Gaudi in the city

It's one thing to build a few buildings in a park, completely another for city planners to let you loose on an apartment block or two. But to build a cathedral? That requires friends in high places.

The trouble with having friends in extremely high places, however, is that you have to get yourself killed to meet them. Someone must have been desperate, because Antoni Gaudi didn't even get to finish the Santa Familia before his time came up.

Not that he would have lived to see it finished even of he hadn't got ran over by that tram. He was 74 at the time.

More than 120 years later, the place is still a building site.

At least he finished a couple of apartment blocks though.

I know this is yet another load of pictures from a trip you probably forgot I'd taken by now, but I reckon they're worth seeing all the same.

Visvim Shaman Folk: A tale of two shoes

The last thing I expected to return from Barcelona with was another pair of shoes, less so Visvim. And to be honest after a couple of days in the city I had banished all hope of finding a store remotely connected to my tastes.

That was when we stumbled upon this trainer shop in El Born called, I think, Black is Beauty. While I was browsing the limited edition kicks including the Adidas Porter and latest Consortium Micropacer, Samy, who runs the store, clocked my Visvim jacket.

It turned out the shop is part of a group of stores owned by a chap named Ricky, who also runs a store stocking Japanese street labels called Chikahitsu.

Chikahitsu is in the middle of a move from it present basement location to a street-level store a couple of doors down the street. So the place was in a bit of a transitional phase.

But Samy wanted us to see it, all the same. So she shut up for the evening and took us to meet Ricky, who gave us a private viewing of Chikahitsu. It was an Aladdin's cave of Japanese labels, Visvim boxes stacked waist high, Original Fake, Undercover, W)Taps, Neighborhood. I was like a kid in a candy store.

It was a miracle that I left with only these Visvim Shaman Folk. THE most comfortable creations ever to grace my feet, and getting more comfortable by the day, thanks to the cork footbed that moulds to the foot and the elk suede moccassin upper. These were an instant sell out when they were released a few seasons ago and have gone down in trainer legend. You're lucky to even get to see a pair these days, let alone buy them.

Actually I left with a different pair, in a peanut colour, and after a sleepless night during which I convinced myself I'd got the wrong colour, returned to Samy the next day to exchange them for the black.

A word of warning to anyone buying these online. I am usually a US 9.5 / 10 in Visvim but these are an 11. They come up that small.

You can find the online store of Limited Editions, another brick in Ricky's empire, here.

The doors of Barcelona

The funny thing is, it's never the walls. Unlike the tag artists of the UK, the Barcelona Graffiti contingent prefers to restrict its activities to the doors. At least they do around the Ramblas and Gothic Quarter.

Massive doors they are, too. Imposing carved baricades with wrought iron knockers.

They offer a unique canvas of their own, framed by the very building they bar entry to.

Each one is a work in progress as new tags, stencils and scrawls appear.

There was no way I was going to be able to find the lot, so here are a few of the more interesting doors I stumbled upon.

They leave the cathedral doors alone