Texas Longboarder

A cool little video of some guy ripping down the street. I love short skate videos. Very cool.

More Badass downhill stuff from the Loaded Newsletter on youtube.com.  This is an older video that I just found.

The Loaded Newsletter youtube channel keeps posting excellent stuff. My personal preference theses days is actually for lightly-edited, short videos with no music. I think a lot of people are overdoing it with the editing, trying to make everyday skating look all “epic”. I assume that Adam Colton did the editing on this vid. The editing is great, but the source material is also great. Really nice camera work capturing some smooth and stylish downhill. Great job guys!

That pavement is butter. Smooth, smooth butter.

A rad downhill run by Dustin Hampton, filmed by Adam Colton. This kind of stuff makes all the shortboarding flip tricks and whatnot seem pretty unsubstantial. Great job, guys.

Here’s a very cool downhill video from the Loaded Boards youtube account, of James Kelly. Minimal editing, which I’ve come to really prefer, and a good song by Radiohead. I wonder how long before the song gets pulled?! What an awesome one-way road. At some points James is fully outrunning the motorcycle that is following him!

This is the best filmed downhill I’ve seen in a while. Hats off to Sector 9 or whoever filmed it. This kid has really great downhill style. A lot of times you see young downhillers all squatted-down like a constipated chimp. Not this kid. He has a fluid, gumby, killer style. I also like the original music for this video. It all just works together really well.

Here’s a fun little vid from Kevin Kennedy, the sales manager at Gravity Skateboards.

I’m pretty late to the game with this review, as the FSM has been out for a while. But I just got mine, so here goes…

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to ride my friend Mike’s Comet FSM board, set up with Milehighskates.com Indy 215 Hybrids and Retro Freerides.  I kind of already knew I’d like the board, so when I took it out on Mike’s street, which is a nice downhill paved with super smooth asphalt, I wasn’t surprised that the board was great. Much like my Comet Pagan, but a bit shorter.

When the next month’s spending money rolled around, I didn’t hesitate to order that exact setup from Milehigh, with 83a Lemon Freerides.

As you’ll see if you click through to the description on the Comet website, this board is the result of massive collaboration with the readers/skaters of silverfishlongboarding.com. It is designed to be a fun downhill freeriding board. “Freeriding” being the “hip” name for riding down hills not in an effort to get the bottom fastest, but rather to have fun. The deck is symmetrical front and rear, with a pretty deep rocker and rad concave. I purchased the standard drop-through version of this board, and with the Indy/Core Hybrids, the thing sits low.

The shape of the board will allow you to run pretty much any wheels you want without worrying about wheelbite. To help further, Comet routes away a few plys on the bottom, effectively creating some pretty big wheel wells.

I’ve been riding mine for a few weeks now. While there are not really fast hills here, and I’ve not had a chance to travel to some faster ones, I can tell you that in the 15mph – 20mph speed range, this board is really a blast. It it very very nimble. Like all the Comet boards, the rocker/concave create a very dialed -in feeling. The feel is very much like the Comet Pagan, but even “more”, since the rocker extends through both ends of the symmetrical deck.

I have my trucks adjusted non-symmetrically. That is, I do use one end of the board as the “rear”, with that truck a bit tighter. I’m sure I’m missing out on the functionality of the deck. I expect that when I eventually go to a good hill and do some sliding, I will probably change this and try using the board bi-directionally. I can see how this would be a very cool way to do things. Right now I’m mainly enjoying the deep rocker and low profile, as well as the very comfortable and functional concave.

Here’s a little video of the FSM being ridden — just some stuff I shot today.