Hey guys, we got a mention in the Holiday 2008 issue of Concrete Wave Magazine!  Very cool!  Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this site over the last several months, making it into a community place for women skaters!

Also thank you to Bobby Stack, who does promotions and all kinds of awesome skate stuff for Concrete Wave and the longboarding community.  He let the magazine know about us. You can read a bit about him in the Noteworthy section of the Fall 2008 edition of Concrete Wave.  I saw him with his van full of longboards, emailed him, and he was so generous with his time telling me all about everything he does in the skate world.  He runs his own company called Paved Wave Promotions. He also taught me, over the phone, how to pump my longboard.  More on that soon!

Here’s some fun and interesting links from the female skaters around the world.

(Found these from the Skateboard Directory)  You can translate them with Babelfish.  There are great pics and a lot of skater girl stoke on these sites, and best of all, they’re still current.

Brazil

Sweden

And then from Girls on Boards, there’s a link to an interview with a female Marine, in Iraq, who is also a skater.  You can see that here.

Anybody know of some more sites from the skater chicks around the planet?  Let us know!

And don’t forget Skirtboarders.  If you haven’t checked them out, they’re a crew in Canada.  Their dvd is great, and their site has a lot of great photos, stories, and vids.

Since it’s finally starting to cool down here in the desert, I can’t wait to get outside more and travel around my own neck of the woods, do a little skate exploring.  Fall skate plans anyone?!

Hey guys, I was going through the 95 new comments, most of which were spam.  I think I accidentally marked some of our real comments as spam during some bulk deletions.  If so, I apologize!

I’ve been craving some longboarding lately , and I know some of you have been talking about it a bit.  So here’s some basic info to get you started, and some resources for more info.

Longboards are essentially 34 inches or longer, about 8.5 inches wide or more  (seems to be around 9 or 10 inches wide usually), and have a longer wheelbase due to their length. They can be flat, concave, cambered, a kicktail or two, or some combination of these things.  I personally like having a kicktail because I can maneuver more quickly if needed.

Trucks are wider for a longboard because of deck width.  Randal makes some excellent trucks and is one of the big names in longboards.  I also have some Tracker trucks that I like.  You’ll need risers because of wheel size.  Angled risers help the trucks turn a little tighter, although you likely don’t need them with Randals because of their design.

Wheels–get them big and soft.  Like around 65mm-70mm  (although they make them bigger), and around 80a or 78a.  Softness is measured in durometers, the smaller the number, the softer the wheel.  The softness lets you ride over all kinds of terrain with relative ease.  The bigger wheel means it covers more distance with each revolution.  Combined, these two things mean you can glide along happily, for longer distances, with less pushing.  Just give it a good push, get both your feet on, and experiment with how shifting your weight, leaning, and foot position help you control the board.  Some wheel companies are Kryptonics, ABEC 11, and also the wheels from Sector 9 or Gravity.  There are many many more.  But you can’t beat at basic 70mm Krypto.  Also, remember that you’re going to gain speed really quickly.  The weight of the board, the way it will just keep rolling, it doesn’t take much of an incline to suddenly be racing along very quickly, more quickly that you might expect.  So get used to carving to trim speed, learn how to stop (there are a variety of ways, don’t go faster than you can run, especially in the beginning).

The appeal of longboarding for me has been about several things.   First, I find that when I’m teaching someone to skate, they get immediate joy out of a longboard. If we’re on a flat empty street or parking lot or playground, and they can get their foot placement and balance right, then one or two pushes and they get that immediate fun of gliding along across the concrete. They’re not as likely to get stopped by little pebbles, they don’t have to put their foot down as much to push, and there’s maybe a little more room for error as they correct their balance here and there on such a long and wide deck.

Cruising is also part of the appeal. It’s just very zen to just go out for a ride, not try any tricks or to really learn something, and just sort of surf around.  It’s a perfect combination of relaxation and excitement.  If you feel like it, you can see how much of a hill you can handle, how tight you can make your turns, but really, you’re just out for a ride. It’s a way to really enjoy some of the urban/street skating elements inbetween actually learning to street skate. So you can’t bust a huge ollie off a ledge yet or grind some handrail? You can still cruise around the environment and take in the sights and the city or whatever it happens to be from the perspective of a skater, albeit a different type of skating. Cruising is a blast in its own right.

Carving is the other thing I love. Figuring out how tight or lose to make each carving turn relative to the speed and steepness of a hill, getting into a rhythm, finding a long mellow hill that goes for a while but never gets out of hand with its steepness. This is so relaxing and fun. A wider street makes it even more so.

Even as I progress in other types of skating (street, transition), I will always keep longboarding in my life. It is its own enjoyment, its own thing, and will never fail to put a smile on my face.

I recommend calling around your local skate shops and finding out what types and how many longboards they carry. Go in and look at them, feel them, squeeze the wheels, stand on a few. See the different shapes. Buy one locally if it makes sense for you to do so.

You can also buy them online, especially if you’ve handled a few and know what you’re looking at. You can by from Sector 9 or Gravity, they make some of the more popular, widely used longboards out there. Landyachtz is also widely known and sells direct from their own site.  Also take a look at Soulboards.  It’s an online site with good prices, a variety of boards, and quality components  (Randal trucks, Krypto wheels).  It’s possible to find some older graphics, from a year or so ago from them as well.  Soulboards offer their own decks too.  I had a 40 inch deck, Randal Trucks, Krypto wheels, a kicktail.  It was great, basic, and high quality.  I recently let a friend have it for an indefinite amount of time because it’s such a perfect board to get used to skating on.

For an excellent list of longboard related companies and resources, check out the longboard directory. There are tons of companies, big and small, making all kinds of cool stuff. But the basics will bring you a lot of fun. Something around 40-44 inches long, some 70mm wheels, some Randal trucks, you’re going to have a blast on something like that.

Be sure to check out Silverfishlongboarding.com and the longboarding 101 section of the site.

And most of all, have fun!

Check out the YouTube up top!  The women’s street is inspiring!

Hey everyone–Just wondering how many of you longboard too? I haven’t been doing nearly enough of it lately because I’ve been so focused on learning to ride transition. But it was longboarding that got me back into skating, and made me take it more seriously. If any of you haven’t tried it, I really recommend it. The smooth long ride, the carving, the ability to go over all kinds of cracks, rocks, messed up terrain, challenging yourself on better hills (know your limits!), the way one push will send you gliding for seemingly forever!

Anyway, these are a couple pics from the old version of the site because I haven’t yet imported the old posts, haven’t decided if I will.  Just thinking about longboarding and how it’s such immediate fun, relaxed.  I would put this post on my own blog, but it’s really a question to everyone, in a general sense.

Following the Warped tour, the All Girl Skate Jam happens this summer in nearly 50 cities!