We’re all a mix of old and new. Metric makes sense for science, imperial for informal measurement. Old stuff can be good (and vert is quite an old discipline now. I see a few young riders but your Dave Allens and Sean Goffs and Hawks and Burnquists are getting on. But skating needs a dose of new tech and innovation to balance things. I’m into foam pits and resi ramps, because they let you learn big tricks and develop the muscle memory without killing yourself. The XC has just got a resi jump-box/quarter combo that I’m looking forward to riding.
Do you have any clue how good people are just now? Have you seen the Vans video? Have you seen Clay Kreiner? Alex Halford?
Fuck Woodward, fuck foam pits and fuck queuing up to skate. Vert is more advanced, more stylish, faster and cooler now than it’s every been. You’re talking like Sean Goff and Dave Allen are still relevant, or that Hawk and Burnquist are the main dudes. Does Bob still skate? Who cares? Kids are ridiculous on vert ramps and in vert pools now. It’s great.
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I’ve seen some of the new generation. At my local vert ramp we have some of the older generation (Dave A and Jussi Korhonen are regulars) and some of the younger rippers like Alex Griffiths, and the new generation are amazing. But places like Woodward are helping them push their skills further
Imperial makes no sense at all. How many feet to a mile? How many chains to a furlong? How many stone to a hundredweight? All total bollocks.
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Got to agree here. Why have 2 different standards? I’m a child of the 70s and even from when I was young imperial measurements make no sense. I understand the resistance if you’re brought up with imperial but I honestly don’t see any benefits at all, it’s archaic.
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Maybe Neal Hendrix can teach Vert at a UK Woodward?
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Maybe skateboarding is way too diverse to please everyone. Let it be and let everyone have their piece of fun. Much the same as the UK, you can’t force everyone to want one thing. Brexit is fucked up and so is our country, no one is right and no one is wrong. Just some of us are more blinkered and ignorant than others.
Those Duffs are hardly something I’d want reissued now but they weren’t that bad looking, see Danny Montoya’s section in the Reason.
Indeed. It’s a bit like how many seconds in a week, or how many minutes in a year. Calculations like that don’t matter to the vast majority of users, and that’s not how imperial works - or the world’s other traditional systems.
If calculation is what matters to you most, then base ten is the way to go. If scientific accuracy matters, you’ll want a unit defined by something like the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1299 792 458 of a second - that’s the metre.
But if you just want to do stuff, and if you don’t want to carry measuring equipment around with you, it’s easier to have measures like the length of your shoe (the foot), or a comfortable handful of the sort of stuff we eat (the pound) or the thickness of your thumb (which is why the word for inch in French, German and Spanish is the same as the word for thumb.)
Same with division of units. For calculating, 1,000 grammes to a kg is good. But try dividing a 1kg cake, or a block of butter, into 1g pieces by eye, and you’ll make a mess off it. The simplest way to divide anything accurately by eye is to cut it in half. The next simplest way is to cut it into thirds. That’s why the pound divides by base 2 (2,4,8,16) and why the foot divides by both base 2 and base 3 (2 x 2 x 3 = 12).
A long way away from skate shoes, I know. But you raised the topic so I thought I’d explain.
Although I suppose you could bring shoes into it. Three UK/US shoe sizes = an inch. The continental shoes sizes (43, 44 etc). are old measures, based on fractions of the French pouce.
One more thing. You asked
A more practical way of looking at it is to take a walk and count your steps. If you start on one foot and count every time you put that foot down, and count to a thousand, that should get you to a mile. Hence the Roman name Mille Passus (a thousand steps)
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To get back on track: should Vans stay true to its classic roots, or should it push the tech innovation? Or is there room for both in the brand?
Thanks Jacob Rees Warwick.
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Seriously I just looked up UK shoe sizing in Wikipedia
The barleycorn is an old English unit that equates to 1⁄3 inch (8.47 mm). This is the basis for current UK and North American shoe sizes, with the largest shoe size taken as twelve inches (a size 12) i.e. 30.5 cm, and then counting backwards in barleycorn units, so a size 11 is 11.67 inches or 29.6 cm.
In my opinion, currently the most accurate way to size your shoes is via European sizing, as some brands use different sizing for men and women in uk/us.
But seriously fucking barleycorns I don’t even know what a barleycorn looks like and I’m pretty sure a barleycorn can come in different sizes.
But, those bloody Europeans, always setting the rules.
We’re European.
It’s funny how people don’t want Europe meddling in our affairs but want things like Imperial Measurements, a throw back to the Empire and us forcing our might on the rest of the world and meddling in other countries affairs.
UK and US adidas sizing after 8 or 9 changes because they round up (or down) from the Euro size, which other companies don’t.
Japanese sizing is in centimeters, they have their shit together. Fucking barleycorns? Fuck the fuck off.
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I’ve been impressed with these - New Balance Numeric 913. I wreck shoes quite quickly but these have seen multiple sessions at BaySixty6 and my local vert ramp with lots of sliding out onto pads and still looking ok to wear for work today
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Are those the New Balance made in the UK factory?
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