Growing up is optional

The whole use of PPE in NZ skating, by my observation, comes down to fashion and style.

When vert skating was big everyone wore at least knee pads, and most wore helmets. Now that street is way more popular, I rarely see any PPE.

I don’t wear pads, but if I’m doing more than a flatland cruise or a play at the local skate park I do wear a helmet, particularly when I know I’m going to go faster than 30km/h (19mph).

Generally, New Zealander’s attitude to safety, in particular young males, tends to be quite blase. This is also reflected in road statistics.

The human body is fragile, but great at repairing itself after most injuries. <lecture>It’s much better to not get injured in the first place. PPE will help with that and also when you do get hurt, will most likely reduce the level of injury.</lecture>

Minilogo are giving away free decks for the most referrals that join their militants. Use ‘NZJoe’ as the referring militant and sign up free here so I can get one. Thanks

Nike is right: Just do it!

Whenever I go out on my longboard I get watched by guys (and girls) of all ages. It’s not often they see someone my age on a board having fun. That’s when the ones that know have ‘the look’.

You can see it in their eyes - first the vacant look as they cast their mind back, then the grin as remember the fun they had, then the smile with envy and admiration as they see somone of my age still prepared to act like a kid for no good reason other than they want to.

To all you guys (and girls) that give me ‘the look’: Just do it! Get yourself a board and start having fun!

My skating stance is wrong for modern tricks. When I learnt to skate, I didn’t have anyone to teach me or to learn from. I was a loner that just had a board and skated the best I could. Unfortunatly, that meant that I didn’t learn the right way to do things. This is not a problem until you try to do something more complex than kick-turns and ollies.

I’m right-handed/footed. My stance is goofy (for surfing too, which is not a problem). However, my pushing foot is my right foot, which means that I push with my front foot, not my back foot. Consequently, my style is to ride with more of my weight on my back foot. I’ve since been informed that this stance is called ‘mongo’ (thanks Stu, and wikipedia)

I’ve tried switching to regular so that my pushing foot is where it should be but it just feels so wrong. I’ve tried doing goofy properly (back foot pushing), but with only my right foot on the board I have no control. I would like to do one or other of these, but breaking a 25 year habit is hard.

Probably the biggest issue is braking. It’s next to impossible to brake with the front foot. This is a bit of a problem, especially going downhill.

Although the comparison does not require the same amount of effort, I have successfully swithed to become a left-handed mouse user. This was because when I became a full-time webmaster I spend most of my working day operating a mouse and didn’t want any sort of strain injuries, so I use left hand at work and right hand at home. It took about a week to get really productive and about a month to become just as competent as mousing with my right hand.

I would love to have eight hours a day to get competent skating another stance. Since I don’t, I guess it will take longer.

Has anyone else tried, or heard of anyone try, to dramatically alter their skating stance before? I think that it would have to be done cold-turkey to prevent reverting to the old style. Any advice appreciated.

These are just my observations and the conclusions I’ve drawn from them. I have not researched thoroughly, so the conclusions I draw may be made with incomplete data. I probably end up with more questions than answers

Skating in the late 80s was huge. Stacy Peralta, Tony Hawk and Steve Cabalero were household names. Skating was a mainstream pasttime for 10-17 year olds. In the early 90s it nearly died out. Specialist shops closed. Shops that had diversified into skate gear stopped selling it.

The late 90s and early 00s saw a huge resurgence, mostly in street skating. Parks ripped out the aging vert ramps and they were replaced with boxes, rails and concrete 1/4 pipes. Skating was cool again, and with it came the lessons of the surf industry: the real money is in the clothing and other accessories. Skaters ‘non-compliant’ attitude became popular, and with it the fashions.

Around this time, the New Zealand dollar, jokingly referred to as the New Zealand Peso, bought about US$0.38. A US$120 custom complete would cost in New Zealand about NZ$400, including the 7% import duty and 12.5%GST.

The New Zealand skate retailers are pulling the wool over our eyes now. I expect that the margins are huge, still charging what was a good price in 2000. Everything else has fallen with our rising dollar, in particular electronics. The NZ$ now buys about US$0.70, yet prices for skate gear are relatively unchanged from 2000. The Australian dollar has gone through similar, although less extreme swings in value, yet a board from Aus costs only slightly more than it does in the US.

Here’s an example: My longboard I bought in September 05 Cost NZ$500 in shops here. It costs US$149 in America. Even with US$70 freight, I still saved NZ$170 by buying from USA.

I’m looking to buy a shortboard too. I don’t care about graphics/brand etc., only quality. I can get a US made complete (blank/no brand) in New Zealand for around NZ$300. I can buy a similar board from Australia, including freight for about NZ$215. I can get a similar (minilogo) setup landed from USA for NZ$185.

So here are my questions (largely rhetorcal, but feel free to have your say): Should I encourage more people to shop in New Zealand, to increase volume and bring prices down? (Would it work or just generate more profits for retailers?) Should I encourage more people to shop overseas, to increase competition, wake up retailers and bring prices down? Should I join the bandwagon and start bringing in gear and retail it myself to fund my hobbies? Even buying at full retail from USA, I could still make money. I have only found one online store in NZ that I would consider buying from. Is building my own store another way to go? Should I find NZ wholesalers and see what sort of deals I can do? Or would Trademe be better?

If you were in any doubt, you should not be. Don’t be like this guy. I wish him and his family the best.

I know this road is fast. I could do 60km/h on my mountainbike without raising a sweat.

Full text of linked article below because stuff pull things:

By NICK CHURCHOUSE

A 22-year-old skateboarder is fighting for his life after an early-morning accident in Wellington.

About 1.30am yesterday, emergency services were called to the accident outside Victoria University in Kelburn Pde, where a Lower Hutt man had suffered severe head injuries.

The man’s family and friends were at his bedside at Wellington Hospital’s intensive care unit yesterday. Police said his injuries were life-threatening.

Sergeant Mike McCarthy said police were conducting a scene examination on the steep hill running through the university and interviewing witnesses.

Karl Truell, a Wellington skater, said the university hill was a popular spot for downhill skating.

He said skaters could go faster than 50km/h on the hill – “at least as fast as a car”, he said.

In six years of skating in Wellington, he knew plenty of skaters who had crashed in the same area but none were seriously hurt.