Adidas have just relaunched their website – in flash which is seriously irritating but ignore that and head over and watch Frisco Stand Up with new footage of their team including the likes of Benny Fairfax, Lem Villeman, Denis Busenitz, Gonz, Silas Baxter-Neal, Tom O’Connor, Pete Eldridge and Nestor Judkins.

This guy knows far too many tricks, the first trick is ridiculous! Well to be honest the whole thing is ridiculous, Mike Mo is a machine..

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

More Christmas video surprises with Hold Tight London and Slam City releasing a Christmas Special, it’s a shame the weather is so bad cause we could all do with a nice long session I think!

Head over to Hold Tight London for all the goodness, you wont be disappointed.

Just read this on our forums and it’s defiantly worth sharing, Macba has finished it’s complete redesign and is looking better than ever, next summer is looking better and better!

Head over to http://www.moleirodesign.com/macba/macba1.html for all the details and pictures!

Happy Christmas All!

As you should already be aware the full Blueprint team have been at the Berrics all this week, they’ve now released a Blueprint United which features mini sections from all their team riders. They kill it, definatly something to help cure Christmas boredom!

Head over to the Berrics to watch it, also stop by the canteen for limited edition Blueprint decks!

The Blueprint team will be featuring on the Berrics all this week, so be sure to stop by and check out regular updates involving them!

This Time Tomorrow a DVD by Chris Mulherns is set to premiere at the Prince Charles Theater on February 25th. Featuring the likes of Lucien Clarke, Rory Milanes, Curtis Rapp, Dave Caddo, Jimmy McDonald and many more. This is set to go off, so be sure to head down to London to watch it, if you can’t make it look out for it in your local skater owned shop soon.

We take a look at the new deck designs now on the market, these deck innovations attempt to improve on the standard deck designs by making it lighter, stronger and poppier.

Plan B Prolite

Lighter, thinner, stronger that’s the promise of the recently released Plan B Prolite skateboards. With the 3 core ply’s made thinner and military grade glue used to hold it all together this looks like the future of skateboards, by making the board lighter board control should be improved. The 3 inner ply’s have been stained black to give it a distinctive look and the promise is the board will keep its pop for longer. The ads for these boards state that:

1. It’s the lightest thinnest and strongest wood construction in the industry
2. Three thinner inner core ply’s with military spec glue
3. Better board control and response with longer lasting pop

Check out this video of P Rod putting the new prolite model to the test

I recently managed to have a look at one of these boards and all I can say is LIGHT, these boards are incredibly lighter than normal boards and I may have to invest in one at some point to check out the strength side of Plan B’s promise.

Darkstar Armour Ply

Carbon Fibre used within board construction?? Darkstar have decided to try and make their decks un-snapable, constructed using 8 maple veneers and topped off with an extra strong carbon fibre top sheet all glued together with super bonding epoxy makes these decks pretty strong. With a standard retail price of £49.99 your not having to pay more for the additional strength an longer lasting pop. Personally I’m not a fan of Darkstar boards however the idea of using carbon fibre within board construction is a great idea for strengthening the board and many companies are incorporating this into their board construction

Flip P2 Construction

After putting in a few years of development Flip skateboards have released their Pro 2 or P2 construction which involves putting an oval aramid fibre reinforcement panel which just sounds pretty sweet as it is. This oval panel will accomplish a couple of things for you, the first is to spread the load and stress evenly across the entire board whereas normally most pressure is put across the area of your truck causing pressure cracks and eventually snapping (not fun for anyone). The second and I’m not 100% sure on how they’ve managed to achieve this is to give you a spring loaded pop which if true would be absolutely amazing, if anyone has used one of these P2 decks please drop me an email I would love to hear from you about the Spring Loaded Pop.

Here’s a short video of Geoff Rowley with his Pro 2 deck:

Almost Shockpads and Uber Light

There’s not too much I can say about almost shock pads, they use two circular carbon fibre reinforced discs around the bolts where you are going to get your first signs of pressure cracks thus increasing the life of your board, in theory.

Contrary to the shock pads is Almost’s Uber Light construction developed by Rodney Mullen and C.L. Composites it is a “Deck inside a Deck”. They use an internal Carbon Fibre Foam Deck which is extremely light but as stiff as metal and is used as the skeleton of the 7-ply layup. This in turn creates a longer lasting deck with better control and response. To me it sounds like Almost are on to a winner with this type of board construction.

Element Flatlight

The final installment on new types of board construction and probably the strangest and most backwards sounding of them all but bear with me because there is reason behind the madness. Push all the concave including the nose and tail down and make the board flatter, now when I first heard of this all I could think of is the Skateside decks I first started skated on which was like skating a plank of MDF. However after looking into it further I’ve been turned into believing that this could actually be a good idea.

The idea is simple by pushing all the concave out you can obtain a snappier pop and better board control Levi Brown helped develop this board construction and sells it well in this video advertising the board.

Zero’s latest video release Strange World has been somewhat unexpected, there was no massive hype campaign building up to it’s release and they choose to announce the first thing about it only months before its eventual release. This isn’t a full length DVD either, most of Zero’s team only get brief sections and this years SOTY Chris Cole shares his section with a young Tom Asta. Seems Zero have choose to focus on select skaters and release videos more frequently rather than release a mammoth video every four years or so, which is actually a brilliant idea.

The DVD opens up with Garett Hill and for good reason he has such a nice style and chooses a good selection of tricks in his part, the guy could have easily closed the DVD, one of his stand out tricks for me was a Nollie Flip 50-50 which is honestly as sick as it gets.

Keegan Saunders follows and hes another with one of those almost too comfortable looking style to him, he steps it up and his section is a definite improvement from some of his previous parts.

Strange World provides two montages of skaters who didn’t get full parts, the first montage consists of the likes of Rattray, Sheldon, Cervantes and Ben Gilley.  Rattray produces some sick lines and throws himself down some huge sets all at some speed, he may be getting on a bit but he isn’t slowing down yet that’s for sure! Gilley lands a huge 50-50 down a pretty gnarly rail despite destroying himself three times on it before hand.

Marissa Dal Santos breaks up the two montages with her busting out some big hammers, she front boards this huge 14 set at the end of a line which is pretty epic!

The second montage contains the likes of Thomas, Steamer, Piscopo and Sandoval. Thomas puts hit down with his usual steeze and has a decent street part, Elisa is solid although her sections on the short side, Donovan has a solid part and Sandoval is as sick as usual.

Next up is Dane Burman the latest Zero am, the Aussy proves his worth and defiantly kills it, he has some pretty heafty tricks in his section including a hardflip over a huge street gap, one of the better sections in the DVD. Following is James Brockman who has a section full of hammers, its some pretty gnarly stuff and he produces a pretty steezy front blunt!.

Asta and Cole share the next section basically switching between the two after each trick. Both of them are insane,  not heard much about Asta before but rest assured I’m sure I will after this section, he is so sick!  Cole destroys everything like he always does with a mix of some tech grinds and some insane hammers, he closes with a back 360 down a pretty big gap although he does snap his deck!

James Toncowny gets the last part and this kid can skate, he kills it busting out loads of hammers, another unexpected surpise, this kid is sick, defiantly someone to look out for in the future.

Strange World is accompanied by a heavier soundtrack as is expected, the filter effects can be somewhat distracting and the DVD contains a lot less HD shots which is a good thing! Strange World is a good watch and is easily re watchable, defiantly worth the small amount of £10 it’s being sold for. Get down to your local skater owned shop and grab a copy.

Maverick Skateparks have posted up a little Christmas edit from Mansfield Plaza with Rodney Clarke as bad Santa.