I'm gonna have to type one of these up sometime it's just going to end up being way too long don't read. I just started and I tried to lump 2003-2009 into one paragraph, but that ain't happening. It's really bizarre to me when kids are asking me how to do a trick at Rendezvous/Store sessions and I realize I've been fingerboarding longer than they've been alive.   


The craziest thing to me though, is I remember arguing with Jon Francis so often because he was always pushing so hard for a real life fingerboard scene, and I, among others, claimed it could never happen. I told him I'd pay him some sum of money (I was 14 and arrogant) if there was ever a fingerboard event in the states. Looks like I owe him something.

Thank god you didn't shake on that one jay...

well, i wish i could say as much as some people before, but heres what I've been apart of i guess

i got into finger boarding when my friend who i taught to skate back in 5th grade showed me his tech deck. he wasn't too good at skating (neither was i), and he mostly just sat at the skatepark watching others. the day he brought the tech deck which he had gotten from his mom a couple days earlier, i knew i would enjoy finger boarding. i always loved building models of cars and stuff, and miniature skateboarding, was the coolest thing to happen to me since actual skating, so i was hooked. i went out and bought a pack of the skateshop tech decks, that come with like 6 boards, a couple tools and a couple extra sets of wheels. the next day, jason (my friend) ordered some board online, from some company i forgot the name of, but its not that big of a deal, it was a wooden board though, so that made it even cooler, and more realistic i guess. I've still got one or two of the original boards that came in that skateshop pack haha, but after jason got his wooden deck, he stopped finger boarding all together

a year after that, i found out about ffi. I had watched fb videos on youtube, and somehow started to talk to todd about stuff, he seemed to have a passion for the same kind of stuff i liked, making really realistic decks/trucks/wheels/obstacles whatever it be, and he got me into the online community. I, like any other older finger boarder, lurked ffi while there account request was pending, and started to know members by name, or started to know their company. I never thought there would be fights and shit like the stuff that went down between companies. people were, from what i remember, always attacked because of what products they made, or their "style" in the videos they posted in the videos section. eventually, my membership was granted by nate in '10, but i had lurked on the site since late 08, early 09. when i joined, i remember making some good friends who aren't even active anymore, grant gibbs, alex tom, sid maurer, and some that still are. correct me if I'm wrong, but in late '10, ffi had the open registration too, and some veteran members were pissed about the new people, and for me, it seemed to be the decline of ffi. i remember looking at newest setups in like 09, every 4 minutes it seemed like, there was a new post in the thread. and when i joined, it was like maybe every hour. idk if it seems like that much of a decline, but it is definitely a drop.

and now, i guess i didn't really leave ffi, i still check it daily, i just am more active here. its really neat to see all the new smaller companies, and the more international community. i really got the impression that ffi was more of a homogeneous american community, while here there are lots of countries represented if you will.

congrats if you read it

tl;dr

i started fb'ing 7 years ago, i met todd, i joined ffi, ffi went downhill, i joined here

sick!

Yeah Jay you gotta type up somethin.   

Yeh I'd love to read yours Jay. Thanks Jackson, that was interesting. It's funny but I've always seen ffi as pretty international.

Suppose I better give this a shot

Got my first tech decks in 2007, like the day before christmas. Had these two birdhouse graphic's that I thought were sweet, still got them both! That was the year I started high school, became friends with Jonny Sivel who'd been messing around with them for a couple years already. After that they kind of became a mini fad for a couple of months, then it kind of died out. I still messed about with them every now and then but never got into it mad seriously.

2008 came and I stumbled on them when tidying my desk, put my mind to it for a bit and started nailing some actual clean kickflips, I was stoked. Started practicing a bit more and eventually people picked it back up again at school, the 'fad' was much bigger than the previous year and pretty much everyone had a tech deck. They were like crack, kids who weren't allowed to buy them were saving dinner money and trading various biscuits and sweets for them, it was crazy. Jonny got this close up G2 for his birthday, I was amazed at the fact that wooden decks existed so I checked them out. The price point was a bit steep for me back then, and after a few weeks we kind of decided that the G2 was actually worse then a tech deck lol. The wheels were sweet though. I remember Jonny picked up a Mitt G4 and it was so much nicer than the close up, trying the mitt kind of convinced me to actually put some money into picking up a wooden deck for myself. I checked some youtube sale/trade videos and picked up a Forest FB deck from some lass in america. I didn't have Paypal so I got some cash changed into USD and sent CIM haha. It arrived over the Christmas holidays and I had this sheet of Riptape saved for it for ages, was great to finally set it up. Forest was a uk company that I never really found out much about, Harvey knew the owner and was sponsored by them I remember? I searched them up and found Harvey's youtube channel linked to them, was stoked to see that he lives in Sheffield (not far from me). I had no idea that there were even any more serious fingerboarders in the UK! Anyway I left a comment or two on a couple of his video's and we became good friends after that.

Harvey created FBHQ and sent me a link via PM on youtube, I joined up and there was about 10 of us here in the first week. Was really weird socialising with other fingerboarders for the first time! I remember that Harvey got accepted onto FFI, I searched it up and just never really thought much of it with the restricted access. I guess at the time I felt like I wasn't 'exclusive' enough and then after that I just never felt the need to join. I saw an advert for 'UKR1' on Youtube and thought that it was an old event or something until I noticed the date, it was a couple of months away so I mentioned it to Jonny and then my mum agreed to give us a lift. Figured we should do some preperation so I bought a new Mitt G4 for myself and some No Comply V3 wheels. Jonny got a Mitt G4 wide at the same time, I thought he was insane buying a 28mm deck haha! Neither of us had owned bearing wheels before, we were amazed how smooth they were, it was like rolling on a cloud or some shit.

UKR1 came and we were pretty nervous, we didn't know what to expect! Pulled up to the venue at like 9:50am and thought that it started at 10:30am, so we sat in my mum's car for a bit haha. Saw one kid walk past with every possible member of extended family but wasn't sure if he was there for the event. It came to 10:30am so we figured we'd go check what's going on, we had no idea where we were going so we just wandered towards a door hoping to find a sign or something. We walked past this huge window, looked inside and just saw a bunch of people with blackriver ramps, that was kind of the moment of realization that there was a scene much bigger than we imagined! The day was awesome, I still rate it as the best fingerboard event that I've been to. There's only a couple of people who I've not kept in touch with from the event, and there was only 10 of us there! I was seriously mindblown at some of the tricks people were laying down, Thom was going for some mad laserflip to back tail and Eddie had this brand new Berlinwood with BRT's pretty much the week after they were released. The day was awesome, met some people that turned out to be really good friends a few years later! Got home and searched up a few of the people from the event and just couldn't seem to find any of them. A few months later Euan showed up on FBHQ and then Thom/Eddie/Sam Jamil joined too, it was mad speaking to them again.

FBHQ really blew up over the next year or so, a lot more people joined and Harvey had started EX-Tape! He sponsored me, Kerry and Boffey who were the mods of FBHQ at the time too. I'd never met Harvey at this point since he couldn't make it to UKR1. Sam posted about UKR2 however and a lot more people responded this time. Me and Jonny went again and got there feeling much more confident than last time haha, we also brought a friend from school who was pretty good. We went into the venue and got confused, we went towards the hall where the event was held last time and bumped into Tom Colbert who was also lost. We eventually decided to go back to where we started when we found ourselves checking the toilets to see if the event was inside there. The turnout was mental, there was like 20-30 people and it was so much different to UKR1. Only Eddie and Euan were there from who was at UKR1 so I thought Thom and Simon had quit! Finally met Harvey (and his dog) and he gave me my first sponsor pack, was awesome! Came home stoked, made a lot of new friends and had a good laugh all day. Didn't expect to become such good friends with Colbert, Boffey and Harry back then but nowadays they're some of the soundest guys I know.

That was the first couple of years for me I guess, I'll do another bit in a few days time covering CS2-UKR3

Danny Hynam wrote:

we found ourselves checking the toilets to see if the event was inside there.

Hahahaha!!

That was rad. Thanks for posting Danny! Good read man!