My friend Dale found this little bank a few years back. We call it the Buda Bank, as it is near some sorta Buddhist establishment. It is just the kind of crusty little spot I love. We moved that parking block into place. We can came back a year later and it was still there. I mean, who but skateboarders would move a parking block.
I want to shoot some footage here this year for the Neverwas 8 video.
Today at aikido practice I essentially had a private lesson with my teacher, as the weather was horrible and I guess no one else felt like venturing out.
We spent a lot of time using the jo staff – a wooden staff about 50" long. I talked last week about how important using the power of your hips in things like skateboarding and aikido. I had somewhat of a breakthrough today with the jo, finally really engaging the hips to generate power to manipulate both the stick and the opponent. It was one of the moments when everything syncs up and an “a-ha!” experience happens.
Everything I do in aikido seems to relate to skateboarding, and in practice I often find analogies from skateboarding that fit into aikido. Maybe not really analogies, as they are really the same thing.
Anyway, it is rainy and shitty this weekend, but I think what I felt and started to understand today in aikido is going to really help me generate the flow I’m looking for in a complex flowing set of turns and pivots I’ve been working on for a while on my board.
Backside 180 slide to Fakie 720. I love this kind of skating.
In this episode, I go on and on about using your hips to generate power doing physical activities like skateboarding. I also blabber about some other stuff.
In this short episode, I talk about the anxiety I feel every year about getting back on my board after months of inactivity.
My “project” in skateboarding the last few years has been - how far can I go without flipping the board or doing a shove-it. How much can I do with carving, end-overs, pivots, spins, walk-the-dogs, 180 slides, wheelies and other “simple” stuff.
It turns out I can go a long way with that stuff. Every session generates new ideas.
I like this board, but the 14" wheelbase is really too short for the way I’m skating now. My feet feel a bit cramped. 14.75" is preferred, but I’ll stick with this one until it is toast.
A quick check in about yesterday’s session and some trick ideas.
Proof that I skated yesterday.
Over the last 4 years my freestyle skateboarding has been done mostly on big boards, and concentrated on spins, footwork, wheelies, and carving. I know a lot of people might not consider it freestyle, to which I can only reply that I don’t really care. It’s what has been interesting to me.
Tonight I was looking through my Vimeo library just to get ideas of things I want to work on. I’ve come up with so many ideas the last 4 years that it’s easy to forget what I’ve worked on. So having videos of sessions is really helpful.
This line was done in an 8.8" wide blunt-ended pops deck, Ace 55s, and 54mm Bones STF. I was just flowing around. I filmed this right at the start of the pandemic - early 2020. Looking at it now, I see a lot of great possibilities for blending other footwork and sequences into this - stuff I came up with later in the pandemic.
In this episode, I talk about how stupid it is to base skateboarding sponsorships on someone’s social media following. It’s just wrong. And it’s stupid. I talk about some other stuff like upcoming freestyle contest and what not too.
Just a note.
As I have returned to Aikido after a long pandemic absence I am feeling like myself again. The depression I think I’ve felt is receding. So I am converting this back to my “skateboarding journal.” I know many of you (2) enjoy seeing pictures of my dog and cat, but that will just be for Facebook and Instagram now.
In this episode, I say a few words about this very important Facebook group that I’m part of.
In this episode, I talk about some of the results, and the set up at the Tucson contest, and have a few comments looking forward to the world championships in Brandenburg, Germany, and the contest it’s coming up this summer in Ithaca New York, as well, as a contest is supposed to happen in Los Angeles.
Just a few quick words about stuff that going on in the freestyle skateboarding community.
In this episode, I discuss my canceled trip to the skateboard contest in Tucson, Arizona.
In this episode, I discussed my return to my longtime martial arts practice, after barely practicing over the course of the last few years, due to the pandemic, and a few other issues.
If I owned a privately held platform, I think I would make the decision - make the ethical leap - to not allow Nazis to express Nazi ideas on my platform. That actually does not seem like a complex decision.
In this episode, I talk about my recent trip to Louisiana for a funeral, staying with my uncle, and being an uncle.
In this episode, I discussed my goals for skateboarding and gaming in the coming year.
In this podcast I discuss the Capitola classic street style contest that happened in 1985. I found some footage of it on YouTube today. It’s in this video. This links directly to the relevant part of the video.
Just a quick episode to talk about my skate session this past Saturday.
Finished reading 2023: Howling Stones by Alan Dean Foster 📚
I got some skating in today.
I set up my science fiction blog (bloftin2sf.blog) to cross-post to Bluesky.
If I make a short microblog entry from my iphone it works. Short or long entries from my computer do not show up on bluesky at all. Wondering if long posts or podcasts from my phone will show up. Since microblog rules, I assume that bluesky isn’t fully fediverse-friendly. Very little chance I’ll continue to use something that will not work with micro.blog. I’ll give them some time to get their shit together.
Weird thing. It was impossible to get my cover image to scale properly on bluesky from their web interface. Worked properly only from their app on my phone. That’s weak. Again - not impressed.
We’ll see how this goes, but either federate or don’t.