KFD Pool Decks Part 2

I'm absolutely stoked to see the full range of KFD skull decks (pool series) online, if you didn't read me rambling about them about 4 or 5 posts back then let me reiterate:

These are SICK!*

*SICK = Extremely rad, unequalled

Mr. Ping wouldn't believe me if I said I want/love/need a board like this so much that I couldn't care less about the new iPhone, in fact I'm being somewhat disloyal to my earlier allegiance to 80's giants Powell Peralta and Santa Cruz - I'm totally day dreaming about these new/old/pool/anywhere fatties from local stick syndicate KFD. Check out the range below, available from all real skate shops:

In my quest for fatness, I'm kind of drawn to the middle two - but see which one you think suits me:

(click on images for much larger view)

Go spread some love on KFD's site, they're kind enough to think Board Brain is newsworthy, so they're alright by me! http://www.kfdskateboards.com/

The Slasher's Legacy

This blog is getting to be a bit too "bloggy" and for that I apologise!

It really was supposed to be about me rediscovering skateboarding and sharing the graphics that I geek out to, with you five loyal readers. In the spirit of the latter, please enjoy these great Pocket Pistols decks which satirize Jim Phillips famous Slasher graphic (you'll remember the slasher from earlier posts).

"Eyepod" (7.75" x 30.50"), eyes like Kate Bosworth.

"Piggy" (9.25" x 32.75"), looks like a Jimbo Phillips graphic.

"Porker" (12" x 32.75"), a Jim Phillips/Matt French collaboration.

Pocket Pistols Skateboards are one of the sickest new era companies in my opinion, because they are the current champs of putting out decks and graphics which really make great fun of the old skool style. They also often make very limited runs of decks for "guest" riders such as Geoff Rowley. These are just a few of them, there are many more Slasher inspired sticks, believe me!

Have a surf via the SICK LINKS to your right ...

My First Skateboard

My mate Rory and me with our rides.

This is my first proper board.

Like everyone else I had a "Skika" first, which was basically a cheap complete spoon nose like the ones you can still get in Makro and Game. They were always white with a secondary colour like blue or red and everything from the grip, to the wheels would be this secondary colour. They had a huge tail skid which looked something like an apple mouse stuck on upside down. Before that I had what we called a banana board - which was a small plastic Dogtown looking toy skateboard with rollerskate trucks and wheels. Number one cause of broken arms in the 80's!

One Christmas my ballies* gave me this blank (allegedly Powell Peralta) deck and I added the tail skid, rails, nose bone and everything later, bit by bit. I can't really tell how old I am here but I don't remember those trucks and wheels at all. I managed to get one hand-me-down Independent truck and, thanks to a cheque from my dad and a trip to Island Style in Pickering Street, added a Pirate Skate truck on the back and four green slimeballs knockoffs,which were the last things I had on that setup if memory serves. I rode that thing in rain or shine until about age 13 when Chris Cormac's famous backyard halfpipe was finally torn down in favour of a pool which no one ever swims in.

I'm surprised that apart from that skull one, I put such lame stickers on my board! Maybe the really rad Jim Phillips stickers were always sold out, or too expensive?

It was a rad board though, what a pity I got rid of it to get that kak blue Powell in the post below ...

It's a shame there's no photo of the other side of it cause I had this siff transparent grip tape with barbed wire printed on it, and flies!

*Ballies = Parents

Board Brain goes new skool

It's been bugging me, seeing a nice little stack of hardware, wheels and stuff staring at me. I decided to haul out my old 90's deck - the one on which I did the "dabbling" mentioned in my very first post.
I bought the thing as a full setup from a mate and it came with no name wheels and trucks but on the deck itself was a little logo which shed a bit more light on the mystery of what the hell kind of deck this is.

Apart from the size and company, I don't know anything else about this deck. It must be fairly old cause it's got that really flat concave that decks had when they first became double-kicktail popsicles. It has next-to-no pop but it's sort of fun to just ride around on. The pile of parts in question were the aforementioned no name trucks, but in my quest for wheels for the slasher, which ultimately ended with those beautiful pink Gooeys, I bought some Bullet Rounds 52mm, some KFD deck bolts and Killer bearings. I put them all together but before attaching to the deck there was one more thing to be done.

It has a pretty gnarly chunk out of the one tail and when we were groms we used to just fill it with wood glue, which dries hard and totally transparent after a while. Then you can add grip and stickers without little dongas* everywhere. Check out this next pic to examine my fine craftsmanship!

When the glue is about halfway cured you just smooth it out with a bit of cardboard and make it fit the shape of the crack better. I reckon I'm going to grip this thing up the old skool way - in two parts and inset about 1.5cm.


*Donga = Pothole

KFD Skateboards

I have a mate called Ping who obviously loves these new(ish) KFD old skool-esque pool decks so much that he would prefer a stack of them to sit in his shop than go home in my car! Tut, tut Mr. Ping ... These are sick! They come in four different shapes, each saucy enough to make you blush.

Check them out on KFD's page:

http://www.kfdskateboards.com/new-skull-deck/

The really pointy one looks like trouble, especially for someone like me who has to start at the bottom of the ladder again, but the fatter, shorter ones look like the boss!


KFD please send me one to test! Please?

The Slasher

Damn. I'm so bloody clingy about the graphics on my board, I even bought enough extra bits last week to reassemble a new skool setup to ride instead. The thing is, I bought the book The Skateboard Art of Jim Phillips not too long ago and if being an illustrator myself didn't make me appreciate that kind of detail enough, Jim talking about the ancient techniques under which they had to produce these classic graphics did.


Jim Phillips talks about his favourite graphic, the slasher, in this little clip:

It's almost 7pm - opening time for the next session at the [R]EVOLUTION skatepark ... hot damn that's tempting. That little slasher would do great on a small half pipe.

Skate Art Satire

By far my favourite thing about skateboard art is that it's constantly self-referencing and satirising.

Take these Welinder, Hawk and Rodriguez decks with their iconic VCJ* skull graphics; The images were prolific enough to trigger instant recall in anyone who saw even a corner of one not obscured by stickers.

Compare these later decks for Rudy Johnson, Jason Lee and Mark Gonzalez, and what you get is a small grin forming at the edges of your mouth. These are from the then-newly created blind skateboards, a company started by Gonzalez. The decks were a response to a Powell Peralta ad which poked fun at blind, and other new smaller skate companies like World Industries and Flip, which involved former riders of theirs.

Want to see how Powell handled it?

 

VCJ* is an acronym for Vernon Courtland Johnson, the artist responsible for all Powell Peralta art in the 80's. He seems to have vanished into obscurity, save for some new work, and a collaboration with the mighty Jim Phillips, for Pocket Pistols. Unlike the former, the latter has many books out liberally packed with eyeball-popping graphics and continues to turn out amazing and extremely influential artwork.

More old skool setups

Ahoy!


I found this setup on the Skate One forum a little while back, while surfing teh interwebs for other people who are digging the return of all these old boards as much as I am.

This setup belongs to a guy named Nick Spesia, and it's just about the loudest colour scheme I've ever clapped eyes on. The deck is a limited edition Powell Peralta reissue in metallic green, with a lime top. Nick's done a custom grip job that assaults your eyes and would actually critically injure anyone who wasn't around in the 80's to see this kind of thing the first time round! Steamy. Nice one, Nick.


The rest of the setup is as follows:

• Trucks: Independent 169's
• Risers: Tracker
• Wheels: Rat Bones
• Bearings: Bones Swiss
• Accessories: Gorilla Ribs / Tail Bone / Jaw Bone

The price of this setup in South African rands would buy you a small car! Admittedly, a car Xhibit would call "a bucket" on Pimp My Ride, but a working car nevertheless.


For interests sake, here below is the original board that Nick's reissue is based on.

 As you can probably tell by now, a Powell Peralta deck is the holy grail of old skool decks for me. That's not to say I am nothing less than a devoted fan of Santa Cruz and all of Phillips Studios graphics.

Last up is a Vision deck in lemon yellow with matchy-matchy Rat Bones wheels, a nose bone, and just about every accessory NHS ever made for skateboards! I never saw Vision boards around back in the day - I'm not sure if I mentioned but literally everyone had either a Powell Peralta or a Santa Cruz. There were a few Santa Monica Airlines and Schmidt Stixx but the former two were king. Anyway, I'm rambling ... here's the board:

My Slasher

It wouldn't be fair to casually mention that my good mate Sean gave me his Santa Cruz Slasher without sharing a pic of it. It's the micro version so it's 8.7 x 26", more or less the width of a wider modern board but the length of an old skool freestyle board. It's gem for carving around and power slides etc but hard to ollie!

It's a sick Jim Phillips graphic. I can't bear to screw rails into it, even though the reason I got the rails in the first place was to protect the graphics rather than for board sliding!


Check out the full setup here below:

I added Element risers, Girl bearings and all the stuff you saw in my first post, namely:


• Killer trucks (An awesome South African company)
• Speed Demons Gooeys* wheels - 65mm/78a
• Powell Peralta Tail Bone


The Powell Thin Ribs are still on the shelf for now ...


Thanks Sean and Mai for the deck, my gorgeous wife Nadia for all her patience and for the "board brain" nickname, my dear old mum for hauling the Powell Peralta stuff over from the UK, and [R]EVOLUTION PAVILION SKATESHOP - the sickest skate shop in Durban.


*I've named each of these wheels "Gooey Deschanel" after one of my favourite actresses :-)


Here's a little video of one of the first test runs of it as a complete:

John's old skool setup

This is my brother John's old skool board which he was kind enough to haul out to share with me.

Check out that early 80's style! White Gullwing trucks, white rails and tailbone, a nose bone, cellblock risers and a lapper on the back truck. The wheels are Kryptonics classics - slightly softer ones on the back.

I think what's driving me towards old skool, apart from the obvious nostalgia, is that the way I learned to skate was to just go charging out my front door and go for it.

The older guys that used to let us tag along never drove to a spot and sessioned it like skaters would start doing 10 years later. In them days it was mainly backyard half pipes and mini launch ramps on the street.

With a fat old skool deck under my feet I don't see an extra kicktail in the front challenging me to try a shove-it. It feels more akin to a downhill board - but with the option to ollie onto a curb or over a crack in the pavement.

I always thought it was cool the way each pro rider would have their own shape, tailored exactly for their individual abilities and signature tricks by the good elves at Powell or NHS.