Guest Column: Edgar Vargas!

New feature for the blog! Guest Columns! This weeks guest column is with none other than Edgar "eddy-z" Vargas! He is a great fingerboarder (his nollie heels are amazing) and a very positive presence on the forum. Edgar explores his thoughts on fingerboarding and life in a meditative piece. Very fun to read!

As I sit here a 26 year young man contemplating fingerboarding and my first blog article ever, I think how interesting finger boarding has become. As a kid in the late 80’s I remember getting those clear key-chains and not really knowing what tricks other than ollie existed, not that I could even do one or comprehend it. Fast forward to the mid 90’s when people had these real looking FB’s called Tech Decks, I didn’t even skate until 2000 to be honest but my homies did and so did kids at school that had them. Anyhow I could give less of a crap until I saw some kid do a kickflip on a FB. I don’t know why it was so impressive, maybe I was intoxicated maybe I was just a teenage kid, who knows. Anyhow strange things that were “tricky” always impressed me, they are simply fun and a cheap thrill. As we all know when you are a teenager cheap thrills are good thrills. What also made this gadget appealing was the ability to impress the kids in class by doing 900 hard flips, as ridiculous as they are. That or any other trick that would take my friends and my own mind off what seemed another monotonous school day. 

In a weird way I actually went backwards from finger boarding to skateboarding. I never actually had an urge to skate until I began to fingerboard. I think this was due to my own plain ignorance of what a beautiful sport skateboarding really was. Fingerboarding actually exhibited to me the endless possibilities of something with four wheels that could be ridden on two legs or fingers in my case. Another cool thing about fingerboarding at the time was that everyone was doing it. In wood shop kids were building rails, halfpipes and various other obstacles in the 90’s. So basically it was a fad in a sense but like all fads some people never really grow out of them including me. Another thing that impressed me was the simplicity and beauty of doing a trick on a FB anywhere, it just seemed pure and destined, almost like drawing with a pencil another one of my crafts. It’s one of those small pleasures in life that no one can take from you no matter what, and if they did who cares it’s probably on video somewhere. What I am trying to say is that I see FB as an active art form like skate boarding, break dancing, graffiti, meditation, and studying for classes (yes studying!). 

   It does take time to perfect your own style and develop tricks and technique but it’s the journey not the destination that is important. For me I feel blessed to have been able to learn to do something that didn’t cost much money to learn and be introduced to many cultures it’s wonderful people, and new techniques for expressing myself through media. When I began fingerboarding it was to escape the fishbowl of high school and now I continue in order to escaping the rat race of America. As some of you watch my videos you may think, “what a loser 26 and FBing the streets.” 

The funny thing is I think the same thing but look at it more as meditation that helps me see what small boundaries society has for people and step out of them and do something I enjoy. In doing so I am forced to face the music and confront what is considered normal in a very innocent way. When I first joined the internet “FB scene” via Tech Deck.com I was a “noob” “GODOFTECKDECK” but in reality I had been fingerboarding longer than most of the entire forum. Now that I have been around longer and displayed my craft with other artists like MKS on FFI some would consider me an OG as “Eddy-Z”. Even though this transition has occurred while online it never really existed the illusion of the internet would have one believe so. In life outside the internet I feel like art helps expose similar misperceptions and fallacies that exist in the world. In a strange way maybe FBing isn’t about anything people think it is, maybe it’s just an art form in it’s infancy yet to be recognized by the mainstream. Maybe we are all just artists looking for a medium to communicate through, then again maybe I just need to grow up. 

I want to thank Chris Daniels for helping me see this diamond in the rough of my mind and the great blog he has created, and of course Tina, Nate, and Martin for FFI <3.

Coming Soon: Company Profile with BC Rails! Flatface Video Preview! And more!