Denni and I went to NYC this weekend for a quasi-organized saturday night skate with the Union Square Crew. I’d say it was the best group skate I’ve been on so far. First, Dominique and Marie from France showed up, which was a pleasant surprise. This gave us a good balance of slalom and non-slalom skaters. So, Denni and I took turns learning slalom tricks from our french guests, and non-slalom tricks from our new york friends.

The skate consisted of just the right ratio of skating through new york traffic, and then hanging out at good locations to do tricks or relax. And we did lots of relaxing, because it was still hot even at night.

I think a bunch of us are going to visit Dominique and Marie in france some time next summer.

We learned our first 50cm trick too! I guess its called the windshield wiper, or the “X” not sure which.

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!

Introduction
I love these skt100 (skt 100) skates. There are a few things that are new about the skt100 skates: (1) wheel spacing, (2) fatness, (3) laces, (4) rockered, (5) heel height, (6) wheel sizes and (7) tongues.

Wheel Spacing
The skt100’s have a different wheel spacing than my old hockey skates. On my old skates, the front wheel is directly under my toes and the back wheel is directly under my heel. The skt100 skates, the front wheel is a bit in front of my toes and the back wheel is a bit in back of my heel. So the wheels are spread out more.

This new wheel spacing helps me and hurts me. It helps me because I have better balance when I am crossing and in akward positions. It hurts me because when crossing, the front wheel of one skate catches into the back wheel of the other skate. So I have to get used to this spacing and move my legs further apart when doing close footwork.

Fatness
Fatness means that the skt100 skates are just fatter in general. They are heavier and fatter and just bigger all around. I can not get my feet as close together as I was able to with my hockey skates only because there’s more padding and plastic. I have to be aware of how close my feet are together when doing the tricks I know.

Laces
The skt100 skates have no laces. I took them out. The old skates have laces. I couldn’t take them out. I hate laces. So because there are two giant clips on the skt100 ones, there are no laces on them. Woo hoo!

Rockered
Holy crap! This changes everything. I can not believe how easy it is to turn my skate. Just skating backwards is so different. I also noticed that the rockering does not last very long. After just 20 minutes or so, I started to notice the wheels getting to be less rockered. Maybe there is a way of skating that I can do where it keeps the rockering. I’ll have to learn some toe and heel tricks to wear the outside wheels down.

Heel Height
This is a major difference. The height of my heel on my old skate was very high because the boot had a heel and because the skate has giant wheels in the back. The skt100 skate has virtually no heel on the boot and the huge wheels are in the middle. The would make one feel like they are always going to fall backwards. This isn’t the case with me tho. The wheels being spread apart further keeps me from that feeling. The combination of the lower heel height and the spread out wheels makes me feel very sticky to the ground. It also makes me lean on and trust the fronts of my skates more. It is easier to go up on my toes for some reason. This will take some getting used to.

Wheel Sizes
The new wheel sizes are good. I bought two sets of wheels: 88’s and 90’s, which isn’t a huge difference and doesn’t make them super rockered but it is a difference. To make me get used to the rockering. Because of the skt100 skates, I also don’t have to worry anymore about the giant wheels in the back and the small ones in the front. These skates standard have all the same size wheels. Another huge plus.

Tongues
The only downfall of the skt100 skates. I love them to pieces but the tongues suck. The sewing on them stinks. There is a giant piece of plastic on the front of the right tongue on the right side that presses into my leg and pinches badly. So what I did is roll a little piece of duct tape into a really skinny tube. Then I duct taped that little tube against the sharp part of the plastic that is sticking out. I tried them on in the house and it’s 100% better!

Conclusion
The skt100’s are just great. I will need to learn to skate all over again with new skates, new rockered, and new socks. (Yes I got new socks. They’re from EMS. I love them.) So it’s true… Before I learn more tricks, I will be learning to skate first, then learning the current tricks, then learning new tricks. The learning to skate first will go really quickly and the tricks will go as fast as I can schedule some personal practices.

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…