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.

Board Brain Begins

I have to confess, I've always disliked blogging.

It just seems so trivial yet so self indulgent but now that Twitter is around, blogs don't grate me quite so much. The lesser of two evils. Truly though, the reason this is a blogspot and not a website is because I can't be bothered to learn how to make a website and besides, I don't have a viable product or service to offer ...

I just want to talk about skateboards!

I have a few, but they currently do more hanging on walls than hanging on vert ramp coping.What I geek out to is old skool skating, graphics, setups and approach. They take me right back to being a grom with a Powell Peralta blank, hand-me-down-indy's, jaw bone, tail bone and rails. I've since dabbled in a bit of skating on and off since 1996 but I just never felt comfortable on a skinny popsicle and wearing no pads. I also can't believe no one minds grinding off the incredible graphics in a single session - Powell still manufacture rib bones and they slide just fine.

A good friend of mine recently gave me a Santa Cruz Kieth Meek Slasher reissue and I managed to get my hands on some fat wheels after much searching. A tailbone has been added, and the rails have arrived, now it's time to venture out from the front yard and into the world of skateboarding again.

I haven't got the stones to skate a half pipe again yet so don't RSS this - it may just be a passing phase.