It was an epiphany for the PD's Hot Shop employees in Vancouver some years ago when they realized that it was the dialogue that was driving kid's skateboarding into weird, often misdirected zones. A lot of kids were coming in thinking that a 'smooth' skateboard HAD to be either a longboard or a crummy 'Penny' board. To many kids, any 'street' popsicle shape or transition shape ALWAYS had hard wheels and was 'too rough to ride'. Kid's faces lit up when they were exposed to the fact that a SOFT WHEEL can make any board smooth. Since then, the Hot Shop has sold hundreds of set-ups for kids that want to start to ollie, learn tricks, or bomb around with smooth wheels on any board they want with either the smaller popular 'filmer' wheels, 80A - 90A old school wheels, or even reasonably sized longboard wheels on a more standard skateboard shape. And of course, when they want to start hitting more smooth parks, bowls, street spots, etc. they can throw on the harder duros.
Prime example from yesterday below -
"You mean I can build that cool looking Slasher deck so that it's smooth like my friends' longboards and Penny boards?"
YES!
