Stop Skating With Your Eyes

We experience skateboarding with all of our senses, but we consume it with our eyes. Ironically, when you are actually skating, what you see is the least important part of the experience. The feeling of weightlessness in the air, the vibration of the grind through your feet, the sound of trucks on concrete: These are the things skaters are really chasing after when they ride. Yet the increasing emphasis on watching skateboarding, from pro vids to your own selfies, can make it real easy to lose sight of this.

Keeping Things Rolling With Speedlab Wheels

Bill likes them.

When Speedlab Wheels started in 2002 it wasn't about cashing in, it wasn’t even an act of rebellion against big time skateboarding. Speedlab started because a skater named David Rogerson couldn’t find a wheel like he wanted to ride.

“Speedlab began because no one was making bigger wheels.” Explains Speedlab's current owner, Alan Keller “Back then, you couldn’t find anything over 58 millimeters.”

Now Speedlab has changed hands, but Speedlab is still all about getting skaters the kind of wheels they want and deserve but can’t always get. 

Talking Gear Doesn't Make You A Poseur, And Not Giving A Crap Doesn't Make You A Jock

If you are familiar with the work I've done with The Ride Channel or even hung around the Parking Block Diaries Facebook page, you probably know I put a fair amount of thought into the gear I ride. In modern skateboarding, thinking critically about what you are riding is usually a point of controversy, not for the opinions you might form, but for the fact that you have an opinion at all.

I see it all the time on my pages or in the comment sections of my articles: Someone will ask some advice about how a deck rides or ask for suggestions on what kind of wheels to get, and, soon afterwards, the snarky and even hostile comments come rolling in. For many, even asking about gear is "over-thinking" and considering the specs of different products"Doesn't matter".  Before long they always end up twisting the good ole' Zorlac "Shut up and skate" slogan into their ultimate justification.

SLAPCHAT: With Danny Sargent

If there was a Mount Rushmore of curbs, Danny Sargent’s face would be on it, three stories high, right between John Lucero and Tom Knox. At the apex of his career it seemed as if there was no angle of concrete in the San Francisco Bay area safe from the wrath of Sarge’s trucks. But now, after moving his family to Minneapolis, Danny Sargent is getting a sample of the pain every midwestern skater felt back in the day trying to emulate his video edits on sketchy middle america crete.

“Out here the curbs are all weathered,” Sargent comments. “It’s not like out west, that’s for damn sure.”

But even if he’s mostly hitting bowls and parks nowadays, Danny Sargent is still a slappy god. “For me it was always a way of life,” Sargent says. “You go out and you slappy around.. it’s just what we did”.

A beacon of inspiration for curb fiends past and present, I was honored to collect Danny Sargent’s accumulated wisdom on the intricacies of the slappy for this edition of Slapchat.

Why "International No Ollie Day" Should Be The Next Big Skate Holiday

Every year when Go Skateboarding Day rolls around, I get to thinking about other holidays skaters might think up to celebrate their culture. Usually these musings are just an excuse to crack jokes and troll for cheap laughs, but this year I’ve been thinking about something more functional, more sincere. I’ve come up with an annual event that will both pay homage to some neglected elements of skateboarding while opening the minds and trick repertoires of all the skaters who choose to participate. A holiday skating, especially street skating needs.

SLAPCHAT With Donny Humes of Smelly Curb Zine

All photos: Jason Bash

When Ohio Skater Donny Humes started Smelly Curb Zine in 1987, skating curbs wasn’t a nostalgic trend or a time-filling gimmick, it was the status quo for anyone who didn't have access to a pool or half pipe. (i.e., almost everyone not near a coastline). As decades passed and skating changed, Humes became more than just another guy making a zine about skating. Producing Smelly Curb by hand with X-acto knives and Xerox machines even after the advent of digital publishing, Humes became a sort  Keeper Of The Curb, using his zine to help keeping skating rooted to the crete thorough all its ups and downs. Humes efforts as an artist, publisher and skater have earned him the respect of skaters around the world and secured him a place in the prestigious Grand Order Of Curb Crushers. When it comes to slappy authorities, you can’t do much better than Humes. We ran Humes through the Slapchat gauntlet, and here’s what we got. Read and learn.

First Off, what counts as a slappy? Do you have to get your trucks involved? Some folks consider a noseslide on a curb where you don’t lift your tail a “slappy noseslide” or a slapped in blunt slide a “Slappy blunt”?

The first slappy involved grinding your trucks, literally carving or slashing the curb. there are variations now because that’s what skateboarding does, it evolves and expands. Slappies are all about the grind, and feeling the concrete
and trucks rippling under your feet.

Slapchat: Special Curb Stall Edition, With Kristian Svitak

The ever popular, Truck-Grab Butt Stall

When I hit up Kristian Svitak to do a Slapchat, I figured it would be the the journalistic equivalent of a slappy on a red painted roundy. Svitak’s from the midwest, he came up at the end of the 80’s, hell, he was a teammate of John Lucero and Jason Adams for years. I just sort of assumed that this Ohio-reared shredder would have a deep devotion to the sacred slappy. 

Never take anything for granted kids, especially in skateboarding. When I called him up on the road with my standard list of questions, I got a minor shock.

“I’ve never really had a slappy phase,” Svitak explained. “I enjoy doing them...but this whole slappy thing, my buddies are always trying to get me to do slappies. ‘Hey let’s go do slappies!’ Yeah, that sounds fun, but, nothing against the slappy, but when I think about the limited time I have to skate, I want to do all sorts of things. I’ve got skateboarding ADD, I only have so many slappies, and then it’s like: ‘Is there a set of stairs around here?’”

The Ace Of Curbs

Depending on your point of view, skaters like Ace Pelka are either saving curb skating, or ruining it forever. On one hand, watching this 18 year old shredder rip a curb is a lesson in stoke. On the other, seeing him pop a variation like a slappy to ollie impossible out is enough to make any veteran curb skater question whether a good, solid, frontside slappy is enough anymore.

“I totally don’t mean to turn slappies into a tech thing,” Pelka says, defending himself. “I just like impossibles, they’re my favorite flat ground trick. I was super-pumped to do a slappy and impossible out. I tried it and it worked out.”

Of course, this does nothing to excuse him for the slappy kickflips, or all the other variations he has completely dialed. Pelka is a monster. But if he’s a monster, then he’s a monster of our own creation.

SLAPCHAT With Mario Rubalcaba

The slappy: it's oh so much more than a skateboard trick. Its an attitude, a way of life, a philosophy. Every once in a while we get a chance to ask a bona fide master of the Dao of Slap a set of questions that go to the heart of the art and cut to the very meaning of the slappy.

Our first slappy sensei is Mario Rubalcaba. Mario has been terrorizing curbs and brutalizing drums for decades. He was a pro for the legendary Alva team in the late 80’s and early 90’s, a role model for the curb generation, and the beat behind too many bands to recount, including 411, Off, Rocket From the Crypt, Earthless, and Hot Snakes. He still drums, he still rips and he’s still putting out decks with Assault skateboards. Those who pursue the way of the slap should all familiarize themselves with the work of this San Diego Curb Crusher. Here’s Mario’s perspective on the sacred slappy.


First off, what counts as a slappy? Do you have to get your trucks involved? Some folks consider a noseslide on a curb where you don’t lift your tail a “slappy noseslide” or a slapped in blunt sllide a “slappy blunt”?