• Big Spins
• Corkscrews

Martin is now officially a cocksucker, having landed six switch heelflips, and having only started trying them tonight.

Because I snapped a kingpin while doing caveman palm flips and had to take one truck off to fix it, I thought I may as well take the other one off too since we had had such enjoyment the last time we were messing around on a bare deck (see article : shuvits).

Carpet Skating?

Carpet skating itself is fairly self explanatory, at least it is when it’s more accurately called carpet boarding. I mean really, who has the space to actually skate around in their bedroom? It’s great because not only does it give you something fun to do while your board is (for whatever reason) without trucks it’s also a useful device for learning tricks with a bit more confidence. This is because there isn’t much that can go wrong, and tricks are easier to land, which is nice, and the board is obviously lighter. But it isn’t all easy – popping is way more difficult, which might be a good enough reason to do it, because if you can pop and catch some air without trucks you will be able to do it much higher with them.

It’s not an official thing or anything, but I’m sure most skateboarders do it and it’s a lot of fun.

As already discussed in previous articles, shuvits are a piece of piss without trucks for obvious reasons. You can use the opportunity afforded by the smooth bottom to try some more gnarly shuvit variants. Doing a 360° shuvit is one option. Others include the big spin, and the “corkscrew” and “360° corkscrew”.

Big Spin

A big spin is a combination of a 360° shuvit and a body varial in the same direction. There’s a lot of spinning going on making it look pretty cool but it isn’t too difficult to learn.

Corkscrew (?)

Now, I’ve trawled the net looking for a name for this trick and nothing has come up yet so I am provisionally titling it a corkscrew. (EDIT – I later started calling this trick a ‘boomerang’ and it has emerged that it could also be called a ‘kastelerial’). If anybody who reads this knows the proper name for it assuming there is one) then feel free to inform me. This is basically a shuvit and a body varial in opposite directions, and it’s a gem of a trick. It feels fairly weird at first but again is very simple.

When you think about it, it makes a lot more sense than spinning in the same direction as your board, because you will be kicking against the direction of the shuvit to make the varial, which is more natural.