“You don’t innovate ’cause you can’t innovate, it’s not a choice”
While the “TWS Buyer’s Guide” is easy to dismiss as a glorified CCS catalogue with ads, it’s interesting how deeply some professional-level skateboarders genuinely enjoy nerding out over the various processes involved in setting up and maintaining a board, the technology or lack thereof, and how much attention they pay to setup fads, like ultra-loose trucks, the 38mm wheel of 2008. Kind of like when an otherwise moribund rock musician lights up like a Christmas tree when Guitar Magazine inquires after his pedals or whatever.
Of course you get the usual setup “madness” stories, but between these and some middling frontside flip photos there’s some interesting tidbits in this year’s Buyer’s Guide. It’s entertaining how often the “if it ain’t broke” refrain rings out among the pro ranks, no doubt bumming Rodney Mullen and his pile of unsold $100 Almost impact boards, along with the rest of the deck industry, stuck with a product that should have climbed to $80 per board (in the US) over the last 15 years, if it kept up with inflation.
Overheard among ruminations on the superior flick properties possessed by suede toe-caps and the proper order in which to tighten mounting hardware:
“When I put my wheels on, I have to put extra washers on my truck axle, so when I tighten the bolt, there’s some extra slack, but the bolt will be flush with the axle. This way you won’t fuck the axle up.”
-a helpful hint from Bobby Worrest
“Right now I’m rocking the standard Swiss Bones bearings. These bearings could seriously be shit, but since I grew up hearing they’re the best, they feel great.”
-Cairo Foster on independent thinking
“I usually put the grip all the way to the left, so that way I don’t have to use the razor blade on the right side of the board. It saves me a little time. After hooking up so m any boards over the years, you find ways to make it easier.”
-Jeron Wilson explains how to accumulate valuable seconds over a period of several years
“Dustin [Dollin]’s working on getting a nine-inch board.”
-Lizard King, 80s revivalist
“I take ’em off and I spray Windex in ’em to take some of the grease out.”
Elissa Steamer, Martha Stewart of bearing care
“Other trucks turn better, but if you’re gonna ride a pool or vert, there’s nothing else to ride. I used to ride Indys, but now I can’t do it. I haven’t even tried the new ones because that whole kingpin-breaking thing happened. They kinda took a turn for the worse.”
-Amy Caron, ensuring a doorstep free of NHS products and weeks of ridicule on slash dog-centric messageboards
“Remember when I was skating Terell’s board? That Darkstar board and it had this weird carbon fiber in it? The point of the 7-ply board is to break it in half. I could not break the carbon fiber – it was so annoying. It gets me even more mad.”
-Mike Mo Capaldi on technological innovation
Tags: Amy Caron, Buyer's Guide, deck construction, Helmet, Independent trucks, inflation rate, metric system, Mike Mo Capaldi, Rodney Mullen, Transworld, Type O Negative
boil the ocean 
November 18, 2008 at 6:22 pm |
Admission-I like reading the interviews in the buyer guide too. It is all about the little nerdy tidbits of information; maybe you can gleam a life changer out of it, or yeah, a boring madness story, and so forth. It makes my obsession with Shorty’s 7/8 allen hardware (recently ended, though not by choice) and my near breakdown when setting up new trucks a little easier to swallow (just ditch the bottom washer and you can get them nice and loose off the bat without finger-tightening all day).
Aside, but on the topic of consumer goods, was Muska the only person that really made visor beanies look rad? I hate those things nowadays.
November 18, 2008 at 11:08 pm |
Whether they admit it or not, skate-nerds(such as myself) do like to read all those interviews.
And Shorty’s 7/8 allen hardware is the shit. Only way to go.
November 19, 2008 at 4:25 am |
That’s the most interesting issue of transworld of the year…it’s interesting to see the size boards dudes ride and shit like that…like, Welsh is up to 7.75, and biebel actually rides Silver trucks?
November 19, 2008 at 1:38 pm |
Now that others admit it, I will too. It’s the one issue that I will read on the stands just for some of those interviews. But I would not be caught dead buying it since it would be like paying for a catalog. In the past the interviews could be sloppily produced and thus worthless. I remember being really curious about the kits a couple atv’s ride and for trucks they would just say “indy”, without a size, or for wheels: “spitfire”.
November 20, 2008 at 10:10 pm |
The $100 impact doesn’t exist. Your thinking of that Uber deck that Rodney had out there. At my local the almost impact deck with the disks sells at the same price as regaular pro decks.
November 20, 2008 at 11:29 pm |
Right, that’s the one.