Our Team

RippedLaces currently consists of 2 writers who are both experienced skateboarders. We love to add you to our team so feel free to contact us.

Ruben Vee

Ruben Vee RippedLaces

My name is Ruben Vee and I have tons of experience when it comes to skateboarding. I started skateboarding on an old school setup with rails and copers in the early 90s and skated 7.75″ popsicles in the early 2000’s. Nowadays, I skate an 8.25 which seems to hit the sweet spot. Little bit of transition and a bit of flat never gets tiresome.

I live in the Netherlands with my wife and 2 kids and I’m a full time blogger.

I also happen to be the owner of SkateboardersHQ, which you could have guessed as the content is quite similar. This blog will go into a different direction but with the same quality and details as the original.

William K.

William K. Author rippedlaces

I am a Canadian in my early 40’s, 5’10”, 170 lb and can grow a fantastic beard. I like to play video games, watch movies and hang out with my cats, Steve and Gary. I enjoy making things with my hands from craft projects to constructing buildings. Oh, I also love skateboarding.

Skateboarding was huge when I was a kid in the 1980’s. The Back to the Future movies brought skateboarding into mainstream culture every impressional kid needed to have a skateboard. I was no different.

The challenge was that I lived in rural Canada and skate shops were very few and far between. There was one in the nearest city and they sold completes for $80. I made a few bucks from mowing lawns, but not that much. So I got a cheap complete from a department store that had plastic trucks.

I knew nothing about what made a quality board, but I quickly found out when I broke the back truck doing acid drops in the garage. That ended my skateboarding career for the next few weeks until my mom took me back to the city. I also learned that you get what you pay for. I would only purchase quality setups from that point on.

I’ve skated most of my life, but definitely have not gotten to a level that I would call good. We had very few obstacles to skate when I was growing up and would get kicked out of spots very quickly. Skateparks were not a thing. They weren’t even on our radar when I was younger.

Now skateparks are everywhere and I love going when ever I can. I enjoy carving the bowls, grinding the boxes, and challenging myself. Skating takes away the cares and stresses of my professional and personal life. When I skate, there is only skating on my mind.

For me, the challenge of skateboarding comes from learning. Either learning new tricks or figuring out different ways to attack obstacles. As a middle aged man I know my limits and am not about to jump down a 5 stair set, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t spend an hour ollieing into a nose stall on the 3rd step and try to pop off into a fakie manual.

I am a firm believer in quality. Both in things I make and products I buy. I have had a slew of skateboards over my lifetime and have come to learn about what makes a quality setup.

I have also read a great number of blogs and articles over my lifetime and can easily sort out the ones that are BS and the genuine ones. I wouldn’t put my name on an article if I didn’t have personal experience with what I was writing and hadn’t done extensive research on the topic.

I like to try out different setups and gear. I’ve spent a lot of my own money trying different skate shoes, deck shapes, trucks, and wheels. I have my favourites, but I like new things and feeling the difference that new setups offer.