Sinus Infection Winter 2019 continues, which means I’ve been sitting around thinking about skating. Tonight I’ve been thinking about my favorite trick, the 2-footed Nose Wheelie. Some people call it a Hang Ten Nose Wheelie. Bad people replace the word Wheelie with “manuel”, which is of course incorrect for reasons I’ll not go into here (but words do actually mean things, so I’m not flexible on this).

Modern freestylers tend to do the trick with their feet centered on the board, while older skaters often had their feet offset or not exactly facing forward, or at least have one foot a little further up the nose than the other. The new way is better for variations like Nose Wheelie Spacewalks. I can do it both ways, but I tend to put one foot a bit farther up the nose, as I learned this in about 1979. It never occurred to me that a spacewalk might be possible from this wheelie.

If you want to learn this trick, here is Tony Gale’s tip for it on FreestyleTrickTips.com. Tony will harsh on you for moving your feet to the offset position, but don’t let that fool you. He’s a top bloke, and certainly in the top 5 freestylers in the world now.

Talking to my friend Terry Synnott (of Mode Skateboards) tonight, I was telling him that a shorter nose allows you to lift the rear wheels higher, and that I think it looks better. Terry thinks this opinion comes from the era in which I started skating. He’s probably right. Still, it looks better with those rear wheels held high. Anyway, here are some examples.

Me, Oct 2019. Photo by Joe Makarski. You can see how much less nose I really need. That long nose is actually a problem. I’m generally happy with the wheelie. Good rear wheel height.

Doug Saladino, late 70s, offset feet, great style.

Tony Alva, from cheesy Playboy Magazine video, but with great style. Very offset feet. Sometime in the 2010s.

Steve Cathey, late 70s, Jim Goodrich photo. Great wheel height and wild back arch. Feet pretty well centered.

Steve Olson, Indy Trucks ad, early 80s Thrasher mag. Again, great style, wheels held high. So cool. Offset feet.

Just fooling around.

Messing around from Bob Loftin on Vimeo.

1. I’ve gone back to the double kick, for good. I just skate with more confidence on it.
2. I’ve been working mostly on footwork related stuff, trying to improve flow. Without flow, we are nothing.

flow into space walk from Bob Loftin on Vimeo.

The annual freestyle contest in Paderborn, Germany is coming up in early July. It, quite simply, the best freestyle contest. The ground there is magical and holy. It’s a grassroots gather. No corporate bullshit, no parades. No prize money. Just a great event, like a family gathering.

I’m starting to think about my contest runs. A run at Paderborn has to mean something to me. It isn’t just a bunch of tricks strung together. Corny as it may sound, it’s my art, and I care about it. I’m not that good, but what I do out there is all mine. We all skate like ourselves. No one skates like you, and no one skates like me. So when you do a contest run, it should come from within you. It should represent you — your emotions. I don’t give a fuck what tricks someone does. A run must not be hollow. Even a run where you mess up a lot can still be a beautiful thing.

So I’m working on a list of tricks and an approach to the run that I think exemplify me, and picking some music that will mean something to me, and I hope I can make it a gift to my friends there and connect with them.

Competition sucks, but like all grassroots skateboarding events, this isn’t so much a competition as it is a celebration.