Sören Manzoni, creator of Manzoni's Garage.
Sören Manzoni defines himself as “a Mediterranean surfer”. He is from Barcelona and has spent most of his life on the beach, but he has also spent the last 16 years traveling around the world. as a DJ, playing rock 'n roll and being the visible face (and founder) of a party called Nasty Mondays.
"Currently I am focused on the day to day of my Garage Museum", he tells us, referring to his 200-square-meter space in Barcelona, where he has been keeping jewelry for 25 years. Manzoni's Garage is the first museum dedicated to skateboarding in Spain: it has more than 1,000 skateboards in an environment that pays homage to arcades, and offers à la carte experiences ideal for those nostalgic for the 80s and 90s.
More than 150 boomboxes and more than 1,000 skates make up a collection intended to spread the history and culture of skateboarding to new generations with a very specific message: “Skateboarding comes from the ocean”.
The museum houses a large number of pieces of great nostalgic and artistic value.
the very Loquillo has contacted him to dress a hotel room, as the setting for his latest video clip. “And the first Spanish Olympic skater in history (Tokyo 2021), Danny Leon, was at the Museum last week, helping me hang a board and playing pinballs”, the collector tells us.
“The skateboard industry and market are very consolidated and accepted by society, It is important to convey that in the beginning we were misunderstood and teenagers with no future”, Soren recalls. “Nothing better than setting up the first Skateboard Museum in Spain in Barcelona, internationally recognized as the capital of world skateboarding, for its architecture and urban quality. I have merged it with my other hobby, pinballs, machines of the million or petacos… also called recreational”.
Sören Manzoni, creator of Manzoni's Garage, surfing in the Maldives.
Thus, Manzoni's Garage "Pinballs & Wheels" was born. "As you can see, passion is what moves me, it's my gasoline," jokes the businessman, who began collecting around 1995, in that post-Olympic Barcelona. “I worked at a skate and surf shop called Free. At that time, parents went there to buy new skateboards for their sons and daughters. and replace your old boards. I exchanged them for current boards and kept the old ones”, he says between laughs. "And he paid the difference at cost."
The Museum also exhibits countless limited edition pinballs, more than 100 lunchboxes, and anthological motorcycles. "Skateboarding deserves it, there are many of us in this world," says the Barcelona native. Of all the pieces, the most special is probably a 1986 Disco Lite boombox with colored LEDs that appears in Madonna's video for the song Hung Up.
One of Sören Manzoni's skate pieces, at the La Poma skatepark, in Premià de Dalt.
“And as for skateboards, one from the early 1950s, made by a father for his son with a simple strip of wood and an old roller skate with four metal wheels cut in half. The child's name, Stecey, is knifed into the wood. It would be wonderful to find that child, who must be about seventy-five years old, and return it to him.” he explains to us.
His most repeated destinations have been L.A., San Diego and New York. “I have visited all the antique stores, flea markets and flea markets in the area, from L.A. to Tijuana,” Sören tells us, and We ask him to detail his preferred flea markets:
1- Long Beach Antique Market (third Sunday of every month), Long Beach, California. “It is spectacular, it covers approximately three asphalt soccer fields with the best selection of vintage and fashion objects, decoration, etc.”
On the second Sunday of every month, the Rose Bowl stadium fills with curious bargain hunters.
2- Rose Bowl Flea Market, in Pasadena, California (every second Sunday of the month). “The old stadium that hosted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, whose surroundings are invaded by hundreds and hundreds of exhibitors with the best collectible retro 'junk'. Last time I brought a container with pinballs, furniture and full of skateboards”.
3- Hell's Kitchen Flea Market, NYC (every Saturday and Sunday in Manhattan). "Currently it's closed... But along with Dumbo Flea in Brooklyn, I hope they'll once again be my Potosí of best game found on the hunt."
Sören doesn't like to buy on eBay. “ The magic part is finding all those skates on trips. Although the great volume of my collection has been found in the daily life of my city, both in "The old Encantes" and in the current ones. In fact, The other day I came across two boxes full of old skateboard wheels... and the sellers gave me credit because I didn't have any loose on them. I paid for them within two days. From so many years buying, they already know me, there is confidence”.
SKATEBOARD CRAZY AROUND THE WORLD
Do you have a similar reference in any other country in the world? “My main mentor is in L.A., he has the biggest museum of skateboarding in the world. We often trade skateboards produced in Spain for other American ones. He has inspired me without realizing it, and I have inspired another crazy person like me in Toulouse (France)".
The museum reproduces the atmosphere of an arcade.
Regarding the nostalgia that we currently live, Sören admits that it is difficult to find new concepts, in art, in fashion… “I like to look back and pay attention to designs and objects. retrieve them. Something like listening to an entire album from the past and making the rock understand that the good song was the least known, not the hit. I am an inveterate nostalgic, but not because I believe that past times were better, but because of an immense respect for history. These pieces inspire me. They take me to my childhood, it is my romantic part. I see beauty in objects that some do not know how to see.
To visit the museum, contact Sören Manzoni directly through his Instagram account: @sorenmanzoni.