Melbourne By Board

Its was way too early to be awake, but here we are at 5am in a cab on the way to Sydney Airport.
I haven’t been up this early in years.
Nick and I stashed our boards in a box, praying they didn’t get lost in a maze of multi-directional conveyor belts, and tucked to the gate. Excitement was building.

A flight, cab and train later we arrived in the heart of Melbourne to be greeted by Vault team rider and generally off-the-rails girl- Jenna Russo.

After a short introduction to the parents we dumped our gear at the Russo mansion and headed down to a local hill to begin the fun.
The road was a casual left turn into a straight away with a nearly untouched surface. It was perched at the top of a new development with a little man-made lake at the base of what was an old quarry.

The sun was setting and a full day of travel had left our stomachs empty so we piled into Jenna’s OG Merc “Bubbles” and headed to her place.

Dinner, Dinner was epic, hell I could write an entirely new blog about how good that food was. Both Nick and I were stoked – great skate, full bellies; it was definitely time for a nap.

10am rolled around and nick blasted into my room barking about wasting daylight – I was struggling for energy until we were introduced to the worlds greatest juice.
Pumped on a good breakfast we geared up and headed to a spot Jenna could see, but took us forever to find. After a few u-bolts we found the hill. A crazy steep drop into a sweeping right then left. The gradient and surface combination meant traction was a thing of the past. Nick threw down hard but the gradient got the best of him and after a few stacks and some long, long walks up we took a break for lunch.

A cheeky feed and quick review of the footage amped us up and we headed back to the quarry for some chill times and to catch a few more clips for the edit. Another day down, we loaded up on some ground breaking ratatouille and crumbed veal, smashed out the first of two sick edits and headed to the Russo band room for a jam – Jenna laid out some sweet tunes on the guitar until we were all ready to call it a night.

The day had arrived. RMIT longboardings end of year jam was only an hour away, Jenna’s wonderful mother Ida packed us a sweet lunch and we jumped into Bubbles.
The slide jam was sick, a heap of shredders threw down for one of Melbourne’s biggest events – Shout out to the RMIT boys who made it happen.

After a long day of shredding Jenna took out the girls prize and I managed 3^rd in longest stand up – not massively stoked with my performance but hey good times were had. At the end of a long day we rolled back home and relaxed with the Russo clan.

On our last full day we woke up to rain, but thanks to spastic Victorian weather, it was sunny as all hell by the time we headed into Melbourne City. Jenna had taken the day off skating to study for her last ever school exam so Nick and I cruised the CBD relaxing, throwing down some flat land and generally having a swell time.

In the late arvo we would rolled back to Jenna’s for an afternoon shred that ended up becoming one of the greatest sessions I’ve ever had – the video of said shred session can be found here –

Going on trips is always rad and this one was no different. Big thanks to The Russo’s for putting Nick and I up for the week and feeding us.

See ya next time kids, Skate Safe!

Psycho Samurai Review

Here is the Video portion of my review:

Initial feelings -

When I first got on the board I was in love.
The gas pedals or Gas Knobs as I call them are brilliant, perfect place to maximize leverage without taking back from the platform.
The concave is deep and comfortable; it’s a sweet dish style progressive concave, locking you in without a restrictive feel.

Set up – Initially I was shredding the stock complete set up Vault RKPs and CueBalls but recently I’ve been running it with Anvil trucks and Vault moon boots. Even ran it with 82a Vault boosters for a DH race.

After 2 months -

So as of now I’ve been skating this for two months, I am notoriously rough with gear and this ninja warrior has held together through rain skates, big early grabs and many curb hits.

The extra meat around the noses gives you enough leverage to do some freestyle and also acts as a first line of defence against curb hits.

I’ve experimented with Wheel base options a bit, for a time I was running the longer option on the back and the inner most option on the front – This is great for really fast runs but I still prefer to have both ends in the inner most holes (27″) as your feet and literally right there on top of the inner bolts.

Set up on the Inner bolts you can get away with a 70mm wheel on most set ups without wheel bits issues.
I had no issues at all on the Vault RKP but lower cast or precision trucks will require a little riser if you want to run 70mm wheels. Personally I’m in love with 65mm wheels (specifically the vault CueBalls), great acceleration out of slides, supper buttery feel and no wheel bite issues make for a great combo.

All in all the Samurai is a great set up, very versatile and incredibly fun to ride.

Happy Skating.

Jonny Hurn

And the clock rolls over – An open letter to the Longboarding Community

I’ll warn you, this isn’t a review this is just an open letter to longboarding companies out there, share it, push it, post it on company Facebook pages if you agree argue if you don’t, discussion is healthy.

I am hardly an expert in the field of anything, basically I am a over opinionated uni student with a chip on his shoulder and a strong feeling of self entitlement. Hence the blog, but even in my own negative way, sometimes, I have something worth while to say.

Longboarding has become my life, my passion, I dream about it, I don’t buy nutella because of it. I don’t own a car or a bike, I push everywhere, I breath and live for Longboarding. So you can imagine how much of me dies when I see whats happening to it. Just this last year has brought so much change to the community especially here in Australia. We have seen an exponential growth in Longboarding as it begins to pierce into mainstream consumer goods. This marks on of the most exciting and dangerous times for Longboarding and i fear we have already failed. How you ask? Longboarding isn’t about tricks, it never has been. This is from Stoked Skateboards Facebook, big thumbs up to Chris Rempel who wrote it… It describes exactly how Longboarding was and should be

Its an Attitude, its not about a board, its not about RKP trucks, bigger wheels, sliding, speed or anything like that. The separating factor between Longboarding and everything else is (was) Attitude.

We have lost it.

As the community has grown the attitude has changed, It started slipping some time ago, you can see the change in the media major companies were putting out, Original is a classic example. Longboarding was never about flip tricks and grinds and as that stuff started sneaking into Longboarding promotional material the attitude started changing. Instead of holding our own and remaining true to what Longboarding is many companies bailed on that ethos, you can see it in the way videos are filmed, trick after trick cropped together rather than flowing runs, Longboarding Let go (Kyle Chen on a Voodoo Doll ripping it) is one of the best Longboarding videos ever, Abec 11′s video of James Kelly and K-rimes shredding together at a stupidly high speed is another great Longboarding video, Landyachtz are yet to produce a video I don’t like as are Rayne and comet, Thumbs up to you!  Loaded began slipping some time ago and for a time lead the charge with Adam colton popping stairs and doing a lot of old school skating, the Original blew it up with the Apex and since then every child wants an Apex 37 to do silly little foot tucking varials on. Now ALL of this I would be ok with but a side effect if this new breed of Hybrid Longboarding is attitude, the thing that defined us in the first place. Once we have lost the separating factor we have nothing, nothing new or different people on boards doing tricks, that’s all it is now. Every thing I learn I learn for a reason, I learn’t to slide so I could bomb bigger hills, learnt to stand up cause it was more fun and gave me more options in places where putting a puck down was a bit sketchy (like campus walkway). I learn’t to boneless to get up curbs and early grab to hop down the only place I would need to walk to get to my morning lecture (a humble 4 stair). Now i’m learning some dancing stuff, cause its amazingly fun, and I’m working on slide shov-its for the same reason. FUN,

I love street skating too, recently I’ve been getting back into it, to me all skating is the same but the reason i love Longboarding so specifically was the attitude, street skating has a real thrash yourself until you land it once for the video/sponsor attitude and I hate that, there is no flow no fluidity, some videos like this here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=77H2EY-M8TI : are legendary street skating the way it should be getting from A-B but living it, living in the journey!
But this is a minority. Longboarding has adopted the street skating attitude and it is the death of us. For the camera, for the sponsor, statements that now reflect Longboarding as it is today.

Don’t get me confused with someone who hates change and progression, its not the progression I dislike, its not the specific tricks i have a problem with, its the attitude. And Its not that I hate people making videos, I just hate watching someone roll around one little hill or even one little bit or pavement doing “tricks” and calling it Longboarding. If you a sick rider film it and share it please, It would be great to see every ones progression out there on camera. But remeber to reflect the attitude in your videos, I try too. And Even I think I’m guilty of filming tricks rather than filming Longboarding, but I try. At least try.

If you can’t do it 100% of the time you can’t do it.
This is something I learn’t from Parkour, consistency is everything. Longboarding was all about that, key word was. Practice, practice over and over then take it to a new hill and skate, don’t think. Sometimes I find myself at the bottom of a run, or a car park wondering what exactly I did on my way down, that’s the way it should be. I session slide hills to practice and prepare for the long sweet runs, so I can flow down them with my own style without thinking about each “trick” just watching the camber of the road and living the journey down it. Can you say the same? Or do you session a spot all day for the perfect shot of your switch check?

I guess this was more of a rant that anything else.
I’m tired and my fingers hurt from typing this so I’m going to go skate now, but I will leave you with my final 2 cents.

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”
― Henry Ward Beecher

I wish that to be true in Longboarding as it once was,
Live the journey,

Skate, don’t do tricks, just skate…

Cheers

Jonny

Doesnt Matter got pike

Welcome back to another episode of the mo-jonny show. today we bring you our thoughts on the recent-ish-ly  released Omen Pike.
this is a two part review, starting off with mojuu-raptors hunter-killer thoughts.

As my human associate sleeps I type this out to you. now i dont need to babble out the dimensions of the board to you, do your homework! but my opinion on how the specs FEEL is always open for you to read.

The biggest feature for me was the TRUE, flat top w. I may remember wrong but the killswitch was said to have *flat top* w in its release video a few years back. Omen’s rendition of flat top w feels right. with  my us9 size feet, i can find a cosy spot to lock the balls of my feet between the w and the drop during pushing, almost like that gap was molded to trap my foot in there.  during the ever important sliding moments, the w gives you good geographical markers and is effective at acting like w-cave.  i found the micro-drop to be fantastic, between that and the concave, you’ll find a zone of no-cave. you can use this to wedge your feet against the concave where it begins to aggresively take off again.

having run this board on paris and caliber 44′s DT style, i found the paris to be nice, no wheelbite issues. great for people who are fans of high angle trucks. on cali44′s you will very easily get railbite issues, and maybe wheelbite depending on wheels/bushings.

all up, i thought i found the last board id ever buy. but alas! TIS TOO LONG.  for a raptor, standing a mere 175 human cm tall, the sweetspots on the deck for my feet are too far apart to feel comfy. and so im sigining off for the hurn to round off this review. end thoughts for raptor? feels slick under foot, but forces feet to be too far apart

Hello Peoples this is Jonny now, OMG a review within a review, review-ception

Anyway, I have to agree with the Raptors thoughts above. I got on this board and was SO excited big locked in pockets easy to push.
I started with it dropped through on Paris and quickly moved it to top mount and I rode and rode and the more I rode the lower my stoke factor went, at 41″ long its a big board, even with the tails taking up a few inches the platform is still (slightly) bigger than a Nemesis, and even that’s to long.

I would like to say for people 5ft 10 and up this will be a really nice board or if you want a longer board and enjoy the wider stance you’ll love it, really useful yet small tails, fantastic concave just (for me) 3 Inches to long,
When/if a mini Pike comes out I will go nuts! especially if its a tad stiffer. The pike did have some flex. Very noticeable when you stand right in the middle but in a normal stance its quite a subtle give this I liked to a point… The board got a little weird to tuck on cause my back foot was right in the heart of the flex zone. Don’t get me wrong this board is very stable at speed and has 0 torsional flex it just takes some getting used to.

All in all we both like the boards design features but its a few inched to long for our tastes or rather our stance.
that said it has such a nice concave if your taller or like standing wider you’ll love this board.

Happy skating,

Jonny and Mojo

Vault Ghetto Freeride

Hello and welcome to 2012!

So over the summer we all need a project right?

As you may know I work for Skateboard Express. In the process of designing some new wheels we came across these abominations…
http://www.skateboardexpress.com.au/VGF.html
But The Dave knew the thane was good, even  though they were hidden behind a stupidly large lip.
If you cut 11mm of the lip off you end up with a fantastic center set freeride. Check out the video bellow if you want to see how we did it.

Be safe, wear a mask cause thane dust is evil.

Enjoy

Jonny

Vault Slide Gloves Review

Firstly – A Welcome to James, Were gonna be turning out double the content – We have a whole lot of reviews coming for bearings,boards, wheels and trucks so get stoked click follow!
On with the matter at hand!

Vault Slide Gloves 
So recently I’ve been shredding a little Vault gear. In the interests of being ethical I will tell you It was given to me for free to review. I will also say I would never miss-lead people by making false statements about a product, what I write here is my honest opinion.  When I first started Longboarding I was warned off Vault stuff. Being a broke ass student there products had always appealed to me because they were so much cheaper than the alternative and over the months Vault gear has increasingly been surprising me.

Their slide gloves are one such item. $10 cheaper than the cheapest alternative the vault slide glove win on price.
To start with the gloves have both finger and thumb pucks in addition to the standard palm puck so the first thing I did was pull these off. I hate finger and thumb pucks but if your just learning, leave them on and save your gloves until you get you technique down! So after removing the grom guards I took to the streets. If you like you fingers and thumbs behind pucks you will love these gloves. They have so much velcro on the fingers and thumbs you can position the pucks perfectly to fit you.

They are comfortable to wear and are relatively breathable. There is a removable pad on the inside behind the palm puck it makes falling on your glove a wee but more comfortable. If your like me and like you pucks closer to you wrist the little pad actually makes quite a difference.

The pucks that come standard are decent. If your just starting out these pucks will be perfect. If you’re heading towards race speed you will notice the nylon compound has a tad more grip to it.

So negatives or negative in this case;
Velcro on the fingers reduces grip, if you’re looking for a monster early grab you’re gonna need good technique.

Positives;
They are cheaper, if you like finger pucks the negative isn’t a negative. They last and don’t tear easily. In the interest of testing i dropped a glove down for a toe side without the puck. While I would not advise doing this as it is both stupid and dangerous, the glove held together well and only had a bit of wear to the velcro.

Overall these are good gloves. They are cheap and they work. They may not suit you for racing or urban early grab mayhem but if your taking to the streets for a healthy session of thane shredding why not save $10 buy these and still have money left for lunch.

One thing I will add is that I have the large size Vault glove, my lush gloves are a small size…just keep that in mind when/if you order.

Peace,
Happy skating!

Metro Motion Wheel Review

Howdy ya’ll First post up here, Im James resident skating raptor and new author to the blog. hope me and jonny can bring you twice as much postage in the same amount of time! To prove that im not here to bore you with introductions, here’s a wheel review!

Metro Wheel Company,  Metro Motion 70mm centerset wheels

So what wheels are best for (insert any and all disciplines)?   One of the most asked questions in the skater-verse is wether or not (insert wheel here) is good for downhill or sliding or both. Ladies and grommets I present to you your answer.

Introducing the Metro Motion. A centerset 70mm tall, a 40mm contact patch wheels coming in 2 duros, 78a and 80a and 5 different colors; blue, red and grey for 80a and pink and yellow for 78a.
For those of you wanting a wheel that slips and grips the 78A is the wheel of choice. Unlike other wheels ive had a roll on the metros have a very gradual and predictable slide. When you push them hard enough they will let go, but even better is when you are railing that corner with your eyes tearing up from the speed these wheels will tell you whats going on. The 78a metros wont transition from sticking to the road then jump straight into a slide, theres a middle ground where you can feel the wheels begin to let go of the road. A very good thing to know

As for the slide, these things are like sliding on cushions made of bananas. Metros have the smoothest slide I have ever slid. Probably thanks to the super tight bearing seat/core which really supports the wheel. Right out of the box 78a metros are quite slippery but a few slides later you will be pulling fast controlled slides, able to shave off the right amount of speed everytime. The 78’s are perfect for the rider who wants to shred around the steepest of city streets and carparks knowing their wheels wont be chug-a-chug chattering as they paint the road with clean white lines. For a wheel so soft metros are very hardy. If all you could ever want is a wheel that goes sideways more than it rolls then 80a is your key to high rollin. The 80a metros still produce the same gradual transition of moving from grip to slip, but do so at lower speeds.

All up Metro motions are a fantastic freeride jack-of-all-trades wheel. This wheel will have you blasting down carparks and slashing your neighbours driveways in style and in control. this wheel however is NOT a good wheel to be blasting down a racetrack on. that being said, if you have the skill to mob down a mountain road choice of wheel wont matter since your technique will force your gear to behave however you want.

Skate often, skate safe! ~Mojuuraptor

PS hopefully that picture album worked, for those of you who want to know exactly what you are getting for your money. the metro motion core appears at about 45mm wheel diameter. In relation to jonny’s previous Vault wheel post, i bought a set and wrecked them. the core shows up at 40mm.

Seismic Bootlegs Wheel Review

A shoulder injury and exams have been plaguing me, i am now a free and relatively healthy man In the next few weeks I will have a whole run of reviews coming, gloves, wheels,bearings and even a new board stay tuned!  Now to the topic at hand.

Ice Ice baby.I have Abec 11 freerides 72mm 84a and i love them like basically everyone else so when i saw the new offering form Seismic I wondered. 70mm, 84a, could this be the next big thing? what can go wrong…  On with the review.

Seismic Bootlegs 70mm 84a
First id like to admit I haven’t ridden these to the core, i haven’t even gotten close. I picked these up two weeks ago and have done a lot of hard ridding on them in that time trying to unlock the “smooth, controlled slides with great hookup and grip when you need it.” And I am yet to even get close to it. I shall continue to ride these until I can tolerate them no more If any part of there performance changes I’ll be sure to post it up. I will also admit i’m not really into hard wheels but given the recent wheels I’ve tried, all being deceptively buttery, I was hoping the streak would continue…C-c-c-combo breaker.
Lets start with positives -
These wheels will last you a long time and they are center set which means, provided you care, you can keep flipping and never have them cone on you.
Aside from durability what i can say is these wheels are slippery, insanely slippery, like skating on slippery dips instead of wheels. To some of you this may be the best thing you have ever heard.  Its so easy to push out your slides and the wheels just love to stay out there. These sound like good things don’t they? Well they are, when it comes to blasting out slides these wheels may chatter but mostly its a fairly nice ride. The issues all come on re entry. Just like landing a space-shuttle the safe and speedy re entry to grip town is a critical and often difficult part. This is where these wheels fall down. They lack the grip to be an all round freeride wheel.

Negatives, well there not bad wheels but they aren’t good wheels either. To really be a good wheel they need versatility. I’m not expecting them to perform as well as a grip wheel would i’m simply expecting to be able to turn without too much slip. This lack of grip makes slides easy initially but at higher speed they just felt lose. Bringing your slides to an end took a bit of getting used to as well. Unlike the Vault wheels, the Mega tsunamis or the Abec 11s there is no hint of grip to help lock that re entry in. In stead of  a smooth transition between grip and slide the transition is harsh and feels like you have to hold the board down untill its willing to go straight again. This is most noticeable when pre-drifting or checking into a corner. I was constantly wondering if i was gonna hook back up anytime soon and while for sliding this is fun it does limit the wheel to one application.
Basically these wheels come down to a lack of versatility for me. These wheels slide but that is all they do and when your not sideways your not having fun.
Maybe its just me but I love wheels I can session anything on I like to approach a corner thinking “What do i feel like doing? do i want speed or slide?” I love doing a sick car park bomb into a steep slide session into a casual bomb down the road and on these you only have one setting, sideways.

For some of you hearing that these have less grip that a yellow stim is good news. For me its not. As always this is just the humble opinion of one person. I can however say I would be very interested in trying the 80a version to see if they can compete with the magical buttery goodness of the Abec 11 freerides or the 82a vault wheel.

In short, i like pucks on my gloves not wheels.
I’m going back to the butter, I may be some time.

Vault Slide Wheels Review

Vault 65mm 82a Wheels Review.

These wheels are great, I’ll skip the introduction and just get to the point.
Vault have struck gold on this compound, they break out smoothly leaving thane plastered on the road in their wake. The slide is so easy you expect some ice on the re entry to grip town but this is not the case, these little monsters are brilliant and even better than the ride is….they are $30, you can buy three sets of these to each set of Otangs or Abec 11′s .

Ok, I’ll put my excitement aside for a moment and get on with the review.

I picked these up off a friend of mine and at first I was skeptical, as always, but i gave these a try.
To begin with these are 65mm x 36mm wheels, there small and their contact patch is tiny, as a result grip is not really something these little rippers excel at. These green little champions excel at getting sideways, even some solid carving will get you slipping so don’t go trying to grip tight corners at high-speed it’s just not gonna happen.

So lets talk strengths. Sliding, sliding and more sliding. Pushing out a slide is easy, very easy, so easy you would expect them to behave badly when you want to grip back up but they actually grip back really nicely for such a small slippery wheel. This means long controlled slides similar to that of the Mega Tsunamis I reviewed last, but these are less than half the price.

Downsides, yeah there are a two main ones. this first is there a 65mm wheel to begin with and they only get smaller, so they don’t create as smooth a ride as a 70mm wheel would offer, It may not seem like a huge difference in numbers but after a couple of hard sessions these will be at 60mm and at that point you will start noticing the difference especially on a bigger board. The second down side is their life expectancy isn’t exactly long. Depending in the surface you can absolutely shred these in a short space of time. However that down side is negated by the fact that there ONLY $30 and to be honest the Mega Tsunamis don’t last that long either at twice the price.

To sum up….BUY THESE WHEELS. They are by no means the best wheels ever, but they are very, very good and there so dam cheap you may as well buy a pair to find out for yourself.

Happy skating!

Rainskates Mega Tsunami review

This marks the beginning of my summer project. Reviews of boards, wheels, and other Longboarding gear completely independently and just because im buying this stuff and have a lot of spare time at the moment.
Current set up -
Fibertech DH 980
200m Surf-Rodz
Rainskates Mega Tsunami
72mm 85a

“The all-terrain, Atom smasher you’ve been waiting for is finally here!” Well like all advertising write-ups its one hell of a claim.
Freeride wheels are a heavily contested category and be under no illusions personal taste plays majority role in wheel selection especially when it comes to sliding. However word gets passed around about a particular wheel and people snap them up like the drunk chick at a Computer Science Society party. Poor taste metaphors aside let’s get on with it.
I picked these up about a month ago after hearing about how buttery the slide was and how smooth the transition between grip etc… Since then I have nearly worn them to the core and have one word to describe them, Smooth. Breaking them was standard, took a session to melt the ice and from then on it was as promised, all butter. If you haven’t heard yet these are not 85a! Well they may say that they are but take that with a grain of salt, these are soft. They ride soft, slide soft and they wear out like a soft wheel too, not to mention the nice big thane lines.  The Mega Tsunami’s break out with very little effort. Pushing out a slide requires more effort than a 86a Stimulus but not by much and this extra effort is rewarded with some really smooth and controlled slides. The Mega Tsunami’s hook back up very nicely and its this predictability that is their best quality. They don’t actively try to get away from you, you can grip turns down your favourite car park building or casual hill but these were made to get sideways so keep that in mind. Now the downsides, there’s really only one… Wear, these things wore down on me fast. Like I said the “85a” compound is basically made of juicy lard so don’t expect these to last as long as other high 80 duro wheels. All in all I liked them, smoother than a purple stimulus and more control than one too If you’re looking for a softer freeride wheel to whip your board some butter these are your wheels, especially at speed. If you’re looking at coming off hard wheels to escape the ice but don’t quite want to sign up to the church of soft wheel sliding these are your wheel, If you love your yellow Stimulus’s or yellow Krakatoa’s then I would recommend you try them as a softer alternative. Its hard not to like something so buttery, until there all worn out that is.
Any questions feel free to get it touch.