There is nothing more exciting than seeing the long rectangular-shaped box on your front doorstep. You know it’s the skateboard you ordered. You open it up and it’s your skateboard, you get on it, try to ride it, and fall. You don’t suck. You just need to work on it, and you’ll get better.

Shoes

If you need a good skate shoe, try looking for Nike SB, Vans Off The Wall, or Converse. I’ll share some benefits about all of them. Vans, Vans are very well put together and well priced although they do tear after a few tricks you can put some shoe goo on it and it’ll be just as good. Nike SB, Nike SB is alright, they have some good material but are very overpriced, like $604.99 skate shoes aren’t really nice, but they’re decent. Converse, Converse are roughly the same price as a normal Vans shoe, they do have some advantages like their toe cap and grippiness. They all have some benefits, though I do recommend vans over any other, that’s just personal preference.

Decks

A lot of decks you should avoid are odd-shaped boards (not classic shapes), a popular shape/design is the Vegeta board from Zumiez. Let’s not forget about Walmart boards, just don’t. Certain board shapes are okay to use like old-school or normal popsicle. Hardware, it doesn’t really matter what hardware you use but I prefer hardware that has paint on one set of bolts that indicates the tail and nose, and yes, there is a difference: the tail is lower than the front which makes you pop higher. Trucks don’t really matter, just don’t get hollow or plastic trucks. Bearings, I recommend Spaceball Ceramics, don’t forget to lube the bearings. When it comes to wheels you don’t want plastic wheels, you want normal polyurethane wheels.

Tricks

There are some really easy tricks that you can learn really quickly. Ollie, ollies are somewhat simple but it gets frustrating after a while of not landing it. Steps: start by stomping the tail down, jump up a little bit, slide your foot up, and stomp down with the foot you lifted. Shuvits are pretty easy, all you do is lift up your front foot and sweep with your back foot, and that’s it. Pop shuvit is in the middle of easy and hard, it’s a mix of a shuvit and an ollie. Stomp down and with your back foot sweep and then you’re done.

Skateboarding is a great sport, and if you read this I bet you’ll love skating as well. We learned a lot of things about skateboarding from setting it up and tricks.

Some good places for getting a board setup based on my preferences:

BEAR Spaceballs Ceramic 8mm Bearings

Cal7 Decks

Krux Skateboard Trucks

Force Hardware (painted)