Team News

Eric Vehmeyer and Josh Toy have been added to the team over at Anchor grip.

Tomorrow the winners of the FFI rail jam will be announced, keep an eye out for the postings.

Review: Yellowood

First I'd like to start off telling you a little about Yellowood. Yellowood is a new company out of Portugal run by Phillipe De Goyri, the decks, are 100% hand made, with top quality materials and exotic woods. More than 26 hours of work go into each individual deck.
The shipping was pretty fast from Portugal to the United States, it took about 2 weeks from beginning of order online,www.yellowoodstore.com to delivery. Phillipe is very helpful and answered all my questions. The boards, trucks, stickers, and shirt came securely packaged in a bubble mailer, with the first deck in it's own packaging as well as the trucks and t shirt. Phillipe was also kind enough to send a second deck and the trucks as extras.
The deck I bought was priced at 19.95 euros which is the same price as a Berlinwood and roughly about 32.00 usd.



as you can see it came nicely packaged in a baggie with a cool tag, stickers and a sheet of Ryp Tape. The Ryp Tape is very similar to Blacktape, if any of you are familiar with that. It's 2mm thick and very very light for being that thickness, it doesn't add any extra noticeable weight to your deck. It also grips fairly decent, it's not my preference over Rip Tape or FBS Smoothtape, but it is good and you can't complain for it coming with your deck.
The craftsmanship of the board is flawless. The dye job is phenomminal as well as the lacquer, the kicks are nice and even, the concave of the deck is symmetrical and the sanding is perfect. Getting the hardware on is no problem at all, it has nice kingpin holes and nicely countersunk hardware holes. As you can see in this picture of the everslick prototype.

nicely sanded

The shape of the deck is also very nice,it is 28mm wide x 100mm long and it happens to be my exact personal preference, although I feel it could use a bit less concave. Nonetheless Phillipe assured me there will be a slightly less concave version in the future. The deck has medium kicks, medium to deep concave depending on what type of grip you are using. If you are using the Ryp Tape, it will have slightly less concave due to the thickness.
blurs varias deck

everslick prototype

you can also see the thickness of the Ryp Tape in the above pictures
The performance of the deck is very nice as well, it's very poppy and very strong. It took absolutely no time to get used to the deck which is very nice, I know a lot of people are turned off to a board if they can't get used to it immediately.
Here are some pics of the deck set up

Now I would like to talk breifly about the everslick prototype and trucks.
The trucks are anodized yellow, and are very bright, almost to the point of being gold. I don't think Phillipe will be selling these, he just sent them as a gift.

The everslick is a future product of Yellowood, this is a prototype model, the production model may vary. Phillipe gave this to me to test out, although I haven't had a chance to set it up yet (due to lack of gripping materials) I am already impressed with this deck. The bottom is made of Teflon and it holds true to the name everslick. I've tested the sliding ability on rails, marble, and it slides like butter, so be on the lookout for these, they will be about 21 euros but are totally worth it.

Interview: Manu Oberle!

AY YAI YAI!!! An interview with Manu! He is one of my favorite fingerboarders to watch and is also really kind as well. If you want some updates about the European scene, and the recent Fast Fingers 11 contest, read on. Here we go! 

Can you introduce yourself?

Hi, my name is Emanuel "Manu" Oberle. I'm 19 years old; I live in Switzerland, Europe. Fingerboarding is an important part in my life and I love it.

Can you list your sponsors? ^_^

Blackriver-ramps, Gripskin ( soul sponsor), Arctic, WW'z

How long have you been fingerboarding, and what got you into it?

I bought my first TechDeck back in '99. But I wouldn't say this is when I started fingerboarding. It was just a big hype in our school and I learned an ollie (with sticker instead of griptape). But then I forget about it and time passed. I got back into it 5years ago, 2003, when I was in school with a friend of Boris Dietschi. He brought his Berlin Wood in the school and landed a kickflip. I was so stocked and couldn't stop fingerboard myself

So Fast Fingers 11 was this past week, how did the contest go?

What can I say.... no words can ever describe the feeling you get at such a great-organized fingerboard event. The contest itself was pretty sick. The first round was very long and a little bit boring with the time. But then again it's cool to have so many starters. The skill level was very high this time, but also the creativity of the riders is awesome.

Yeah, it's amazing what the scene over there has accomplished haha

It shows the rest of the community what can be accomplished and sets an example for others to follow.

Thx, god... uhm..

Yes it's cool to see what you can make out of fingerboarding. But therefore you need someone who lives for fingerboarding. It's hard work to get the respect from shop owners and skateboarders it deserves.

The thing is: Skateboarders always wanted the respect of all the people, and now they got something like that... But now they are also ignorant.

Yeah I just wanted to tell the people out there a little bit about what's really going on at such an event. 99% of the people are there to have fun, meeting people and fingerboard together. The whole contest thing is cool, but it's not like a football game where people forget the fun.  

I had some really great experiences this year. I met a lot of funny people and we laugh and drink a lot together... We also had a nice after contest party and skate sessions. :)

That's great! I have a feeling a lot of people  would really be focused on the contest itself rather than the social event.

But I can understand when people from the US that come to Europe for fingerboarding try to be good. Like Mike Schneider ;) he was very good. But you know, it costs money for the flight and some time to travel. So I think I also would try to be good ^^ This year there were no prices anyways. Everybody went outside the building after the final to smoke and chill. So they just threw the stuff out of the window.. It was very funny. But some thought it was unfair...

So are there any more events coming up?

Uhm there are quiet some I think. There is at least one skateboard exhibition where brr has his stand. Then there is WeissWurstiss-Jam in Munich. Everybody goes there and Winkler leads through the city to some outdoor spots ;) There will be a European championship at the 22nd of November in Austria, organized by Fingaspeak. And I hope to have some great sessions this summer with a lot of guys

Shoutouts?

First of all, thank you for interview ;) keep it up with this blog. I know it's a hard work, but it's worth it! There should be more fingerboarder like you. There are too many haters out there. Support fingerboarding and stay positive. I want to thank every fingerboarder out there! Have fun and stay real. Fingerboarding never dies!

Thanks to Gripskin-/, NWDC-/, BRR-/, WW'z-teammembers. Thanks to all the ones I forget and I want to meet again this year.

Thanks a bunch Manu for the interview! You are a great fingerboarder!

Fast Fingers 11 Results

Here are the results from Fast Fingers 11!

1 elias assmuth
2 dimitrj schlotthauer
3 boris dietschi
4 jeldo ulpts
5 sheryl ann hartmann
6 timo kranz
7 marc gork
8 mike schneider
9 markus schmidinger
10 lennart behnke
11 manu oberle
12 max von nolting
13 harald schön
14 philipp ziegler
15 tobias phieler
16 valerij müller
17 daniel durku
18 lucas lipowec
19 bene müller
20 david wagner
21 marcel zickler
22 göran wiesniewski
23 emil ebner
24 stefan klauser
25 atila lakatos
26 tim freudensprung
27 ramon angelow
28 philipp reinhard
29 julien klein
30 nic herzog

Team Changes

Some team changes as of late. Tim Alexiel has jumped from Summit Hardware to Arctic, Shane Young has been added to the roster over at Anchor Grip, as well as Ben Mullen.
In other news, Portuguese deck company Yellowood is officially open for business, you can buy products at www.yellowoodstore.com
although they are currently sold out at the moment, expect a restock sometime in the near future.
Entries have officially been closed for the second annual Finger Flip Inc. Rail Jam, expect to see the winners posted June 1st.
All of the entries were sick, good luck to all competitors.
Be on the lookout for the new Make Believe Marble ledge, it looks sick.