Racing skateboards (or not)

I like writing about skateboarding, but not as much as I like actually skateboarding.

So why do some of us not care about going racing on skateboards? Erm well...

So to try and explain, lets murder fun down in a really cold manner into an equation.

Fun on a skateboard= Time spent having fun on a skateboard * How fun it actually is

Ish. There are so many other things that weigh in but that sums most of it up.

And then racing. I've done some racing at Hog Hill up in london. It can be quite cool being in a pack and trying to overtake people, I get it. But it's the extras that come with racing that, certainly for me, puts me off the idea.

Such as you don't magic into your heats. Somebody has to be super organised and sort people out. Even if they are really good, it still means everybody who isn't racing at that time gets to sit around and watch. To me, sitting around and watching skateboarding is for when you hurt yourself at a session, or when it's the middle of the week and somebody has released a cool edit.

Also, the IGSA racing system is not for me. Not being fast enough is NOT reason to have to sit around doing nothing because you dont make the qualy cut, or get rinsed in a heat, or whatever. Moving forward, with the IDF or whoever, racing inevitably means that eventually, you have to sit around and let the faster people skate the hill. I want to be skating the hill as much as possible, as much as everybody else. You dont buy a book and have it slam shut halfway through because somebody else grasps the concepts of it better. If you buy a day of freeride, you get a day of freeride. If you buy a day of racing, you might get a day of racing, if you are fast.

For me, racing goes against how I like to skate. I like to get as many runs as I can. Thats why even though I get out to a hill so little due to various factors, when I do, I get as many runs as I can manage. When you die you want to be able to say you lived, when I'm done skating I want to say that I skated as much as I could and got maximum fun from it.

But then it comes back to that really crude equation I made right?

Fun on a skateboard= Time spent having fun on a skateboard * How fun it actually is

For some people that race, they get more fun from racing than not racing. So the less time spent having fun is offset by having more fun with the time they get.

A long while ago now, I spoke to a very fast dude who likes his racing. Whilst conveying how much fun a race heat is for him, he explained that the qualifying is also fun for him, because even though there is time sitting around before and after your go, you have the hill to yourself, and you can just go for it and push things.

At the moment I don't get the fun from the same things, but I respect the pursuit of fun in downhill skateboarding that we share.

And I suppose theres a bit of a conclusion. We're all able to respect each others different approaches to fun on a skateboard, right? Being able to say "I have a different opinion to you", before hooning down a hill with somebody and laughing the same when you get to the bottom and crashing the same when you mess up and sharing the same amazing, absurd, ridiculous moments of life spent travelling fast (or slow, or sideways, or on your face), down hills, on skateboards.

Cheers for reading.


Will

..

I wonder whether I am indeed too honest with how I'm feeling when I write about it here but since nobody will be reading this anyway heres some more.

I'm impatient for good things to happen and yet I don't possess the initiative and drive to make them happen. These things include getting a small job and supporting my skateboarding. If I got a job, any job, I could get to more hills and events, and I would almost certainly be happier. If I woke up tomorrow and had a job I would, surely, be fine with it and do ok. But the bit where you have to go out and make things happen is what I do not have. I've written a CV, and printed it. Thats it. Printing it took ages. Should I be happy for doing that? It's an achievement for me.

It's about setting goals but I don't really know what to set. I definately need more than college life and skateboarding.

I put things in the way to stop myself thinking. Maybe thats the skateboarding. Only a few times have I gone out and not been able to skate because of not feeling very pleased with that moment, or me. When I'm not skating, or at college, it's a lot more difficult, so I listen to music or read loads of pointless articles on the internet. I've recently started deciding to watch some things on TV rather than just looking over and seeing something on. But all of it is just stuff to put in front of my face so I don't stop and think. When I do accidently stop and think about my life in general it never results in me feeling positive.

Another day has passed where I've done barely anything useful. I havent done any work, or got a job, or created anything. I went cycling and that was quite good, but then I was home, and now I am home, and I spend far too much time here on my own, feeling like this. Going to bed loses the feeling, once I fall asleep, but it's 4pm now. Better go for a skate. I wonder if i'll regret bothering to write this.

IDF, IGSA, Skateboarding

 

IDF has been launched, and this is the International Downhill Federation.

Ye olde IGSA is still going, and that is the International Gravity Sports Association.

 

The main point of concern with the IDF is the lack of letters for making amusing acronyms out of, but we're a creative bunch and we'll think of something.

 

People are well excited for the IDF, I'm stoked for people being stoked on something new, even if this doesn't really affect me much... at all. I don't think I need racing at the moment, but I might do and then I suppose things will matter.

 

Anyway, the funny thing I find is skateboarders obsession with nobody making a profit. I mean, skaters go out to work, to make a profit, so they can go skateboarding (well most do ;)), skater owned shops have to make a profit to you know, exist. But when it comes to the conductors of making shit happen, people think they are being out of order if they make something. If an association was launched tomorrow, saying heres some sick races, we're going to be making a profit, it would be unfairly torpedoed by the skating community.

 

Money is awesome! Wouldn't it be ideal if race organisers and associations could make it their full time job? Skaters would love to make skating their full time job. The organisers could dedicate so much time and energy to making the community better. If organisers and associations are working together to do good work, objecting to them making a profit out of it isnt fair.

 

So in summary

 

Yeah IDF! Yeah a future where people can make a living out of this amazing skateboarding down hills thing.

 

 

This year of skateboarding down hills

Seems a bit weird reviewing the year before its even over but having not been on a hill for 2 weeks (and not having a proper run because the conditions were god awful) for what... 4 weeks? Well I have nothing better to do at the present time. So what stuff has happened to me this year?

 

In January I wrote about the year before (my first year of skating hills.) That year was immense. Sessions were skating Peep with a close family a hell of a lot. Everything was a novelty and that was a cool feeling. This year the skating is a lot more diverse and theres a lot more people. I have got to know some absolute shredders and seen some crazy things done on a skateboard. Theres less novelty to skating hills now but I suppose thats just something that happens. I still love downhill as much as when I first stepped on a board at Peep, but not everything is new anymore.

 

I was really psyched on the year a little after february. I was gonna have it.

 

Ah April, April was an interesting one. The Mark Short All Around Skate interview came out that I'd been very excited for. I can't remember if it was announced beforehand or if I just knew it was going to come out eventually, but I dived into it. And it made me feel a bit sad and I wrote about it HERE. The thing was, I wasn't trying to lay into Mark Short.

 

In that interview, Mark talks about getting into downhill and watching Sergio Yuppie's video parts over and over again. Well I got into downhill watching Mark Short's video parts over and over again. Everybody has role models in their skating and when a big inspiration seems to be so not stoked on the scene that you are in, it's not a great feeling. I was clear that the only thing I was judging was the words in that interview, and I maintain that. He absolutely shreds and to be able to slide anything like that is a dream for me.

 

What else happened? Oh yeah, I went to Houyet.

 

Or more accurately- I WENT TO HOUYET WITH THE VANDEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I will freely admit that I am just a big kid, and I can still feel the stupid smiles that would rock up on my face every time I remembered that I was travelling in convoy with the Vandem dudes and the metal was turned up to 11. The weather was awful, the company was immense. The ferry was nasty but the Vandem was... well, there are no words to describe it's majestic beauty. I didn't skate so well due to limited dry runs but one of those was the most stoked i've ever been on a skateboard. And then it was over. I wanted more but I know how lucky I was to have got that opportunity. Cheers dudes.

 

In May I reviewed my Sabre trucks that I'm still skating. Cool to have people from various corners of the world enjoying something I wrote. I really bloody like these things!

 

And then Crash and Burn.... ah... so... I don't use this word very often at all, but it seems appropriate.

 

At Crash and Burn weekend, I was a bit of a cunt. I realise that now. I mean the weekend went badly for me but there was a lot that I could have done to have made things better. An example? I missed the day where ALL of the runs happened. I missed it because I hadn't gone out and got a proper sleeping bag and manned up and camped. There were some silly crashes also, I really don't like having crashes with people. The inliner was my fault for not being able to stand up and footbrake into the corner to avoid him (still don't know who it was.) Adam Persson was just one of those things. I didn't know he was there, he didn't have time to let me know because of the speed difference and we crashed on a narrow road coming out of a horrendous corner. Thats it.

 

After that I really started enjoying my techsliding. Hard wheels are amazing fun. Currently trying to decide whether to downsize on my slide board or start combining a longboard with hard wheels. The future will be fun in any case.

 

THE BLOODY CATS!

 

Oh, when did that even start!?!?! I can't remember. But when I'm bored I will quite often find wherever my cat is, take a picture of him and photoshop some Cult Goodness around/on him. Risch helmets, boards and gloves also now. I don't think anybody minds. And some people have liked the stuff im doing! I don't know why but if the stuff I make when I'm trying to avoid feeling a bit down ends up making somebody laugh, well thats really cool.

 

Myself, I am not that happy with things at the moment with regards to life and skating. But things can only get better, and i'm determined to get to a place where I can get out to hills a lot more and am happy when not skating. Most of this involves learning how to do things for myself.

 

On it.

 

I've learnt a lot this year, and I know how to make next year the best yet.

Will

Longboardism and jumping to conclusions

This cropped up http://longboardism.com/2012/10/igsa-bonelli-chance-gaul.html

At some race, some dudes crashed, some dude called Chance in the heat took the opportunity to give em both the finger.

The Longboardism article is a bit sad.

You can only comment on what you know. Seeing a picture is not always "worth a thousand words" as the article states. Those pictures that get shared around on facebook, with messages on them. Yeah, you know the ones. People seize on them without looking into the details because it suits their opinions on something. You often find out theres more to the picture than is immediately obvious.

A picture you could completely judge would be something like a dude kicking a child off a skateboard. Any person would know that there could be no reasonable justification for that action. Case closed. But what about this picture of Chance? Heres just some justifications for his actions.

• He's having FUN and enjoying himself.
• He may know the dudes crashing really well.
• The crash may not have been that fast.
• It may have been worthy of a little bit of mocking if it was paticularly "failsome"
• The dudes may have been out of order to him before (not suggesting they were)

See, that took such a small space of time to create loads of things that should prevent you reaching a judgement on the photo. Unless you have the answers, jumping to a conclusion is wrong. Jumping to a conclusion that suits your agenda, and then publishing it on the internet and potentially damaging somebodies reputation is not cool.

But then, you can bet on some of the responses to the article being as shit as the article itself. The people who are scared of words like "serious" and "professional" and "organised".

What is needed is for people who are more on the side of seriousness to respect those who arn't, and for those who are more on the side of not being serious to respect those who are. 

To simplify things.

GO SKATEBOARDING HOW YOU WANT (UNLESS YOU ARE BEING A TWAT)

LET OTHERS SKATEBOARD HOW THEY WANT (UNLESS THEY ARE BEING TWATS)

Easy.

Will

The Skeptics and the pub shaped Rabbit Hole

 



Yeah, I went to visit The Skeptics. I only saw one truly impressive beard. But the evening was great. Weirdly enough whilst you could easily tell who the Skeptics were, they are strangely like us. If you met one you might not even realise until you reached a conclusion based on an assumption based on a preconceived mindset. At that point you'd better have an escape route planned or a copy of What Doctors Dont Tell You to distract them but still, meeting them can result in enlightenment as well as death by knowledge.

If you think critically about it, I am typing this, therefore I didn't (quite) die. Although for quantifying the state of death I imagine their agents will be on the way.

So, some things.

I don't call myself an atheist.

Not because I disagree with it, but because it doesn't operate in a realm in which I think. I just don't need a banner to stand under in terms of belief. I dont follow any religion, I do think about the universe.

Sometimes you won't agree.

I noticed some people go into a debate expecting to change the other persons mindset and reach some kind of amazing agreement. I think once you get to a certain point and you don't "agree to disagree", you end up just making noise at each other. Also if you are not ready to have your own thoughts challenged, why should somebody let you challenge theirs? Not wanting to "lose" is wrong. Having your mind changed a bit is a win in the same way as changing somebody elses mind a bit, because one or both of you take something from it. Even if it doesn't immediately dawn on you.


Agree with everything, some, or none of what I have written here.

These brains are made for thinking, and thats just what they'll do...

Will

This skateboarding thing

Hmm, so this is gonna be a rambling one.

Lately i've been thinking about this skateboarding down hills thing, and I think it's changed somehow. I've known it for coming up to or around 2 years now, and it's a bit different now to how it was then. Going for a skate then was going to Peep, and it was skating with a crew of usual suspects. It was before the whole "facebook gear talking shit longest standy bitchathon" era, just about. It was cool. It's cool now, but it's different.

I remember when you'd hear about some bit of gear or see it at a skate and there wasn't a massive discussion on facebook about it.

Suppose it's natural that you get more into the scene and the sort of mystery and novelty goes away. It's a jarring thing when you finally realise that somebody can be a downhill skateboarder and a bit of a knob at the same time. It's a jarring thing when you realise that people care so much for the thoughts of everybody else on what they are doing.

On that-I've always tried to do my own thing, and I care very little about what most people might think about something I'm doing. If something needs to be said here I will say it, if I can be arsed. I'll skate how I want and approach things however I want. That might be how I'm feeling at a certain time, right now I'm enjoying cycling a lot and trying to build some fitness to get more runs in at each skate, and improve from there.

I, personally do not go to a skate for much but the skating and the people. Some people need the drink or the social or the whole "yeah we're here for the party, we're so not serious, observe our lack of seriousness" thing. And thats fine. But I percieve some lack of respect for anybody not following the crowd. If I go now and post somewhere discussing, for instance, how you might go about training outside of skateboarding for something inside of skateboarding, the responses would be pretty funny. People are scared of seriousness and words like "training" and "practice", because most downhillers are the half arsed anarchist type. I identify a bit with these words. Who's scared of a word?

A good way to be is if you don't like something in skateboarding, let it be, and do your own thing. Don't like the IGSA? Don't take part. I don't like any soup apart from tomato. I don't have chicken soup and bitch on the internet about it. Unless perhaps you can improve something for the benefit of yourself and others, be constructive. The requirements of building a sandcastle are a lot more than those needed to kick it down.

What stuff has changed then? Well, in a couple years the number of sponsored riders has shot up. I didn't understand before how the skill level could suddenly rocket in such a manner but I think I've got my head around it now. I thought that the sport was in a place where people were leaving and coming in at the same kind of rate, maintaining some kind of balance. Having thought about it more I realise we haven't got there yet, and things are going to be pushed a lot more before the skill on show levels out. We are enjoying the boom. Also the number of people getting hold of so much sponsor gear shows how healthy the companies around are, that they can throw so much produce into supporting riders. Its nice that those that do all the right things- shred, have a laugh, try and be good people, get pushed by the companies and the scene.

Cool boards are coming out now. I remember a time when the range of boards at a company would have some highlights. Now the designs are going so far that even a board which I would never buy still interests me with it's coolness. This is another facet of the boom.

So yeah, stuffs changed, but it's still downhill. We're going skating this weekend. The scene has changed, but the road feels the same when you hit it and the excitement is still the same in the morning before you skate and you still make those funny little calculations before you dive into a run and see what happens. The urethane sounds the same and the banter is still there but we're all going faster now. I still love it.


Will

Opinions are bloody irritating

Opinions are bloody irritating arn't they? You can have an opinion, and it doesn't have to be set to the tune of stuff like facts and figures and studies and real stuff like that. You can have one of these opinions, based on the rest of your opinions, based on the rest of your opinions, which are based on your personality and mindset. And you can shout it out loud. And thats fine. But your opinion, potentially based in a world where what is real doesn't matter, can affect other peoples opinions.

I would at this point talk about what has just been brought to my attention, the new "health" magazine What Doctors Dont Tell You. It appear to be a massive load of scaremongering, badly intentioned, horrendous shite. But I haven't read it, and couldn't be bothered to read through their site after spying a headline "fluoride lowers kids IQ", so in an effort to be all fair and mature I wont use it as an example. I will not criticise that stupid, god awful, pathetic excuse for a waste of paper and ink.

Oh. Whoops.

Anyway, back to objectivity (or as close as I can get to it, I dont tend to like being objective and reasoned because I normally contradict myself and mess up my own arguments in a way in which any accomplished thinker would mockingly laugh at whilst stroking the beard that they should definately have to signify their level of thinking.)

Skateboard stuff! This is what I have observed.

There will be a new bit of skate gear that comes out. Say a new truck. Most people will offer an opinion on it, and shout it on the internet. How many of these people have enough experience of skating a range of trucks, or the relevant engineering experience, or knowledge of the production of this paticular type of gear to comment on it? I would suggest very few, and certainly not I.

And where do these opinions come from? Some people want to sound like gear nerds. Some people just like to see their own opinions in writing to satisfy their ego. Some people want to show everyone that they skate in this way, and form opinions to provide evidence for them skating in this way. That last example was a bit of a tricky one to explain, so a really simple example would be- "Yeah high angle trucks are better"- because they want everyone to think they ride in a cool, sketchy manner, with gear that is on the limit of chucking them off.

I should at this point say that skateboarders, paticularly of the downhilling type, are not inherently carefree. Many care a lot about what people think of them, whilst professing how they "really don't take things seriously." Hah.

But yeah, opinions- opinions irritate the hell out of me sometimes. To base your thoughts on what you want things to be like, regardless of the facts is a highly annoying thing to do. But we all do it to some extent. I would like people to take a minute though, and think about how their opinions could influence others before shouting them out. Perhaps think harder still if you are about to publish a magazine that could scare people away from medicine and cost real people their health. Oh, I wasn't suppose to use that. Whoops again.

Will

"Freeride" videos

A lamentation.



So little tim, you wanna make a downhill skateboarding video? heres what you gotta do

Learn no comply slides. At no point should you EVER put a hand down.

Skinny jeans are not optional. You must not under any circumstances wear kneepads, although whichever soft padding is fashionable at the time can be worn, as long as it's what the cool kids are rocking.

Include plenty of shots of trees, insects, badgers, cows and various other nature related things that have nothing to do with skateboarding. People dont watch these videos to see skateboarding you know. Make sure you come across as really eco friendly.

Include lots of shots of you sliding through piles of leaves. Get a friend to help if you cant find enough.

Find a wall and skate past it, sliding your glove over it. This will make your video really, really unique and thought provoking, raising lots of interesting points of debate about life. Possibly combine this shot with the piles of leaves.

Make sure whoever's filming you pans the camera from the floor towards you, or focuses it from a flower or a tree or a pigeon or something onto you. This lets your audience know you are At One With Nature.

Include shots of you smiling, laughing and mucking about with friends. This will show everyone how much of a good person you are.

You can select whatever music you like, as long as it is dubstep/is an unpopular remix of some popular song/ is really, really old school. The last approach shows you have a great depth of personality.

Make sure not to go too fast, or your video might transition from mild downhill to fair/moderate downhill and then serious downhill. Make sure you know exactly what category of skateboarding you are doing, and then skate to a paticular set of rules and regulations so you dont get confused. The "free" in freeride is not a licence to do whatever you want you know.

have fun

Will