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K2 has released a new slalom skate called the “Soul Slide Urban Skate.” As far as I know, this is the second urban skate to hit the market in the U.S. including the Twister from Rollerblade.

Good to see that not only is freestyle/slalom growing, but its also growing in the U.S.

I think the skate looks decent, but I’d like to see more skates available with 76mm max wheel size, to get the frame down to 230mm, like my seba 1 skates (they should arrive early next week!) Anyway, at least the frame is shorter than the twister’s frame, which i found to be too long.

One thing i’ve noticed is that if you set up cones, skaters will come join you.

I noticed this in Central Park last sunday while skating with the Union Square Crew. We were taking turns skating and relaxing (it was hot!) and I had kept my cones in my bag so far, since no one else there is really into them. After a while i broke them out though, and within 20 minutes, A couple skaters from France came over and added their cones to mine. Marie was really good, and tried to teach me a trick while her father, Dominque, translated. Oh, and she had the Seba 1 skates, which looked even cooler in person. I can’t wait until mine come next week.

I mentioned to Sebastien that I ran into someone from paris in nyc, and he guessed right away that it was Marie. I guess she’s one of his young proteges, then.

Anyway, thanks for joining us guys!

Just did the landskaters sunday skate, but i brought 7 cones, a tape measure and a piece of chalk (7 was all i could fit in the little camera case I was using).

It made the skate so much more fun to do cones at each stop, and plenty of people were joining in.

Thanks to Doug for making the stops just a bit longer to accommodate the cones. I got really fast at setting up a line of cones too =)

ps: found an even better rain location at 8th and Poplar

So, we went up to Boston on the 4th, as planned. Brodie and everyone we met were very friendly, and open minded enough to try out our “Euro” style slalom. Then when it rained everyone came over to the bridge we had set up under, and skated with us for a few hours, while the 6ft spaced large american cones got rained on.

All in all it was very fun, and we’ll be going back next year, i’m sure. Head over to the videos page to check out videos of all the people we met.

I’m heading to Chicopee, MA^[1] today to meet Denni, and we’re going to Boston tomorrow for the annual slalom setup they apparently do there. We’ll report back here after the weekend and let you know if it was worth the trip.

[1] Why do i always go to MA, and Denni never comes to PA…

I’ve spent a few minutes each day since last weekend, combing through all the footage of our session. Its actually a pretty boring job, but i think i’ve put together the best video I could have. Its much more interesting than the last ones i posted with the same trick over and over. This time I made one video for me and denni, and mixed it up according to the music. I didn’t bother putting multiple runs of the same thing in, so it should be more interesting for everyone to watch.

We’ve got three new tricks, as you can tell from Denni’s previous posts: the grapevine, the new thing we’re doing on the cones thats like a cross between grapevine and crazy, and toe-heel snakes. I think we should just focus on these until we can do them fast before learning more.

go on over to the videos section to watch, or go straight to the movie

The last freedom skate was pretty good, and my feet are killing me. Met Evan, Alister, Pete, Shawn and Juan from NYC. They’ve got an online forum dedicated to freestyle skating. Seems like a great place to organize times to get together. I’ll definitely be heading up there on some wednesday nights to skate with them.

On a side note, John Franke is back in the Philadelphia area. Even though he wasn’t at the freedom skate, it was great to hear from him over the phone. Congrats to him and Sue on their new baby. Oh and Tom Detwiler showed his face at one of the skates too. Lots of cool people, old and new.

I just modified the lower buckles on my Twisters. They used to hook around and into the shell of the boot, which caused them to protrude into my ankles and give me hot spots.

I used some speaker wire to attach them to a lower part of the boot. I’ll find out tomorrow if this does any good.

UPDATE: the new buckles I made are perfect. I skated all day today with the hotspot from yesterday and it didn’t bother me once!

Lots of new stuff going on. First I got a new digital camcorder, so the movies aren’t crappy still camera avi’s. Second, I found a new location (thanks to Josh) that’s perfect! Its under i95 at front & washington ave (philadelphia) so it’s covered by the highway. The pavement is really smooth because cars can’t get to it (not sure why its even paved, but hey, no complaints). There’s even a slight slope at one part, which was fun to play on for a while, till i got sick of speeding up and knocking over all the cones.

Oh and third, I learned a new trick. I’ve been watching Naomi Grigg’s tutorial on ‘The Crazy’ like once a day until i memorized how it worked. Today I did it for the first time.

I’ve got a major hot spot on my foot. The Twister’s have this plastic power strap built in, but the place where it connects to the skate is right over a bone in my foot, and it kinda sticks into the skate more than it should. I think i’m going to get some wire at home depot tomorrow and attach it in a different way to avoid it rubbing my ankle.

Check out the videos, i trimmed and edited them in iMovie, so all the dead air of me skating around before and after each run is gone.

Rocking it Philly style. If i didn’t live in Philly i doubt I would have ever learned this.

click here for the video of me skating down the Art Museum Steps