Tag Archives: longboard

Pink plastic poser

Way back when, I bought a longboard.

I bought it with the intention of using it for transportation, and I had a blast learning how to ride it. Longboarding is fun! Nothing can beat the feeling of cruising smoothly down the street.

Except I soon discovered one logistical problem:

My longboard is huge. Like, really long. It’s over half my height. Riding my longboard is fine. It’s when I carry it that it becomes difficult:

Or when I try to go shopping:

My longboard, while lovely, is simply too impractical. (Nor is it a particularly great longboard. The trucks creak and barely carve. The bearings are terrible, so that the wheels barely spin. In other words, I can barely turn or move.) I decided it was time for an upgrade.

I had to do some research, of course. I tried to use the internet. But I found out that skateboards are more complicated than I thought.

The internet was not going to help me much on this one. I decided I needed some help up-close and personal. I quickly looked up skateboard shops around Boston and decided on my criteria: small, lightweight, a smooth ride, good for getting around town…

First up was a store called “Blvd,” a small skateboard shop on the swag Newbury Street. The guy was really friendly and helpful:

Nearly $200! There was only one correct reaction to this news:

So that was a no. I was hoping that perhaps that was the upper price range for a good skateboard. Newbury Street is notoriously expensive, after all. Hopes still up, I hunted down an even smaller skateboard shop called the Beacon Hill Skate Shop. After a couple hours of wandering, I finally found it in a shadier corner of Boston.

And shadier it was. Rather than the polished look of Blvd, it was a tiny room haphazardly crammed with all sorts of skate stuff. Not just skateboards, but roller skates, ice skates, and the like.

The owner was an old, gruff guy who wasn’t nearly as friendly as the first guy.

But perhaps what was most off about this store was the cat. The cat. Omigosh.

The (only) cruiser board that the owner had to offer would run me $190, anyway. Even more expensive than the last shop. I’ll pass.

I was losing hope. I searched for a shop called “Board Room Boston” that claimed to be in the Financial District, but had in fact been turned into a hair salon.

And finally, I visited a specialty shoe store. It was down the street from my dorm, and claimed to stock a few skateboards in addition to the latest, greatest, freshest sneakers.

I was just about losing hope. But the guy in the last store– the shoe store– gave me a tip. He asked me if I might be interested in a “penny board.” Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. It was time to return to the internet.

Penny boards, as I soon found out, are these tiny little plastic cruisers sold by an Australian company. They seemed to be everything I was looking for: small, light, durable (though plastic, they can be ran over by cars without snapping) and are designed for smooth transportation.

And as I searched on Amazon, I found an even better deal: stereo vinyl cruisers, which are essentially the same thing but cost a bit cheaper. And they come with stickers and sunglasses. I WANTED ONE. I WANTED ONE SO BAD.

After a great deal of agonizing and rationalizing and pros-and-cons-ing, I decided to get it. I could even choose what color I wanted! Except on Amazon, for some reason, the pink skateboard was twenty dollars cheaper than every other color. Twenty dollars. I thus ordered the pink one. (Though the green one was pretty rad.)

Once again, Amazon shipped it in a box way too big for such a small item:

And I had to buy new bearings for it, too. (Reviewers online said that the board’s bearings were terrible, and it was absolutely true– when I got the board, the wheels barely spun.) It’s okay, I used the twenty dollars I saved to get a new set of Bones Reds bearings.

The board also comes with some decorative stickers:

And a fashionable pair of “sunnies”!

So ended my journey for a new skateboard! Hours of research, traveling, contemplating, comparing, all culminating into… this.

I have gone from

all the way down to

Oh yeah, can’t forget the helmet:

And my sunnies:

But dang. This board is awesome. It carves and rolls like a pink little dream. It’s perfect! Well, except for the fact that I can barely ride it at all.

I guess going from a too-big longboard to a miniature cruiser is quite an adjustment. It’s gonna take some doing before I feel comfortable enough to ride it around. It’s okay. I love it anyway. What’s not to love about a neon pink plastic anything?

Case in point.

Skater-nerdy-Asian girl

A while back, I got a longboard. I’ve been trying hard to learn how to use it. Every chance I get, I’m outside clumsily skating around, tripping over bumps and running into people.

I feel like there’s a certain stereotype that comes with girls who use skateboards, or in my case, a longboard. You know, the skater girl. Skull cap. Punk sneakers. Graphic print tee. Heavy makeup and a look of rebellion.

But I don’t fit that stereotype. Nope, I am a bona-fide nerdy Asian girl. So what people will see on the street, contrary to their expectations, is this:

People often don’t know what to make of me. Usually they’ll glare as I pass them by, only to be replaced with looks of pity.

My longboard seems to get attention wherever I go. First of all, it’s a bit different from the conventional skateboard we all know. Secondly, it seems like “the skater chick” is, so to speak, a “thing.”

But my progress on the longboard is coming along nicely! Meaning that I can, uh, ride on the board, slowly, without falling off. I’m awful at turning, though, and I still have trouble steering clear of passerby. More often than not I’ll just pick up my longboard and walk where it’s too crowded. Especially since I don’t know how to stop, besides just jumping clear off the board. It’s a… a work in progress. But it’s a ton of fun!

Sometimes I don’t understand shipping companies

Boston is known as the “walking city,” which I agree with. So many places are within a few miles of each other. It’s doable.

It should come with a disclaimer, though. Sure, Chinatown is two miles from Northeastern. That’s still 40 minutes or so of walking.

But the T costs money. And I like the exercise. I decided that I wanted to take up a popular sport here in Boston…

It’s always been my dream to learn how to skateboard. But as I’m not too concerned with tricks, and because I really just want to get around the city, a longboard seemed like a more practical choice.

So I used my first paycheck to order a longboard from Amazon. And waited with baited breath for it to arrive.

At Northeastern, dorms don’t accept packages– they have to be picked up in a different building. For me, the building is a short 0.3-mile walk from my dorm. THANK GOODNESS. Because the box containing my longboard looked like this:

And carrying it back was… a challenge.

I attracted plenty of stares on the way back, the looks of which can be summed up in my roommate’s reaction:

And in the end, most of the box was full of paper.

…and the board took up only a fraction of the space in the box.

That's the longboard sitting at the bottom.

What, Amazon? I don’t understand. Regardless, I’m glad my longboard arrived so quickly and safely! I can’t wait to learn how to use it. It’s gonna take some time. But it is so worth it.