When I was 5 years old, my dad brought home a double-kick street skateboard. I remember riding it endlessly around our kitchen.
From that day on, skateboarding consumed me.
When I was in school, I’d think about skateboarding. When I was playing other sports, I’d think of skateboarding. Everything involved skateboarding.
Fast forward and most of my childhood I spent at my local indoor skatepark; Small Empire (RIP). There, I discovered transition skateboarding. It had some amazing street features, but I spent 95% of my time in their bowl or halfpipe.
I didn’t realize it at the time but what I connected with was the flowing aspect of skateboarding. I loved pumping the corners of the bowl or going up as high as I could on wallrides, doing buttery reverts.
But in the early 2000s, street skating was the thing to do. I kept feeling this underlying pressure to attempt more technical flip tricks. Deep down, it’s not what I connected with.
After all my local skateparks shut down, skateboarding slowly faded out of my life. I didn’t connect with street skating anymore and felt like it wasn't cool to try other types of skating. If you grew up street skating, you know what I mean.
Skateboarding was part of my identity for most of my life and without it, I felt lost.
Until I discovered longboarding. One of my friends introduced me to it and I felt that same feeling when I got my first skateboard at five years old.
That feeling of freedom. Where all my problems seemed to fade away and all that mattered was the present.
Skateboarding consumed me once again.
But this time through surfskates, cruisers and longboards. I originally connected with the flowing aspect of street skating. And that was fully captured with these types of skateboards. I found a new love and appreciation for skateboarding.
Or maybe this was the style that I connected with all along.
This discovery made me want to start Shred Shack. I want to provide information about all types of skateboarding styles. So no matter where you’re at in your skating journey, you can find the style that fits you.
I love the feeling I get when skateboarding and I want to share it with the world.
