comasundays:

As Marcus Bandy wrote in his recent article in Wheelbase, “style and skateboarding are best in bed, with each other.”  Bandy talked about the importance of style and I wanted to elaborate on his connection between individuality and style.  Byron Essert definitely skates with sick style, but that doesn’t mean everyone should try to replicate it.  Style is how your riding naturally looks, and without trying to adjust it to look a certain way: good style usually comes from comfortably skating for at least a couple years.

Your setup definitely affects how you ride and how you look when you do it.  Grease sharks, hammers and short topmounts shaped like fish surfboards have become popular in the DH sliding community, not only because they are fun to ride, but some of the most media covered riders skate them really well and make them look very appealing to ride.  Aaron Grulich, Liam Morgan, Bryon Essert, and many others of those Berkeley shredders skate really smoothly and fast on them.  But that is the way they skate and people across the country probably shouldn’t go around emulating NorCal style.  Copying style in general is pretty lame, but as it has become somewhat associated with geography, it doesn’t make sense to ride with the same style as if you are part of that crew two thousand miles away.  I see skaters all over Massachusetts skating with limp T-Rex arms, putting their arms out and waving them around like they need them for balance, when they are going about 15mph in a straight line.

At the same time, these NorCal skaters couldn’t be doing their job better as sponsored skaters; they are playing a huge role in making companies successful.  Sure, your product has to be pretty good to keep all these skaters riding it, but without all those Nor Cal guys and their videos, I doubt I would see four grease hammers and another three grease sharks at a slide jam in Lawrence Massachusetts.  These guys are selling your products, and they are the guys losing skin and fucking up their joints making your companies successful; I hope these guys are getting more than just free product.

Some of the raddest skaters don’t have the smoothest style, but a fast and aggressive style, like Kyle Martin, Mike Benda, and Mark Short.  Their style seems to come from them just pushing themselves to go faster, and so they get some flail going and sometimes look like they are on the verge of getting buck.  They are so fun to watch skate because you aren’t sure what’s going to happen next, because it doesn’t look like they are either.

Marcus Bandy said that he didn’t want to come off as the all-knowing authority on style, and I hope no one reading this thinks that I think of myself as especially knowledgeable around style.  These are just my observations around style in downhill sliding and all of this being said, if you are having fun, then you’re doing it right.

-Peter LaFreniere

Here is Marcus Bandy’s Rad article in Wheelbase

If you’re into longboarding check this site out; it’s hilarious and on a less important note it’s got some good skating.