Madrid skatecation - part one

so a bunch of us went to madrid, here's what we got up to

proof of how awesome I am

Okay, this has absolutely nothing to do with skating, but I recently promised my girl friend a tattoo… she had it done today and it rocks.

Yeah, I know… I rock.

Brand Loyalty?

In my defense, I have been back to the tattoo studio two further times in the week since I got this.

Good for a Girl

Here's a question for any female skaters out there…have you ever been complimented on your skating to have the suffix "for a girl" screwed on the end? For me it rankles just a bit, which doesn't mean I want put on my man hating dyke hat, lace up my DMs and kick the offending complimenter, because it's almost always meant sincerely…it's just the unthinking and misguided misogyny behind it that gets me.

Yes guys…there's sexism in skating. 

Now, before I get tied up and burnt as an evil feminist witch at the next freeride I go to…this isn't an attack on any of the guys I skate with, because believe it or not I'm just as guilty of the kind of unthinking misogyny I'm talking about.

Let me explain… when you quite sincerely tell one of your many female skater friends that she is "good at skating, for a girl" you're judging her buy different standards. It's actually quite demeaning and a bit condescending, it kind of says that you think that the skater in question can never just be good… only good for a girl. Imagine if we all started saying this to skaters with red hair?

"Oh you're good at skating… for a ginger."

See what I mean? You wouldn't base your praise of a skater on the colour of their hair, so why do the same with their sex?

And what about my unthinking misogyny? Well at the recent Bristol board meeting Mark Short ended up holding an impromptu slide jam and I was the only girl skating the hill. When it came to giving out prizes a bit of me was hoping for something for being the only girl on the hill. Mark actually judged everyone skating on their ability rather than sex and the right people were awarded the prizes. I salute Mark, and I'll dedicate my next safety meeting to his wisdom, because the fact I didn't get any prize made me want to be a better skater. If I'd been recognised as being "good for a girl" it might have made me lazy, as it is I'm determined to up my game… not because I want to win lots of swag (though everyone loves free swag) but because when I skate a hill with a bunch of guys I want to be their equal. As things stand, that will never happen while people tack "for a girl" on the end of compliments.

So, do a skate… and stop judging girls (and gingers) by different standards.

Motherfucking DIY skateboards!

A while back I wrote about building my own boards…well, that dream is now a reality as my first blank is in the press!

As it's been ages since I've posted anything it feels like a good time to go through the whole process. At this point I can't talk about the finished board, but I've definitely learnt loads in the past week just by building the press and from laying up the first blank. I'm really excited to get it out of the press and to start shaping my first board.

Seeing as this was my first time building a board, I decided to keep things simple with the press, mainly because that meant I could easily change parts of the press design without having to build a whole new one. This philosophy has already paid off as I had to take a plane to the outer rails to reduce the amount of concave (I shaved .25" off so the outer rails ended up at 1") as I had erred on the side of caution a bit too much.
I made a very simple rail press, with angled outer rails on the top of the press to ensure there was enough pressure on the blank to ensure everything bonded well.

I had this built after a couple of afternoons work, and while compared to rib press it is fairly crude, it was quick and easy to assemble with the tools from my garden shed. Simples!
Once I've learnt more about building boards I'll build a more refined press, but for the prototypes this is more than sufficient…well in my eyes it is.

Building the press was the easy bit, at least you can un-screw it if you put something together slightly wonkey…gluing up the veneers and sticking them in the press is certainly more scary as there is no going back. Construction for this board is 8 plys of ash and maple, with two of those plys cross grain and two layers of kevlar for extra stiffness, dampening, goddess knows what (The kevlar is an experiment that I will have know idea if it worked until everything comes out of the press). I'm hoping that the resulting blank will have minimal flex and bugger all torsional flex…the final board is going to be a top mount speed board after all.

laying up…use plenty of glue

The main thing I learnt pressing my first blank is that you need to make sure that you use enough glue, especially if you're using wood veneers rather than plywood as the wood soaks up a lot of glue. I was a bit frugal on my first couple of veneers and had to re-glue them…no real harm done. 

Also if you are going to use composite materials like kevlar, fibreglass or fabric, make sure you get all the air bubbles out…I used a handy little roller for this.

Kevlar layer…pressing out the air bubbles

Once all the layers were glued up the whole thing went in the press and was cranked down hard…now it's just a waiting came waiting for the glue to set and then wait another week letting everything cure somewhere warm. Yes this may well come under the heading of overkill, but I've invested a lot of time and effort in this little project so far so I'd rather do it right, rather than rush and get something substandard out of the press.

Okay, that's it for the time being, I shall report back in a week when I have a finished blank in my hands and I'll get to see how much everything has relaxed once it comes out of the press, in the mean time do a motherfucking skate!

Find a Penny

Because plastic skateboards are shit…right?

Do a kick flip!!

Apparently being able to do kick flip is what makes street skating "better" than longboarding (well according to some street skaters that is. So here's a picture of Felix Drushel doing a kick flip on a Land Yachtz Wolf Shark.

DIY skateboards

If you're truly obsessive about skateboards, at somepoint you will start to wonder if you could do things better…I reached that point last summer when I realised that pretty much all the boards designed to go fast and sideways are very utilitarian, with form defined by function. Now for some reason this angered my feminine soul deeply, I think skateboarding is a beautifully expressive sport and I like to ride boards that reflect this. Most of the guys I talk to about this don't get it, they seem to view their skateboard merely as a tool for going fast and sideways rather than a thing of beauty in its self. For me form is just as important as function.

So I took matters into my own hands, I was riding a drop through pintail at the time (LY Battle Axe) and while bored one afternoon and hanging out at Timmy's I sketched out a design for drop through, DH race pintail. At the time it was the most fucking awesome thing ever, but know with a bit more experience riding I can see there were some flaws in the idea.

Behold the awesome!!

My pintail never got built, but the idea to design and build my own skateboard never left me and after a small hiatus I am now about to start. The idea hasn't changed though, I want to build beautiful looking skateboards with all the function of the boring utilitarian ones…I have plans in regards to construction of the boards, I have settled on a simple but effective press design (earlier press designs were way too complex and I have a large amount of wood veneers on order. So it's about to be all systems go…oh yeah, I've also designed the first board I'm going to make.

The idea behind this was simple, I wanted a top mount DH/freeride board, built for my smaller feet and narrower stance because a lot of longboards are built for hulking guys way over six feet tall and with massive feet. Finding a cave that works with size 6 feet can be hard. I also wanted to make a board with a symetrical foot platform for epic freeriding fun times, but set off with a beautiful directional shape. Form and function working together for a change. Have I managed that? I'm sure lots of people will disagree with me, but I think she looks sexy and I'm looking forward to the challenge of building her.

Anyway, that's it for now…I'll have more to say about this project once more has happened.

And then we get this

Vomit!



Brighton Skateboards - Girls Video from Brighton Skateboards on Vimeo.

Get your own sammich!

Carmen Shafer and Alicia Fillback shredding hard. Time to learn to cook guys 

Clutch PTG Review

So as you know I recently got a super sexy Clutch PTG, well I gripped her today and took her out and here's a very quick review.

Check out the custom grip job!

She has been shredded! Actually, she's been shredded a bit more than intended as I hit a pot hole while doing a coleman and flipped her into a curb. ooops! The concave is really nice, in fact I'd go as far as to say it's lovely and with some super coarse grip tape your feet aren't going anywhere soon. 

  

With the bushing set up i have in the randals (88a purple sabre barrel boardside and an 83a reflex cone road side) she's quite turny and pumps like a dream, I actually think that on the shorter wheel base and with grippy square lipped wheels you could experiment with a bit of slalom. She certainly feels nimble as hell when skating around.

  

The cult converters still aren't properly broken in yet, so stand up steeze is currently unavailable (i can do stand up steeze on the board i've got my cult classics on), however for hands down slides they slide a very looooooooooooong way…about twice as far as classics at a similar speed. Once they're properly broken in and starting to cone I imagine they'll be ace for freeriding and sliding.

  

All in all a fantastic board and I love her! ♥

She'll also be absolutely bitching for Boarder X…now if only someone in the UK would run a comp!

fuck yeah! Kati Torrebella & Sonso Masiá!

I'm so going to spain to skate!

Questions

Life is hard for us female skaters, not only do we have to shred hard we have additional worries like "does my bum look big on this skateboard?"

Though I imagine if I'd been wearing a bikini when I'd been filming this, two things would have happened: a) Rob Borek would have spent the next three months staring at his computer screen and b) I'd be given loads of free plastic skateboards.