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

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!

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!

Education

“We feel that incorporating (Insert field of interest here) into the education system of (insert country) would be helpful” then they quote some crazy ass preliminary research. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not saying all these people are crazy and I’m certainly not implying that their ideas are bad all in actual fact this here (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3167-Gamifying-Education) has some ideas. Reliable research admitting to the lack of supporting research and not boldly claiming it would solve all our education woes for everyone. All I’m highlighting is… Well its one sided.  It is easy for me to say it would be better if education incorporated a focus on creation and providing skills for learning instead of actually (well at least focusing on) teaching information. But its a whole other thing for me to actually implement all of that. Even harder is ensuring it doesn’t just help me but all the other cultures, religions classes etc within the education curriculum.
I’m sitting here partially listening to my lecture on Media industries and half focusing on writing this, I guess in this sense I epitomize part of the problem. Focus… Now before you string me up and hit me like a piñata at your nieces 9^th birthday let me explain. A while ago education was simple a teacher or teachers stood up in front of a class and told you about the world. One of my tutors highlighted how much extra knowledge “kids these days” have as a result of technology. I am a firm believer that this is entirely a good thing, but it certainly detracts from focus. My point here… Finally, hey I’m getting there, Is that “back in my day” focus was important you picked your stream of interest early and followed it… People kept the same jobs, didn’t change degrees didn’t get divorced… These days we change everything. From our faces to our jobs and in this new world of broader opportunity and focus then how does old styled education fit it? That’s part of the reason I like university and hated high school. Mostly at Uni we learn skills, Research, report writing, interviews, experiments… This type of education encourages us to seek our own knowledge with these skills. High school just doesn’t do that and it should.
“The three R’s kid… That’s all you need from school”
To some point I guess I sort of…SORT OF! Agree with this. But not just 3 Rs… I agree creative subjects. Art, drama, music etc is hugely important especially at school. I personally am a product of the arts side of high school. A large part of this is down to what I learned from my English and Media teacher in 6^th form. Mr Mortenson, told me that life was a cow and we should milk it.  Seriously inspirational stuff, and I’m not kidding it is. He and my next media teacher, Mr Bird, as well as my dram teacher Bernard Beckket taught me skills. Life skills like how to communicate effectively, how to write convincingly, how to research and support you arguments. They taught me how to make my own informed opinions rather than preaching their own. I guess this is my hope for education. I don’t really care that some research suggests more Sport, outdoor activities, video games and whatever could improve education. I don’t care what form it takes I simply think education should teach skills for gaining our own knowledge. Obviously we will need basic Math science and language skills so I’m not advocating that we shouldn’t teach maths I’m saying teach basic and advanced maths then give people the tools and the environment to take it further. Encourage students, especially at higher levels of school, to challenge and debate rather than blindly follow. Some of the greatest ideas in the world came from challenging what we had already accepted as fact things we thought were impossible are now normal… The earth is flat… computers can play chess…robots can walk… Think what will happen if we continue to challenge what already exists. How big how small how fast. Education should foster these goals. An education institution should preach these ideals, challenge, question, research, experiment, find, create, and through this we will learn.

If a hundred students from all around the globe got together to research and debate mathematics we might just have a breakthrough. Student would learn research and peruse their own questions all they need is encouragement, a little direction, a forum.  Maybe this approach doesn’t work for all subjects. I guess at some point we need to know the basics, we need to be tested but at higher levels of education the emphasis should be on more than “can you solve this equation”. If English in my final year of High School was a year spent actively using the skills we learnt in a real world situation, rather than writing an essay about a book, maybe it would be more engaging? What if at the start of my English course my teacher said, “Last year you learnt about dialogue, character development, symbolism, irony etc and you produced original short stories… This year your task is to produce a written or spoken work in any genre or style. At the end of the year the best work will be published.”

Would that not be better…? It doesn’t have to wait until University before students can carry out their own research, write their own stories. Think about all you would learn during the year if your sole task was to write one play, one novel. Obviously for the task to be practice and fair some form of word limit/guide would be needed. I just feel students stand to learn more from writing an original 40 page play than they could possibly get from writing essays on Shakespeare. “But oh no, everyone needs to read Shakespeare and know about the great writers/books” yes I know they do, but they would read and reflect on those works as inspiration for their own. That’s where the teacher comes in. When a student says I want to write a play or I want to write a sci-fi novel the teacher would say, “Well here is some Arthur Miller for you and Some H G Wells for you. Reflect and discus these texts with me and your peers”. Imagine what you would learn from that.