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by fokinsean 1753 days ago
Here's a fun one to debate with your skate friends, nollie and fakie tricks are "swapped".

For example:

- nollie fs 180 and fakie fs 180 (fs half cab) are two different directions: nollie fs 180 is in front of you and fakie fs 180 is behind you going blind

- nollie 5-0 and fakie 5-0 (fakie switch nosegrind) lean differently on the grind: nollie 5-0 you pop off your nose and land on your back truck, fakie 5-0 you pop off your tail and land on your front truck

- nollie noseslide and fakie noseslide are different motions to get into the slide: nollie nose you pop off nose and land on the nose in the ledge, fakie nose you pop off tail and land on the nose but you do a sort of half cab

The key distinction in the argument is that in fakie, your tail is always considered your "tail". Therefore you treat any derived tricks as being "backwards". In the 5-0 and noseslide examples, you're still popping off the front of your board, but you classify it as nose or tail based on if it's nollie or fakie.

There are caveats though such as "fakie crook" where if you kept the rule it should be "fakie suski", which no one says.

There's a million arbitrary and nonsensical rules in skateboarding which is part of the reason to love it, especially for something that "has no rules".

And remember, never carry your board by your truck :)

5 comments

Ah don't forget the same variation of foolery that comes around if you 180 into a grind.

What most people would call a nose grind or 5-0 is inverted if you 180'd into it.

> And remember, never carry your board by your truck :)

I miss skateboarding :). My ankles don't though.

I always thought names like "180 nosegrind" made no sense. Why not "180 switch 5-0"? That seems so much more intuitive.

It made so much more sense when I learned a lot of these tricks were first invented in the 1980's, when most boards had an obvious nose versus tail difference. Like this one:

https://i.etsystatic.com/6865693/r/il/f51835/361296329/il_15...

So even though you we're grinding in a switch 5-0 looking position, you would be clearly grinding on the nose, hence "180 nosegrind".

Ah yes! and

One of my other favorites:

On circle rails there is "no such thing" as fs overcrook, just fs nosegrind, and there is no such thing as bs nosegrind, but there is bs overcrook.

At least that's how magazines seem to classify it.

And these are just for street! Transition has its own set of weird names (losi, andrecht, g-pivot, etc.), including some slight street overlaps (varial, pivot, etc.).

I have a little passion project where we log pro’s tricks and interview them called 4ply[0]. The naming convention is something we always have to get right to make the logged data at all useable. I actually grew up skating with Erick Winkowski but can’t do an article on him because he does so esoteric transition tricks and we can’t name them all (or find someone who can).

[0] http://4plymag.com/

Thanks for the link... Read about Skate After School and made a donation. Great interview! http://4plymag.com/SAS/
That's awesome! The site seems down for now but I'll check again later.

Also I'll go ahead and plug the site I'm helping rebuild.

https://skatevideo.site

Yo! That’s awesome you’re working o skatevideosite! O just read your guys interview on Jenkem [0]. I used your old data years back for an article for The Pudding [1] years ago - invaluable resource. Growing up I would spend so much time on the site just finding music and skaters. If there’s an issue board or something please plug it, would love to contribute!

[0] https://www.jenkemmag.com/home/2021/08/16/meet-minds-behind-... [1] https://pudding.cool/2018/06/skate-music/

Woah! That's so random, I recently came across your article a few months ago. Great work and small world :)

I have a private discord and github for the project I can add you too. I eventually plan to open up the discord for anyone once we get a little further in the rebuild.

Wish there was a good way to DM on HN, I can send you a discord invite. Or if you happen to be on slap let me know.

Holy!!! That site still exists??!?!?!?!?!! I remember when this was filled with videos which were mostly hosted on what were google videos back in the day(and a small number on vimeo). Must have been 2006-7-8-ish...
that invalidates my deep faith for the suski grind, this is unacceptable Lemongrab screaming
Haha Suskis are still valid. They've grown on me over the years, especially when pinched on a ledge.
> - nollie fs 180 and fakie fs 180 (fs half cab) are two different directions: nollie fs 180 is in front of you and fakie fs 180 is behind you going blind

That is till this day(12 years since I last set foot on a skateboard) the most illogical thing. Especially when combined with board slides which were also not apparent from the start(for years on I called front side board slide back side) and from a logical perspective the lip slide names made a lot more sense. That said, I never figured out how to classify nollie/fakie board and lip slides front or back. As far as experience I also never understood why were hard flips called hard(I learned how to do them in less than 15 minutes after I first decided to give them a go).

Well, the "logic" for fakie is that your tail remains the reference even though you are popping backwards. Therefore you would spin the same direction for fakie fs 180 as you would for regular fs 180.

> I never figured out how to classify nollie/fakie board and lip slides front or back

Yep this one still trips me up to and is great argument over some beers. Especially when you introduce flip tricks into them as well :p

The rail tricks are simple if you just think of whether it’s your toes (fs) or heel (bs) facing the obstacle and ignore any body turn motion.
all these terms originated from skating pools so you have to visualize them relative to your position on a transition as opposed to flat. fs/bs is quite literally how you are facing the the wall while fakie is simply treated as the inverse of your natural position.
Mall grabs are okay as long as you just tried something huge: https://youtu.be/THcnby6b6sY?t=88
Kinda like how benihanas are lame, unless you're shaved-head Jamie Thomas taking it down a gap:

https://i0.heartyhosting.com/skateboarding.transworld.net/wp...

From this Transworld Article:

https://skateboarding.transworld.net/photos/tws-10-most-memo...

therefore by induction a nollie fs 180 is not a half cab∎
never push mongo too
*Unless it's switch mongo and you're Koston, Rodrigo TX, or Stevie Williams
i see you're a man/woman of culture as well
*swongo