Category: freestyle skateboarding

Soul Searching

Maybe Soul Searching is a little bit dramatic a term, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how I approach freestyle skateboarding this week, and about taking my own advice about always skating like one’s self.

It was percolating (I almost wrote “gestating”) just under my surface thoughts for a while, and I think yesterday’s Alva post really brought it to the conscious mind. In particular, skating my own way at Paderborn this summer, rather than emulating someone else. Truth is we can’t help but skate our own way, and when we try not to, well, the results are horrible. I have this long list of tricks I “want” to learn. They are mostly tricks that lots of other people do. Not original. A list of check-box stuff that will frustrate the hell out of me and not really make me very happy. They will be removed from the list. Going to work on my own stuff. My own ideas. That must be good enough. It is. It is more than good enough.

Yes, I probably spend a little too much time thinking about things.

Style through the decades

The other day on Instagram, Tony Alva had one of those “story” posts in which he did a 2 foot nose wheelie where one of his feet is way to the side, and as he carves around he moves it almost to a G-Turn and almost to a 1-foot nose wheel position before he finishes the move. I really like the way he does them. There’s not a lot of footage of him skating, but at this point in this dumb video from “World of Playboy” he does the move. I say dumb because they obviously wanted him to talk about being a “renegade”, and TA does his best to accommodate them, and well, it’s kind of blabbering. I really think Tony is a better than that, and the editing and questions were probably dumb. But really, the move is awesome. Here he is doing it in a Van’s video, under cramped conditions.

So I did a little interwebs research and found some other images that I really like, because they show him back the early 1970s doing it the same way, then a couple of shots from more recent stuff (including this video). Kind of cool to see him still doing this move. I like that.

All photos stolen from the interwebs. Thanks to the photographers.

 

Alva two-foot nose wheelie style from days of yore.
Logan Earth Ski days.
More recent image of the now middle-aged but well preserved Alva doing the move.

 

Detail of foot position and delightful knee style from the dreadful video linked to above.

A little skating

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I managed to get some skating in over the last week. After winter I always put my foot on the freestyle board and wonder if I can “still even do this.” The first session doesn’t feel that good. I have to understand and accept that. The trick is just to get back on the board and roll, and get used to it. From November to usually March the weather and holiday decorations at my freestyle spot ( they put up Santa’s Village) conspire to keep me off the freestyle board and just skating a little street and ditch. So by the time I get back on the freestyle board it feels a bit weird at first.

After 3 session last week I finally started feeling good on the board again. Rusty, but feeling solid again. Here’s a little clip of something I do on my street board too. I call it “slide to spin shove-it”. Backside 180 slide into a fakie 360 with a 180 shove-it at the end. I like to do them rolling fairly fast. It’s a high percentage trick for me. I usually make it. Not too complex. You just have to let it flow.

Today is Tuesday. The weather is back to rainy crap, but at least I got a few session in. I’m excited for the rest of the year in skating.

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