That moment when you decide not to ollie anymore

I don't know if this happens to everybody but it happened to me ...and I'm not exactly sure when.


If there's something that changed with my style of skateboarding it has to do with popping the board (flipping also). Growing up in high school, it was all about street skating and flip tricks and all that. (We didn't have a park back then.) We grew up skating "the pit." The pit is the courtyard at the now Parkview High School, back then "Trickum" (Middle School) as we still call it. Four stairs, curbs, ledges, and eight stairs (and the three stair) is what we skated. It shaped who we are/were as skateboarders for the longest time. It was our skatepark before Mountain Park Park Skatepark. It was the spot.

Maybe we all got lazy, maybe the million dollar bowl 5 minutes up the street changed everything, or it could be that our bodies just don't feel like handling that kind of pain anymore. Whatever it was, I skate completely different now. Instead of manuals, ollies, and ...well I still do kickflips, I base my present day skateboarding around footplants and what I can do easily, on tranny or street. I think it is progression. I would rather go easy on my body riding bowls and ramps as opposed to hucking my body down stair sets or try for hours on a tech line or some manual combination. I am more in the state of being as opposed to doing. I have a set number of tricks I do and my goal is to do them on every new obstacle I come across (that I deem worthy.)

I'm not as agile a street skater as I used to be, but I'm sure I could still pull some manny pad tricks out on a good day. Purely riding has seemed to take over, I assume for the better. However, I think purely riding in a bowl is useless. Sure it is the essence, but I'm not going to do it. It uses up energy I could use on something else.

I have found interest in using my arms in skateboarding too; bonelesses, beanplants, simply grabbing the board. It's an option not necessarily used in street skating. I have somehow found a mix between transition and street that I enjoy and deem it as my own personal style.