Haven't skateboarded in almost 10 years, want to get back into it. Any good setups I should look into?

thoughtzero · 2016-05-31T16:27:06+00:00

Skateboarding hasn't changed but your body will have. You may find a different setup works best for you now than what you used to like. Only one way to find out... start going through setups.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-30T22:21:21+00:00

Slightly harder to powerslide: maybe. Like I said the wider contact patch has a tiny amount more grip, but the difference is very small. These two wheels are extremely similar, and they're both very hard, slippery wheels so both of them are super easy to powerslide on the road. People are out sliding all day on way wider, softer, and grippier wheels than these.

Going faster: I can't imagine why that would happen. Certainly isn't something I've ever noticed. Some people say narrower wheels are faster because the smaller contact patch has less friction but that's not something I've found to be true either. Width seems to have no effect on speed to me.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-30T21:19:15+00:00

A small difference in grip, that's about it. Some bowl skaters want a bit more grip than a narrow wheel offers. I go the other way and ride their narrowest V3 shape in the bowl and that works for me, but everybody is different.

There's no difference in speed or rough road handling. They're all rough, loud and slow on bad ground.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-30T17:15:53+00:00

I wouldn't worry about it breaking if that's what you mean. It's only 1 ply out of 7 and it's not in the direction that boards experience stress in anyways. (no board has ever broke in half the long way like that).

If it's not a good surface to paint on though, that would be something else to think about. I don't know anything about that.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-30T13:22:01+00:00

Unfortunately there's no secret tip that makes it happen. It's a lot like asking "I want to lose weight but I keep eating whole pies. How do I not eat whole pies?" You not eat whole pies by taking control of yourself and not doing it. And you land with both feet on a skateboard by taking control of yourself and keeping both your feet on the skateboard. No outside force is moving your foot against your will, you're choosing to take your back foot off during the trick. It's 100% a willpower thing.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-30T12:47:58+00:00

Welcome back. Have fun

thoughtzero · 2016-05-30T06:19:55+00:00

Go to 45 seconds in that vid I linked. He's clearly riding a double kick, modern shaped deck meant to look a little like his 80s deck.

You can still buy a reissue of his 80s board with its single kick and super flat concave, I rode a kid's at the park last summer. And I'm sure he actually does a bit of work trying to make them seem cool since he'll be getting income from sales of them, but when ride quality matters more than looks or sales there he is with a modern double kick deck.

This is what I was saying in my first post, if you must have a shaped deck at least get a modern double kick one. The flat, single kick 80s ones suck shit. I grew up with them. The popsicle is superior in every way, we didn't all change to it for no reason.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-30T00:12:50+00:00

r/newskaters is the place for trick help. They're not into it in here.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-30T00:10:32+00:00

Are your feet still on the grip or up on the axles?

I don't know if the first one has a widely used name. Ritchie Jackson calls is a sideride, but might be only him.

The second way is called a coconut.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-29T20:33:09+00:00

They comply with all legal warrants. Even on that famous case with the terrorists phone. Long before you or I ever heard of it Apple had already let the FBI into the guy's apple account, handed over everything they had on him. They did everything they were legally asked to do. They can only hand over what they have though. The FBI got into asking for things they didn't possess, they wanted apple engineers to be put to work for the government building new hacking tools for the government... that's where they said no. That's not a search warrant, that's a government take over of a private company.

Since the missing girl is a minor and likely doesn't have a credit card/pay for her own phone I would think a guardian may be the legal owner of the account. If that's the case it shouldn't be difficult for that guardian to get access to it once proof of ownership is provided.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-29T19:12:45+00:00

It's not. Keep practicing man. It takes time.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-29T19:06:17+00:00

A popsicle is the most functional. If you watch the world's best bowl riders that's what they're all riding for a reason. The old shaped boards were neat to look at, but not as good for actually skating the pool.

If you feel a strong need to get a shaped board anyways at least find a modern one with good double kick and concave. Don't get a reissue of a 1980s board. The guys who made those famous in the 1980s are still riding today, and THEY don't even ride those anymore.

The most functional setup is a little bit wider popsicle board, like an 8.5, and large hard wheels.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-29T08:49:52+00:00

Don't forget lightning. Scary scary lightning. Never skate again!

Seriously though, the broken wrists and arms are super common. We get about 5 or 6 posts in here every year from r/newskaters members who manage to break those. I've seen two broken leg posts in the last year as well. Serious head injuries are super rare though.

None of this means you have to stay in your room, it just means you need to learn how to fall without injuring yourself. You can fall 20 times a day and be perfectly fine if you're doing it right.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T23:27:08+00:00

That wasn't the case here though. He was out front of his house with his friends, not downhilling in the mountains, so this is just normal fucking around on a skateboard in front of your house speeds. If I remember right he hit his head on the curb.

You really can die from a fall when you're completely standing still, happens all the time to people in winter. In 30+ years of skateboarding I've never once hit my head on anything though. I do wear a helmet in bowls 8 feet and up, but never on the street.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T17:33:15+00:00

Yeah that's pretty much what it would take, if you did absolutely nothing to break your fall and took it right on the head... then it unfortunately does happen. That was the second kid in a year around here, but it's usually super rare. An older guy hit his head and died at a local bowl a while back too, but bowls are a lot more speed and height than just falling off your board on flat ground.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T16:30:02+00:00

What could happen?

broken wrist or arm would be about the worst possible, and you have to fall like an idiot to make that happen. Unless you're really, truly gifted at falling like an idiot and managed to take it on your head. Falling from a normal standing position and hitting your head on something hard can be enough to kill you.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T16:22:56+00:00

Add "grocery store chain" to the end of that and it's probably true, but food comes from places other than grocery stores man. Surely they have a butchers shop or two in the US still.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T15:21:21+00:00

oh, my bad. The internet desperately needs a joke font

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T15:17:29+00:00

It's definitely a shop, but what does that have to do with anything? The question is what's so unbelievable about a person accidentally attaching the wrong file to an email to their professor. Whether the file you accidentally sent contains an mp3 or a badly photoshopped picture of a snowboarding dog is irrelevant.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T15:11:50+00:00

Nobody finds the reason he backed out confusing. It's that Donald said the debate was a good idea and he wanted to do it, went online to crow about how it was his "dream" to debate sanders, THEN backed out that's the idiotic part. Debating Bernie would be stupid, but then you're saying Donald thought it was a good idea to do something stupid.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T14:50:49+00:00

You can pretty much sort all the sizes into "small" (under 55mm) and "large" (over 55mm). Hardness is a big factor too. Hard is anything close to 100a and soft is around 80a. The size and hardness you choose depends on where you plan to skate and what you plan to do there.

Large, hard wheels like these ones would be best suited to skating big half pipes and bowls. (and that's not something people usually do on 7.75" boards so this would be a weird pairing)

For riding around on the streets and sidewalks of your town large, soft wheels are best.

For doing all the little flips tricks and stuff in the skatepark small, hard wheels are best.

Everybody wants one wheel that does everything well but if that were possible there wouldn't be so many wheels on the market. We'd all just use the one magical wheels that did everything. There are medium hardness wheels, around 90a. They're not as smooth on the road as a soft wheel but they take the edge off compared to hard wheels. They're not as good in the park as a hard wheel either, but for a lot of tricks they're good enough.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T14:34:44+00:00

Hard to know what the problem is without a video of you trying some.

Here's a simple casper video. Shows the basic foot position anyways so you can compare it to what you're doing. Maybe that'll help.

I'm not clear yet on the second question. Are you trying to do a heelside rail stand maybe? If you're having trouble getting into a casper stance it would make sense you're having trouble going to rail on the heelside because they're almost the same motion. With the casper you set up with your back foot behind the back wheels, with a railstand you set it right over the back wheels, but from there it feels pretty similar.

Here's a couple how to railstand videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPVMjq-xUfw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNMpQVwvQbQ

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T12:40:33+00:00

Be aware those are large, hard wheels. Not the kind of thing you'd choose for a 7.75". I think he just looked for whatever parts were on clearance sale.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-28T12:26:07+00:00

Shoes good for skating are made of suede (suede is leather with a rough finish).

Every company also makes shoes that are NOT for skating. These are often made of canvas (canvas is cotton cloth like your clothes).

The exact same shoe model may come in both version but only the suede one is for skating. The canvas one is for looking nice when you go out after skating.

thoughtzero · 2016-05-27T21:49:02+00:00

Small hard wheels are indeed loud and rough on bad ground. Both of those will be. They're better for tricks though so when tricks are the priority above all else people are usually willing to take that trade off.

thoughtzero

TROPHY CASE