My legs have been hurting and I’m totally over shoes that make things worse. Aka thin vulcanized shoes. So I gave up the Provosts (mediocre shoe) and tried some Etnies Jameson 2s I picked up recently. But they are way too wide for my feet and my foot was moving all around and trying to come out of the shoe. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately for my pocket book) I had another new pair of shoes too, the shoe that proves I am a hypocrite. The New Balance Numeric Stratford. Yeap, the PJ shoe. I’ve been watching a lot of PJ footage lately and saw them at Meta and could not pass them by. They fit my foot absolutely perfect. Needless to say when I went back out to Rampy I was hyped to skate. I rode the ramp a bit and got the legs flowing and then skated flatground for awhile because I knew Carleigh would be over soon. Skating flatground with someone else isn’t possible on Rampy. These shoes flip a little different so it took some getting used to. I got a few kickflips and other basics then starting trying switch flips which ended up being ridiculously close. Man that would be cool. An uninspired Carleigh showed and we began skating the ramp. It went pretty well. We both had some good runs. Carleigh had front d’s, feeble fakies, and got close to front tail and fakie front 50. I had most of my basics and added a fakie crooks before hucking front feebles and kick back 50s which were both kinda close. I was surprised at how good these brand new cupsoles were skating. After Carleigh left I skated flat on Rampy for a few minutes to see if I could get that switch flip feeling back. Nope,

Back in Boulder after a fun time in Omaha for Christmas. It was a super nice morning and I wanted to get out skating early. So I did. I started flatground in front of the house. I had new shoes and new wheels. Emerica Provost. Null superthane 52s. Flatground was fun. After doing several basics I started trying two tricks in a row without pushing between. Since I skate slow this was a challenge. Got fakie bigspin then front shove, no comply 180 then fakie flip, pop shove then treflip, almost kickflip then nollie treflip. Settled for my first nollie varial flip in awhile instead.

Neil arrived so we took off to campus. We started at this silly little rock wallie. Neil and I took awhile, but we both got lines we were hyped on. Back 180 up a curb, b/s halfcab flip on flat, rock wallie, ollie a 4 stair. So ridiculously fun. Both of us were set for the day at this point, but it went on. We ollied the round 4 stair then ended up at the art building double set / ledge area. Ollie, Neil and I back 180’d off a ledge. Neil first try. I tried mine in a line with a crooks then a noseslide on the ledge after. Didn’t get it, but was hyped to try. Then we went to the library. My legs were feeling pretty sore, but I tried a silly line of ollie onto the downhill ledge and ride through skate stoppers by doing the little front wheels/back wheels dance. It was fun, minus the one time i hung up and dove over the last part. Ollie did that too. Neil was too scared of hanging up. Ha. I got one with an ollie onto one of the benches after. Then we hit the plastic ledge area for a bit. Neil got front 50. I got noseslide. Ollie randomly did a perfect no comply. Then a few more to show he had it down. Then we went to go pick up my mom at the bus station and ate some food before heading back out to the streets.

Neil and I were super sore and we started off by riding down some long stairs. It was actually pretty fun. Ollie got buck first with this crazy jump over the mini rail to his board then firecracker a 3 stair then ride down a bunch of long stairs going fast. Neil ollied onto a ledge before the stairs. I did a noseslide down this weird metal ledge then front 180’d the 3, turned around and rode down the stairs. Street skating rules. You can’t do stuff like this at a park.

Then we went around the back and ended up at this thing for awhile. Neil could ollie up all 5 so easy. Ollie mostly just goofed around like in the video above or just riding down the stairs.

I mostly tried lines starting with noseslides. Got one with a b/s flip off the last stair going so slow I didn’t even roll 2 feet past the last stair before I came to a halt. Ha. I managed to ollie up all 5 stairs, but it wasn’t as pretty as Neil’s at all. Last line was front 180 down the first one, switch roll off one, switch front 180, roll off, kickflip off. So hard.

Those dudes were pretty over skating and it had cooled off quite a bit, but I wanted to try a few things back at the front of the school. First was to kickflip into the downhill sidewalk then ollie the 5 stair. Didn’t get the ollie. Didn’t even commit. It was harder then I thought. First the 5 stair is big. Bigger then a normal 5. And second, the downhill takeoff is just plain weird. Didn’t get it. But I did get something else I was probably even more hyped on. Ollie onto the tall ledge down the stairs in the very front of the school, ride around the pole, drop down a level then ride off the big drop. Hammers! Ha.

Lastly after dropping off Neil, Ollie and I went to the Louisville park for a few carves around the snake run. Kind of a nice ender on one of my favorite street skating days ever. Gotta start off with flatground more often!

neilsoffire’s video on Instagram

Red curbs on a cold and snowy Saturday afternoon. It was barely 30. Neil and Blake picked me up. Neil put in about 20 minutes before getting on a marathon call with his lady. Blake did a sick quick Ollie on this weird loading dock that somehow didn’t have snow on it. He also put a sign in front of the rock to wallie it and got a cool line to it. I didn’t skate great. I had new shoes and a new board. Went 8.1 this time for whatever reason. I got a smith grind at one point on the taller curb that hyped me up. I’ve done what I thought were smiths before, but this one felt legit. Other then that I had a couple front lips, struggled with kickflips, had a bunch of ride on grinds like above then started bucking some new ones. Did ride on front 50 no comply shove out. Stoked! New one. Then started hucking no comply finger flip out. Got really close, but didn’t get it. Gonna put that one on my list. Dave ripped it. Boardslide 270 out, front 180 nose manual, almost front 5-0 to nose manual, wallie the rock with help from the sign, a lot more. Decent session even though it was so cold.

Brought boards to 303 and Emage then went to meet up with Chad and Connor. Had a few minutes to kill so I just parked on a random block that looked fun to skate. Good asphalt, curb cuts and even a ledge. I had new shoes and a new board. I had some Emerica Laced (Romero). I had tried to break these shoes in months ago, they gave me blisters, gave up on them, gave them to my brother, then while visiting my brother in Wisconsin I took them back. So they are broken in. I even skated them for a bit while in Wisconsin. Anyways, I felt ok initially then slammed super hard bailing an ollie out of a curb cut. Ouch. I also couldn’t seem to land a kickflip. Ugh. Chad showed up and cruised around with me. He’s got pop. We both just cruised the block hitting stuff. Chad front boarded a tall flower planter and started feeling out a potential line. I started feeling somewhat ok on my board, but then we got the boot. Then I filmed the rest of the night. It was one of those frustrating nights where we got the boot from every spot before people got tricks. Ugh.

After destroying my grip trying kick boardslides yesterday I decided it was time for a new board anyway. And I was sooo sick of those grey wheels that I put some new superthanes on. Lastly, since those Lakai’s were killing my feet I went with some new shoes too. Emerica Provosts. My first vulcs I’m excited about in awhile. They have Strobel construction at least though. After trying to get Ollie to go skating all day he finally agreed to it when Liz and India got home and I could have just gone skating solo or with friends anyway. Ha. We went to campus. Right out of the car Ollie sets his board down, does a fakie shove and then a f/s halfcab. Whoa! We rolled around the new dorms on the south side which were torture because there are so many new amazing ledges, but they all have that crappy flagstone finish with cracks between them. We did find a way to skate them a little though. We kept pushing, ollie’ing up curbs, off curbs, etc. Did the hill down from the basketball center which was fun. My new wheels are really really fast! Ollie foot drags with his front foot. Ha, darn mongo pushers. We ended up at the weird ledge thing that Carleigh and I kickflipped the monstrous flat gap a long time ago. This time I took a bit to get used to new wheels and did a gap to manual. It was pretty fun, I normally chicken out of manuals with drops that tall. Ollie was having fun ollie’ing down the 2 stair by it and riding through the grass. We moved on some more. I manualled one of the long downhill pads first try. Sweet. We dorked around that area for awhile. Then dorked around on that one stair ledge that you can’t get any speed for. I did a front tail off it which was still not the easiest thing for me. Oh, so my new deck was an 8.25 and I wasn’t really noticing a problem with it. Cool. The new shoes fit a little loose, but I was liking them too. We hit the art building area and I did some flatground while Ollie hid in the bushes so that people wouldn’t see him. I got a few heelflips which surprised me. I was 3-0. I forgot how awesome vulcs are for heelflips. Halfcab flips felt a little harder with the bigger board. After that we basically headed home.

My NB+ shoes were in need of repairs and when I took the ol’ glue gun there was some weird reaction to the tech layer and it kinda mutated into some weird bubble that I didn’t want to skate. So I showed up at SOL on a rainy friday afternoon in my new Lakai Guys. I’ve had these shoes before and loved them. After today I think I’m sold on Lakai XLKs from here on out. When I got to SOL there was a few people playing foosball and I joined in for a bit then we skated. My new shoes felt much better on tranny right out of the gate. Much better board feel. I didn’t rip by any means, but I didn’t skate as bad as I normally do there. Lots of Longmont locals came in and out of there. Chad, Uriel, a few younger kids that were ripping, a dude that just moved to Longmont that was destroying it. Dude was seriously slaying it. Front 180 fakie 5-0 to fakie, back smith over the extension, back 5-0 to fakie over it, hurricanes to fakie, etc. All fast and powerful. I got to the point where I would land more then one trick besides axle stalls in a run so I was happy. Had one with front rock, front d and fakie back smith to fakie in it. I left feeling really happy and went to Crisis for the Fallen premiere.

After the Fallen premiere we were hanging out and Blaine starts messing around with some slappies. Before long it turned into a full on session. The crew was Fuzz, Blaine, Carleigh (in a skirt!), Jack and I and we skated for a pretty long time. I was skating Fuzz’s board. Jack was doing lots of fast grinds which aren’t easy on that waxless curb. As you can see from the videos there were a lot of boneless style tricks, slappies and a front pivot kickflip out. I had tried that on Fuzz’s board a few times and he said I should land it. So I did. Whoa. Not even that many tries. It kicked off an hour long frenzy for Fuzz to get one too. Which he did perfect. Not the funny one above, he got one bolts. Carleigh was getting into legit backside slappies which is pretty hard on that square curb. If it was waxed I’d be willing to bet some would have been landed. Blaine was kinda all over too trying a bunch of random tricks. Jack had a pretty epic slam sliding out and shooting his board breaking a table leg, but somehow not breaking the window. Whew. He had another one with the board getting caught in his feet and he almost hit his head on the Lowcard toilet. Ha ha. There were a lot of silly boneless tricks and powerslide noseslides. So fun. A couple of my favorites were the f/s 270 slide to tail and boneless 270 to tail. What a fun night. I drove home late feeling some of the best physically and mentally I’ve felt in awhile. The rain had stopped and driving down the hill into Boulder I could see patches of fog hovering over the city. It was beautiful. Pissed Jeans was cranked on the stereo. Awesome.

Yeap folks. We have found the price in which I sellout. It’s called a shoe that PJ Ladd skates and it costs me less then $50 (sometimes running a company and getting hooked up at shops has it’s privileges!).   NB+ Stratford 479.  They aren’t even broken in, but I could not find the will to try those DC Mikey Taylors anymore.  Instead I went with a brand I see every day at the gym on every retired man that goes there.  It’s hip to be old?  Anyway, after bringing some new boards to Crisis, Rob, Ollie and I went over to the Safeway ledge.  Ollie wasn’t stoked, but was cool about it.  I on the other hand was super hyped.  The PJ shoes were hyping me up in ways I thought they would.  I’m the ultimate PJ nerd.  For the first time in awhile I landed the first kickflip I tried.  I went on to have a pretty good session in general, especially for a new pair of cupsoles that didn’t really have a chance to be broken in.   I was happy to get a couple kick back 50s, almost good front tails, lots of kickflips, halfcab flips, and the surprise for me was multiple switch front 180 to front 50s.  Rob was killing it.  He called kick back 50s on the drive, but ended up settling for front hurricanes instead.  What!  They were sick.  He had also tried a bunch of nollie lipslides to front 50 and didn’t quite get one.  Ollie mostly just cruised around, but did a few front nose taps and back boardslides.

It got dark so we went to go meet Carleigh at the park.  Only every teenager in the area was there which bummed out the old and the young so we said to meet at yellow curbs instead.  It was my idea so I take the blame, but upon getting there it felt wrong to skate there when it was nice out.   Rob and I managed some nose and regular manuals.  Ollie did some ollies up the curb and back 180s off.  Carleigh tied her shoes and after maybe a couple ollies we got the boot.  Doh.  It was close to Ollie’s bed time so we just bailed.

Had a short amount of time after going to SOL and before date night with Liz. Since I was in Longmont I hit up Fuller and we skated Longmont High for about 30 minutes. The normal area was covered in teenagers so we went to the main ledges. It was super hot outside and I had new shoes. Some DC Mikey Taylors. They are cupsoles and were not very broken in. Dave struggled a bit more then normal. Got some rad no complies though. My flatground game was back to the drawing board with the new shoes. The heel is really thick on them. At least they aren’t vulcs though. Can’t believe how bad those Lakai vulcs felt for just one night. Anyways, I didn’t get much. Tried a line of ollieing onto one ledge then front 50 another one. Never got them together and I never actually landed the front 50.

Had some new shoes. Lakai – Picos. They are vulcs. I wanted to try vulcs again and see if I truly am sold on cupsoles or not. Well, I made the idiotic mistake of getting 10.5s again. Right out of the gate I didn’t like them and felt like I was swimming in my shoe. We got to the spot and after a couple bad ollies and failed manuals I wanted to quit and get new shoes. But John was already ripping and Rob showed so I had to skate. Rob was totally ripping. Manny and nose manny the long way no problems. Almost with back 180 out of the nose manny. He also had some good flatground no comply moves and a back 360. So jealous of that trick! I took a long time to do the long manny, but came remotely close to doing one with a front shove out. I want that trick! I did a fun line of ollie onto the manny pad, quick back 180 off, fakie flip on flat, switch front 180 up the curb then ollie a gap into the parking lot. John came super close to halfcab manny back 180 out. Did treflips, but struggled at kickflips (so weird!). Had some good flatground as well. Some lady came by and told us the noise was amazing and John sat down. Kinda ending the session.

So we went to Valmont and skated a pretty dry ledge. We ended up doing some tricks though. I got noseslide, halfcab noseslide, halfcab noseslide to fakie, front tail stall, almost front tail shove, back board pop out, bad crooks, bad back 50, horrible nosestall 270 pivot out. I was hating swimming in the shoes and new I couldn’t even skate them another day so I was pretty lazy. John got front 50s right away, killed his patented switch front noses and much more I can’t remember. Rob did a few front noseslides. All with epic extra reverts on accident.

Oh yeah, this was the first time I’ve skated in glasses in awhile. It was fine. Gotta get some different shoes for skating though.

The weather was rainy and in the low 60s. What an unusual day for late July. I was feeling really run down and sick with a cold. Doh. I had gone to Meta earlier and picked up some new Thunders that hopefully wouldn’t have axle slip like my old ones. While I was at it I got new bearings and fruity colored hardware. So there you go, a new complete!!! I went with Null 52mms. Maybe I’ll be a normal skateboarder again.

On top of that I had new shoes! Lakai Guys. I’ve been waiting and waiting for the Nikes to die so I could wear these. They seemed good out of the box and they don’t have a stupid swoosh on them!

We went around to the side of the school we don’t normally skate. There are tons of pebbles everywhere, but we ended up having a blast and skated it in totally new ways. My shoes felt amazing. My complete felt like a new complete. I did keep my old bushings going so it wasn’t completely night and day. The bigger wheels really cruise over cracks easier, but they also gave me wheel bite as I’ve gotten used to tiny little wheels. Ollie was killing it. He did a fakie back shove out of the curb cut back onto the sidealk, front 180 off the stairs (above) and halfcab off the curb, back 180 and f/s halfcab out of the curb cut into the parking lot. The f/s halfcab was new for him and he did it really good. For how sick I was and mellow I was feeling I skated pretty good. From right to left in the panorama I worked up to a run of kickflip up the curb, front 180 off the 2 stair then fakie bigspin off the curb. From left to right I did ollie up the curb, front 180 onto the loading dock then halfcab flip on flat. Fun, brief session. Stoked to have a somewhat normal setup that makes cruising around a little easier.