RippedLaces currently consists of 2 writers who are both experienced skateboarders.
Ruben Vee
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.
William K.
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.