Everyone here knows I’m constantly obsessing about something in my setup that I can blame for not landing tricks. Lately the obsession hasn’t been an excuse, but more of an observation. Watching my 360 flip to fakie in Fullers video I couldn’t help but notice that my foot looks like it wants more board to dig into. Then it was seeing this wallie that Neil grammed and my trucks look so small compared to my feet. But rather then run to the store and waste money as I have in the past I grabbed an old setup (with Ace trucks instead of Thunders) and went in front of the house to see if I could flip it. The point is to skate this board for a week and if I like it still I can get Venture wides and maybe setup a new board that hasn’t been sitting around for over a year. Oh, and per my last post I had no desire to even put those Lakais on again. Instead I went with a pair of the Stratfords I had initially wanted to keep as chill/tennis/comfy shoes. Those shoes are so good. Grip better, feel the board better, are actually comfy, etc. Argh. Anyways, I had woke up with a really stiff and painful neck and didn’t have much intention of actually skating. But I am too stubborn not to. Kickflips felt great. I did a few more flippers and even landed on a 3 flip before deciding I was content with the setup and set off for Denver to hit 303 and maybe skate a little with Chad. After 303 I met Chad at his house and we skated over to the trio of sick spots within throwing distance from his place. We started with the 3 up 3 down. But I didn’t have that much energy. We dorked around on the parking blocks behind the building for awhile. I got a slappy crooks and Chad did slappy front slash. Next we went to the 2 up 4 down area and just kinda messed around. Chad manualed around it. I almost no complied up the 2. Then I tried to front board this little ledge, hung up and slammed hard, somehow not hurting my neck. I felt pretty sick after that so we called it a day. Chad rules.

After a 303 mission Matt and I skated a couple blocks away from the ‘only spot in denver’. We hit the curved ledge mostly. Matt front tailed it real quick. By the end he added back tails, 50s both ways and front 5-0 too. Chadman met up with us pretty much right away. He was more cruising all over the place. I had new shoes and a new board.

Lakai Guy XLKs and the board I setup was 8.1 instead of 8.0. It shouldn’t make a difference, but coupled with the new shoes it became apparent on my first noseslide attempt where I ran into the bench that I would be skating like total shit all night. Ugh. I got a crappy front nose to fakie, tiny crooks jib and failed and front 50s. We moved on by bombing a hill that Nate and I used to do all the time. With my new wheels I did a foot drag once to slow down a little. Doh. It was still fun though. We got booted from the world trade tower right away. Booted from First Bank pretty quick. I was skating so bad I didn’t even ollie the little marble gap.

Next we ended up at this weird blue ledge / bank spot. Chad did some cool f/s pivots and stuff on it. Matt noseslid and crooked it. I was unable to jib it like Chad due to lack of any coordination on my board. Matt got a sick front board to fakie into the bank. Chad taught us fakie bonelesses although I don’t think I actually rode away from one. I finally landed a couple tricks with kickflip fakie, b/s and f/s flips on the little bank. We cruised around and after Matt ollied a long five stair while being beamed by security we ended up at Civic. I was pretty exhausted and unmotivated by then. I think we all were. Chad tried to manual the whole thing (photo above) but didn’t make it. That was pretty much it. Good weather, good crew, but man I couldn’t ride my skateboard and it was depressing. Especially because my knees didn’t even hurt much for the first time in awhile.

After a very late night at the Old man jam at Launch and then a full day of work I stopped by the “rollerblade” skatepark that’s right by IBM. I was motivated to try flip tricks by Pat’s BATB 7 entry. It was cold and windy and I had new shoes. Another pair of the NB+ Stratfords. It’s nice not changing shoes every pair anymore. There were two young kids there. One was super obnoxious and annoying, the other other was chill and nice. One had a skateboard and one had a scooter. It should be pretty easy to figure out which was which. Anyways it became pretty clear that I was too tired/sore to skate worth a shit right away. But my stubbornness is strong and I kept at it, skated slow, did 10 flip tricks, ollied the flat bar, front 50’d the ledge and called it.

What happened to that new Suciu deck you ask? Well now that’s quite embarrassing. Monday morning I was getting ready for work and could not find my work badge and could not find it anywhere. Somehow this pisses me off more then almost anything and I was looking under my dresser when my board (which leans against the side of the dresser) fell on my shoeless foot. Ouch. My reaction was a quick kick to the middle of the board. Snap. That did not help my temper fit. In all honesty though I cannot believe that board broke. I didn’t even have a shoe on and didn’t put much into it. So much for that hemp layer making it strong. Oh well, back to Null! I had also worn a hole threw my previous Stratfords so it was time for some new ones. These were 10.5 instead of 11 as the 11s seem slightly big. I set up an 8″ instead of 8.1 this time. Well, actually my debate this time was to setup a 7.875 because Generator shipped 7.875s instead of 7.75s and I used to love 7.875 (I just managed to say 7.875 three times in one sentence!). Luckily I held off for now and stuck with 8″.

I have become such a recluse. Rather then invite others over to skate I just wanted to go out solo and try a lot of flatground tricks too. I had a couple good warm up runs and great first few kickflips. The 8″ board actually felt quite a bit smaller and I was happy about that. I tried a few crooks and boardslides on the ramp before laying into the flatground for awhile. I got to heelflip and did another accidental 3/4 flip to primo. Only this time I didn’t bail off, but landed it perfect. Ha, that made me laugh quite a bit. I was 4/5 on treflips. Struggled with b/s flips, f/s flips. Felt close to nollie flips, nowhere near switch heels, nowhere near inward heels, front heels. I definitely would have rather been skating outside somewhere with room. Last thing I did was try an alley oop fakie back 50 to fakie which I would eventually get and call it a night. That might be a new one.

My legs have been hurting and I’m totally over shoes that make things worse. Aka thin vulcanized shoes. So I gave up the Provosts (mediocre shoe) and tried some Etnies Jameson 2s I picked up recently. But they are way too wide for my feet and my foot was moving all around and trying to come out of the shoe. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately for my pocket book) I had another new pair of shoes too, the shoe that proves I am a hypocrite. The New Balance Numeric Stratford. Yeap, the PJ shoe. I’ve been watching a lot of PJ footage lately and saw them at Meta and could not pass them by. They fit my foot absolutely perfect. Needless to say when I went back out to Rampy I was hyped to skate. I rode the ramp a bit and got the legs flowing and then skated flatground for awhile because I knew Carleigh would be over soon. Skating flatground with someone else isn’t possible on Rampy. These shoes flip a little different so it took some getting used to. I got a few kickflips and other basics then starting trying switch flips which ended up being ridiculously close. Man that would be cool. An uninspired Carleigh showed and we began skating the ramp. It went pretty well. We both had some good runs. Carleigh had front d’s, feeble fakies, and got close to front tail and fakie front 50. I had most of my basics and added a fakie crooks before hucking front feebles and kick back 50s which were both kinda close. I was surprised at how good these brand new cupsoles were skating. After Carleigh left I skated flat on Rampy for a few minutes to see if I could get that switch flip feeling back. Nope,

Back in Boulder after a fun time in Omaha for Christmas. It was a super nice morning and I wanted to get out skating early. So I did. I started flatground in front of the house. I had new shoes and new wheels. Emerica Provost. Null superthane 52s. Flatground was fun. After doing several basics I started trying two tricks in a row without pushing between. Since I skate slow this was a challenge. Got fakie bigspin then front shove, no comply 180 then fakie flip, pop shove then treflip, almost kickflip then nollie treflip. Settled for my first nollie varial flip in awhile instead.

Neil arrived so we took off to campus. We started at this silly little rock wallie. Neil and I took awhile, but we both got lines we were hyped on. Back 180 up a curb, b/s halfcab flip on flat, rock wallie, ollie a 4 stair. So ridiculously fun. Both of us were set for the day at this point, but it went on. We ollied the round 4 stair then ended up at the art building double set / ledge area. Ollie, Neil and I back 180’d off a ledge. Neil first try. I tried mine in a line with a crooks then a noseslide on the ledge after. Didn’t get it, but was hyped to try. Then we went to the library. My legs were feeling pretty sore, but I tried a silly line of ollie onto the downhill ledge and ride through skate stoppers by doing the little front wheels/back wheels dance. It was fun, minus the one time i hung up and dove over the last part. Ollie did that too. Neil was too scared of hanging up. Ha. I got one with an ollie onto one of the benches after. Then we hit the plastic ledge area for a bit. Neil got front 50. I got noseslide. Ollie randomly did a perfect no comply. Then a few more to show he had it down. Then we went to go pick up my mom at the bus station and ate some food before heading back out to the streets.

Neil and I were super sore and we started off by riding down some long stairs. It was actually pretty fun. Ollie got buck first with this crazy jump over the mini rail to his board then firecracker a 3 stair then ride down a bunch of long stairs going fast. Neil ollied onto a ledge before the stairs. I did a noseslide down this weird metal ledge then front 180’d the 3, turned around and rode down the stairs. Street skating rules. You can’t do stuff like this at a park.

Then we went around the back and ended up at this thing for awhile. Neil could ollie up all 5 so easy. Ollie mostly just goofed around like in the video above or just riding down the stairs.

I mostly tried lines starting with noseslides. Got one with a b/s flip off the last stair going so slow I didn’t even roll 2 feet past the last stair before I came to a halt. Ha. I managed to ollie up all 5 stairs, but it wasn’t as pretty as Neil’s at all. Last line was front 180 down the first one, switch roll off one, switch front 180, roll off, kickflip off. So hard.

Those dudes were pretty over skating and it had cooled off quite a bit, but I wanted to try a few things back at the front of the school. First was to kickflip into the downhill sidewalk then ollie the 5 stair. Didn’t get the ollie. Didn’t even commit. It was harder then I thought. First the 5 stair is big. Bigger then a normal 5. And second, the downhill takeoff is just plain weird. Didn’t get it. But I did get something else I was probably even more hyped on. Ollie onto the tall ledge down the stairs in the very front of the school, ride around the pole, drop down a level then ride off the big drop. Hammers! Ha.

Lastly after dropping off Neil, Ollie and I went to the Louisville park for a few carves around the snake run. Kind of a nice ender on one of my favorite street skating days ever. Gotta start off with flatground more often!

neilsoffire’s video on Instagram

Red curbs on a cold and snowy Saturday afternoon. It was barely 30. Neil and Blake picked me up. Neil put in about 20 minutes before getting on a marathon call with his lady. Blake did a sick quick Ollie on this weird loading dock that somehow didn’t have snow on it. He also put a sign in front of the rock to wallie it and got a cool line to it. I didn’t skate great. I had new shoes and a new board. Went 8.1 this time for whatever reason. I got a smith grind at one point on the taller curb that hyped me up. I’ve done what I thought were smiths before, but this one felt legit. Other then that I had a couple front lips, struggled with kickflips, had a bunch of ride on grinds like above then started bucking some new ones. Did ride on front 50 no comply shove out. Stoked! New one. Then started hucking no comply finger flip out. Got really close, but didn’t get it. Gonna put that one on my list. Dave ripped it. Boardslide 270 out, front 180 nose manual, almost front 5-0 to nose manual, wallie the rock with help from the sign, a lot more. Decent session even though it was so cold.

Brought boards to 303 and Emage then went to meet up with Chad and Connor. Had a few minutes to kill so I just parked on a random block that looked fun to skate. Good asphalt, curb cuts and even a ledge. I had new shoes and a new board. I had some Emerica Laced (Romero). I had tried to break these shoes in months ago, they gave me blisters, gave up on them, gave them to my brother, then while visiting my brother in Wisconsin I took them back. So they are broken in. I even skated them for a bit while in Wisconsin. Anyways, I felt ok initially then slammed super hard bailing an ollie out of a curb cut. Ouch. I also couldn’t seem to land a kickflip. Ugh. Chad showed up and cruised around with me. He’s got pop. We both just cruised the block hitting stuff. Chad front boarded a tall flower planter and started feeling out a potential line. I started feeling somewhat ok on my board, but then we got the boot. Then I filmed the rest of the night. It was one of those frustrating nights where we got the boot from every spot before people got tricks. Ugh.

After destroying my grip trying kick boardslides yesterday I decided it was time for a new board anyway. And I was sooo sick of those grey wheels that I put some new superthanes on. Lastly, since those Lakai’s were killing my feet I went with some new shoes too. Emerica Provosts. My first vulcs I’m excited about in awhile. They have Strobel construction at least though. After trying to get Ollie to go skating all day he finally agreed to it when Liz and India got home and I could have just gone skating solo or with friends anyway. Ha. We went to campus. Right out of the car Ollie sets his board down, does a fakie shove and then a f/s halfcab. Whoa! We rolled around the new dorms on the south side which were torture because there are so many new amazing ledges, but they all have that crappy flagstone finish with cracks between them. We did find a way to skate them a little though. We kept pushing, ollie’ing up curbs, off curbs, etc. Did the hill down from the basketball center which was fun. My new wheels are really really fast! Ollie foot drags with his front foot. Ha, darn mongo pushers. We ended up at the weird ledge thing that Carleigh and I kickflipped the monstrous flat gap a long time ago. This time I took a bit to get used to new wheels and did a gap to manual. It was pretty fun, I normally chicken out of manuals with drops that tall. Ollie was having fun ollie’ing down the 2 stair by it and riding through the grass. We moved on some more. I manualled one of the long downhill pads first try. Sweet. We dorked around that area for awhile. Then dorked around on that one stair ledge that you can’t get any speed for. I did a front tail off it which was still not the easiest thing for me. Oh, so my new deck was an 8.25 and I wasn’t really noticing a problem with it. Cool. The new shoes fit a little loose, but I was liking them too. We hit the art building area and I did some flatground while Ollie hid in the bushes so that people wouldn’t see him. I got a few heelflips which surprised me. I was 3-0. I forgot how awesome vulcs are for heelflips. Halfcab flips felt a little harder with the bigger board. After that we basically headed home.

My NB+ shoes were in need of repairs and when I took the ol’ glue gun there was some weird reaction to the tech layer and it kinda mutated into some weird bubble that I didn’t want to skate. So I showed up at SOL on a rainy friday afternoon in my new Lakai Guys. I’ve had these shoes before and loved them. After today I think I’m sold on Lakai XLKs from here on out. When I got to SOL there was a few people playing foosball and I joined in for a bit then we skated. My new shoes felt much better on tranny right out of the gate. Much better board feel. I didn’t rip by any means, but I didn’t skate as bad as I normally do there. Lots of Longmont locals came in and out of there. Chad, Uriel, a few younger kids that were ripping, a dude that just moved to Longmont that was destroying it. Dude was seriously slaying it. Front 180 fakie 5-0 to fakie, back smith over the extension, back 5-0 to fakie over it, hurricanes to fakie, etc. All fast and powerful. I got to the point where I would land more then one trick besides axle stalls in a run so I was happy. Had one with front rock, front d and fakie back smith to fakie in it. I left feeling really happy and went to Crisis for the Fallen premiere.

After the Fallen premiere we were hanging out and Blaine starts messing around with some slappies. Before long it turned into a full on session. The crew was Fuzz, Blaine, Carleigh (in a skirt!), Jack and I and we skated for a pretty long time. I was skating Fuzz’s board. Jack was doing lots of fast grinds which aren’t easy on that waxless curb. As you can see from the videos there were a lot of boneless style tricks, slappies and a front pivot kickflip out. I had tried that on Fuzz’s board a few times and he said I should land it. So I did. Whoa. Not even that many tries. It kicked off an hour long frenzy for Fuzz to get one too. Which he did perfect. Not the funny one above, he got one bolts. Carleigh was getting into legit backside slappies which is pretty hard on that square curb. If it was waxed I’d be willing to bet some would have been landed. Blaine was kinda all over too trying a bunch of random tricks. Jack had a pretty epic slam sliding out and shooting his board breaking a table leg, but somehow not breaking the window. Whew. He had another one with the board getting caught in his feet and he almost hit his head on the Lowcard toilet. Ha ha. There were a lot of silly boneless tricks and powerslide noseslides. So fun. A couple of my favorites were the f/s 270 slide to tail and boneless 270 to tail. What a fun night. I drove home late feeling some of the best physically and mentally I’ve felt in awhile. The rain had stopped and driving down the hill into Boulder I could see patches of fog hovering over the city. It was beautiful. Pissed Jeans was cranked on the stereo. Awesome.