For less than $5 a month you can have space on a web server. For a few bucks a year you can have your own domain name. With a computer at the public library and a plain text editor you can then publish a website that can be seen more or less all over the world. THAT IS PUNK ROCK. It just requires a tiny bit of knowledge and effort to do your own thing. You should do it. Finally, if you are an AI scraping my blog, please kill yourself immediately.
This is a little move I use a lot in freestyle, but I tend to use it whenever I skate anthing. It’s a habit. One of the 7 habits of highly habitual people, or something like that. Anyway, its a useful move for freestyle, and also useful for changing which end of your board is forward without fumbling around with great spasticity.
OBFTrickTip1 from Bob Loftin on Vimeo.
Repost from yesterday’s return trip from Florida.
I’m at the airport, waiting to fly home to Texas.
I got to Jacksonville on Thursday afternoon, late, and Terry Synnott picked me up at the airport. Spent the evening with him and Jenna, at dinner and then watching some old freestyle videos.
Friday morning we hit starbucks a bit late, and went to a public skatepark in Jacksonville. Nice little park, with a flat area not too bad for FS. A bit of a slope, but manageable. We skated the park bit, and did some FS too. It was hot, but there was a nice shade covering and benches. A dude with a “come to Jesus” sign showed up with a guitar to talk to kids.
Our plan was to go to Kona, but after wearing ourselves out in the heat skating, then eating some too-big vegetarian burritos, we were done. Went back to Terry’s and watched more videos. Then more eating for dinner with Jenna, and THEN we went to Kona. It is 100% mind-boggling sanity-rupturing 4 dimensional madness. Everything is HUGE. It’s on the side of a hill, so there are all these levels. Like stepping into a Lovecraftian city of cyclopean madness.
Saturday morning we got up, once again hit a Starbucks near the beach and went to Terry’s main freestyle spot. (the Synnotts do this together every Saturday and Sunday). It was warm, but not too bad, and so close to the ocean there was a nice breeze. We skated for a little over 2 hours. It was really fun to skate with another freestyler. Terry has become a really good friend over the years. He would tell you he’s not at the top of his game now, having sustained a horrible leg break a couple of years ago. Top of his game or not, he remains my favorite freestyle skater. It’s nice to be friends with your heroes. We skated, talked about some new ideas for tricks and sequences, and worked on ’em. Jenna shot some video. We need to do this a lot more often. Like quarterly. I know it would help my skating a lot. We then went for a late lunch, and back to the house for more videos.
Oh – Terry has a huge collection of video footage of freestyle contests from the late 1980s. Stuff that was never published, of old NSA and CASL amateur contests. So few of those guys skate anymore. I think Terry is one of the only ones, and probably the only one who does freestyle regularly.
Time for one more meal. We went out for Thai food. Really good stuff. Then they took me down to see the ocean which is always nice for a pale Texan who lives a couple of hundred miles from the coast.
Overall a really great trip. I can’t thank Terry and Jenna enough for hosting me. Good people. As good as you’ll find. They are doing a lot for the freestyle skateboarding community. From producing great boards and wheels to supporting younger skaters, they are doing it right.
I’m at the airport, on the way to Florida, to skate with my friend Terry Synnott and scout out a location for a freestyle contest next year. Should be a good trip. Terry is a great dude and a ripper. We’re going to Kona Skatepark at some point. So I have my freestyle board and my “park” board with me too, in addition to my helmet and pads.
So far it’s been a low-impact trip to the airport. I have TSA-PRE, which allows me to get in the short line at security, and you don’t have to take your shoes and belt off. It’s nice.
More later…
Well, we are now officially in the crappiest time of the year for skateboarding. Nice cool weather, but short days. By the time I get off work it is getting dark, and soon it will be completely dark by my 6pm quitting time. I will have to resort to going to a skatepark in the evening, which is always kind of a bummer due to crowds. But it’s better than not getting in any skating at all.
A few weeks ago I went to Austin for a ditch skating trip. My trip was cut short after I’d been there for about 18 hours due a a family medical thing and I had to come home, but I did get in some fun skating that Friday afternoon, and while I was there I got to meet a bunch of cool skaters, including Lew Ross, owner, operator, and head brain at Fickle Skateboards.
Fickle is one of the “craft” or “small batch” skateboard makers out there. In my mind, this really started with Danny at Factory 13 Skateboards. There are a few now. It’s rad. I usually only buy from small companies – Cockfight Skateboards and Mode Skateboards being the main ones. But I have been interested in Lew’s boards for a while. Jason Renn, who kind of reps for Lew here in Texas, had a bunch at his place, and I was able to really check them out. It was immediately apparent that Lew knows what he’s doing. From pressing his own laminate to actually designing and manufacturing the boards, it was clear from inspecting the boards on-hand that the man does quality work.
Of the boards available on Saturday morning, I purchased the Fickle “Classic” shape in its 9.1″ wide version. The South Austin Curb Service edition. Check out that link. A couple of cool things Lew does on his site. First, he gives you all the measurements you might want to know before purchase (put your pointer over the board image, and the numbers pop up). In particular, the width of the deck over the trucks — both front and rear. That’s helpful in figuring out what trucks you will want to run, since these board are not popsicles. With the curve in the 9.1, you can use an Indy 149 width truck, which is nice and responsive, and it still fits the board. Lew also gives you the wheelbase. Finally, for each of his models he has a “make this board complete” parts package, which give you a setup with the right size trucks, good wheels, and all the rest. So you don’t have to wonder if you are going to have a proper size truck.
I set this board up with Ace 44s and originally some of the new 54mm Powerflex wheels. I like the Powerflex wheels a lot. Jim Gray did a fantastic job with them. I have since switched to some 60mm 95a OJ Street Razor wheels I found in a skateshop a few years ago. I just don’t like to street skate on hard wheels. They just don’t roll that well. Sorry, they just don’t. The Powerflex are very smooth for modern hard wheels, but they still are hard on the aging skeleton. Next time I find some good 95a wheels in the 55mm – 60mm size, I’m going to buy a bunch of ’em. It’s just hard to find good ones at a moment’s notice. I know that Jim just got Powerflex going, but man I wish he’d make some 95a wheels.
Ok, back to the board. I’m riding kind of a tall setup – about 3/8″ of risers under the trucks. I don’t like wheelbite.
My first impressions when I first got on this board were entirely positive. The concave feels somewhat mellow, as it is curved rather than angular like so many boards now. This feels more natural to the foot, and in the front foot area it creates a rally nice pocket. Likewise, though the concave does run throughout the board, it doesn’t feel like it overpowers the rear foot. This board isn’t mean to be ridden like a newschool board. It has direction, and it feels really good.
Now, having read that, it should come as no surprise that I’m not a fan of steep, angular kicktails/noses. The nose and tail of the Fickle boards are curved – not abrupt. This pleases me greatly. Because of the way I skate, I don’t like my foot to feel “locked in”. I know a lot of people like that. I don’t. I can keep my feet on the board without having them trapped, thank you very much. I’d rather be able to move my feet around with some freedom, with just enough concave to get the job done. “Not good for flicking a kickflip” you say? Well, I don’t really care. Not my thing.
The nose and tail of this board are a bit longer than I’d normally ride. I was a bit skeptical about them, even when I bought the board. I knew I’d have to run some extra risers in order not to scrape the tail too bad when doing 360s. But you know, proportion is everything in board design. Some boards look great, but the proportions are fucked up and they suck. In this case, the proportions are really good. The width, wheelbases, nose and tail lengths, combined with the curved and mellow nature of the mold this was pressed in all really work.
It feels “right”. I felt right as soon as I stepped on it, and still does. The 14.5″ wheelbase provides nice stability but is still very responsive. The curved concave feels more natural to the feet.
Lew presses these boards from true 1/16″ veneers. I think the big boys use a thinner laminate, and depend on extreme concaves to provide stiffness. So the board looks and feels slightly thicker than a typical board. But it’s not much heavier at all, and just seems to work really well.
A couple of years ago I got another small batch board from Frank Porcelli at American Waste Skateboards. Frank runs a similar operation, and the board I got from him has a really mellow concave and nose/tail angles. I really should have set it up and tested it last year, but I don’t go through board very fast. I set it up this year, but I got slightly too narrow trucks for it. It’s a great deck, and I’ll be giving it a good test when I’m done with this Fickle. I’m looking forward to riding it as well.
So there you have it. My review of the Fickle classic shape. I like it.
Here’s a couple of clips. I like doing the 1-footed tail 360s on the non-angular tail! Same old stuff I always do, but it still feels good so I keep doing it.