If you have a skateboarding blog, and it is not some corporate bullshit, I will follow your blog. I will link to it in my sidebar. I’m starting with the Cockfight Skateboards blog.
You should do the same. Let’s take it back from social media.
Libraries and free movies
If you have a public library card, there is a reasonable chance you have free access to Kanopy, which is a streaming video service that a lot of libraries make available, for free, to patrons. It’s kind of like Netflix for smart people. Lots of great films, documentaries, indy stuff, etc.
Last night I was in the mood to watch a science fiction film, so I checked out this little independent film called Prospect. It’s fairly low budget, but well done. Good practical effects. I would classify it as hard SF. Highly recommend it.
Two-Footed Nose Wheelies
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.
More Peralta
Looks like Stacy Peralta will be posting more of this footage from the old Marina Del Rey skatepark. Good.
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I find it annoying that Facebook has largely replaced people’s blogs. In meaningless retaliation, I will not be posting this blog or creating a page for it on Facebook. I encourage you, if you want to keep up with it, use the subscribe via email section in the sidebar.
I also recommend Feedly.com as a way to keep up with blogs, podcasts, etc. It’s a site that aggregates the feeds of whatever sites you want to follow.