Category: skateboarding

Fair warning. I’m about to go on about Tony Alva again…

Every few weeks I do a YouTube search for new Tony Alva footage. From what I can see, Tony doesn’t go out “to film.” He goes out and skates, and maybe someone shoots some video, and maybe some of it is pretty good, and maybe it ends up on YouTube. Such is the case with this video below.

After watching this video several times today I texted it to some friends with some comments about how relaxed this skating is.

When I see rippers today on nearly any terrain they look frantic to me. Maybe it’s because they are going really fast, but I think it’s more than that. Not sure what, but I’ll figure it out. The propagation of skateboarding video, first on VHS tapes and now streaming to your pocket idiot-device has to some extent homogenized skating. I think it’s hard to argue against that, so I’m calling it a fact. I see it in freestyle skateboarding too. Where once skaters only had access to see the skating of their friends, or maybe the best person in town, or a group of local pros, now everyone has immediate access to everything. I think to some extent this permeates not just skateboarding but probably everything. Culture, pop culture, subculture, is now global. How sub can a global subculture be? Not very.

So now I see clips of rippers skating parks as fast at they can, every trick seems rushed and on the edge of disaster. Now the edge of disaster is often celebrated in skateboarding and rightfully so. Still, seeing someone blast around like a lunatic simply doesn’t connect with me.

Yes, this is likely a function of my age, but not entirely. I’d have said the same thing if I was 23 right now. Correction; 23, but with the same formative skate experiences.

At the start of this video, Alva does a little axle stall on a small wall, then does a casual 540 spin on the opposing bank. Relaxed. Styish. Smooth.

I heard him in a recent interview that what he thinks about now when skating isn’t so much learning new stuff but refining what he already knows. It shows. That line looks so satisfying. I can guess that when he does that line, he isn’t like “Wow, look what I just did!” but rather “Damn, that felt good!”.

Same with every line in that bowl.

My friend The Lone Sentry says Alva has Groove.

Earlier this year I was at an Aikido seminar taught by an 85 year old 7th Dan, Harvey. Harvey’s knees are kinda worn out. He’s a bit broken down, but he’s still teaching, and still learning. He told us the thing he loves about Aikido is that no matter how old you get there are still thing to learn, things where understanding can be deepened. I think skateboarding is the same way.

To my readers who aren’t skateboarders – sorry – this may be a boring post. I usually try to insert some “witty” remarks, personal (narcissistic) reflections, or other things to entertain or inform. I will give it a shot. Also, you can click the images to make them bigger.

So, last month I put this new setup together:

Black Label 9″ standard pops (14.5″ wheelbase), Ace 55 trucks, 54mm v1 103a Bones STF wheels. 1 thin riser under each truck, and Lil Jawns rails.

This is the board I’m riding in the recent Skateboarding in Fort Worth post (if you are not a skateboarder, you may find this post entertaining anyway. Maybe.)

Those new to this blog are likely unaware of my constant search for “the perfect board”. This is a mental disorder that many skateboarders share. We agonize over tiny details in our setup, when the truth is that more practice is the real solution to nearly every skating problem. Sure, there are some very real differences that can be felt in your board when you change tiny things. No doubt.

This all reminds me of my father and my uncle’s constant purchases of new golf clubs. I know that modern golf clubs are vastly superior to the old stuff. Materials science has advanced a lot.  But when you factor that out, and compare my obsession, what’s at work to a great extent is simple consumerism. It is fun to buy new stuff. And there’s nothing wrong with trying new configurations. It can get a bit expensive, but as a handsomely paid public librarian I have so much disposable income I just don’t know what to do with it, so why not buy skateboard stuff?

So, dear unknown reader who is not a skateboarder, regarding the “tiny” details I’ve been referring to… yes, I am correct when I say that more practice is usually the important thing is skateboarding, but we really can tell the differences in those tiny adjustments. They do matter. The difference in feel of a 54mm diameter wheel and a 56mm diameter wheel is significant. A 14.75″ wheelbase feels different in many ways from a 14.5″ wheelbase.

I’ve come to understand that my own consumerist tendencies in skateboard gear purchases come from not always accepting myself — my own skating – as it is. I see a skater I like and think “I’d like to skate like them. What are they riding?”.  Or perhaps I’m remember how I skated when I was 23-years old.  What magic setup will somehow repair the springs I used to have in my knees?

Morehei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, said “Masakatsu agatsu” – True victory is victory over one’s self. He was referring to martial arts, but as I continue in my 19-year practice of aikido I find this to be true in every area of my life. In the case of skateboarding and skateboard gear, I think that “victory over one’s self” translates to “knowing one’ s self honestly.”

I don’t need a giant board so I can skate like Alva. I like Tony Alva’s skating, but it’s not my skating. It’s his. I love my friend Tony Gale’s skating, but that is HIS skateboarding. Not mine. I love and admire my friend Dale’s skating. His skating is similar to mine, but it’s his. I’d know his skating if I only watched his shadow.

There’s nothing wrong with my skating. It’s mine. My board needs only to be right for my skating. If it works for that it’s good enough.

One might think “Bob is just getting old and he can’t skate like he used to.” This would be partially correct. Age is a real thing. I am not injecting the blood of fit 21-year old athletes into my system, so I am stuck at present with a relatively fit (but a little too fat) 61-year old body. It’s not going to get any better. BUT — I have left most flip tricks and bombastic shit behind not entirely because of age, but because that stuff isn’t of interest to me anymore.

Truth is, I have 3 boards right now that are “right” for me, depending on the situation.

• The board I mentioned above, for ditches, parks, and all-around stuff
• 8.5″ wide Super-8 pops, Indy 159s, 54mm Bones STF. 1 thin riser. This is a good board for parking-lot style for me.
• 8.25″ wide Super-8 pops, Indy 149s, 54mm Bones STF. 1 thin riser. Smaller board for freestyle and quicker footwork and spins.

Yes, I still have a “real” freestyle board, but I’m no longer interested in competing, so I never use it.

Right now, I would say that 90% of the time when I go skate I will simply grab the 9″ Black Label and go. Truth is I can ride the 8.5″ in the same situations and the narrow trucks are better for spinning, which is a major part of my skating.

Changing wheels out for different terrains is a reasonable idea, but really, this quiver of three boards will pretty much cover all the bases for me these days. I don’t need to worry about whether or not I’m going to do some kickflips or shoveits or rail flips. I’m just not interested in that stuff anymore. It’s not the direction I’m going.

I’ll close with this. As I was writing this, my friend Chris was publishing a similar post on his blog, The Twilight Sessions. Read it.

Fort Worth is what you might call the “sister city” of Dallas. While we call this area the DFW Metroplex, Dallas and Fort Worth are of very different astmospheres. FW isn’t quite as big. Both have great arts and culture, but FW leans into the cowboy thing a bit more. FW is a bit more chill.

This past Sunday my friend Dale and I met our friend Carter over there to skate this ditch (see video). Carter had a camera set up and caught a few nice clips of us. I am the guy in long pants with the wool flat cap.

The week before this we were at a really nice skatepark in Dallas. I have 1000x more fun in this ditch. I love skating real, natural terrain.

Same clips in slo-mo.

Tomorrow I’m going out to Fort Worth, Texas, to skate a very cool ditch I’ve skated once before, last summer.

It’s an hour away.

There are numerous skateparks much closer. I will have more fun in this drainage ditch, not intended at all for skateboarding, than I ever have at any skatepark.

For the most part this is how my life in skateboarding has been. Skating places not intended for skateboarding. Reimagining the physical landscape – the built environment – in the way that skateboarders do. It’s been said more articulately by others many times.

Last weekend my friend Dale and I went to the 71st birthday skate session of my friend Jeff. It was at the new skatepark at Bachman Lake, in Dallas. It’s a super nice park. Really good. But still, for me, not even 10% as fun as a ditch.

Now, Bachman Lake is in a pretty shitty area of Dallas. The skatepark is at the west end of the lake, on the north side. The south side of the lake is Love Field Airport. Bachman Lake is where the legendary Blue/Clown vert ramp was during the 1980s. Dallas pros like Jeff Phillips, Dan Wilkes, Craig Johnson, and many others practiced there weekly, alongside everyone else.

Anyway, the west end of the lake, where the skatepark is, well, it’s a shitty area. Light industrial on streets like Denton Drive that head north along side the light rail line. Warehouses, shitty bars and clubs, low-rent apartments.

So when we left, I was like “fuck it, let’s go up Webbs Chappel Rd.”. Down that far south Webbs Chappel is sketchy and shitty. Dale needed some water so we stopped at a gas station/convenience store. Now, the store wasn’t horrible looking. But it is in a horrible area. But it was the middle of the day, not 3am. So we stopped and went in and got some water. As we left the store and were getting in the car we heard some loud unintelligible babbling from over by the light rail tracks. There was a security guard (armed) who’d been running off someone of unknown problems but clearly — troubled. We got in the car. I picked the exit furthest from the insane person, who was already heading for us to ask for money. Dale indicated that the person was female. Ugh. Anyway, we split.

Encounter averted.

Note to self. Don’t go that way again.

So we continued north, heading toward LBJ freeway and escape from shittyville.

As we drove, as skateboarders tend to do, we were still scanning for good skate spots. Dale spotted what we think was a good bank spot, but we’ll not be returning to Mordor to skate it.