#Tech deck grip tape pro
#Tech deck grip tape tv

Some veterans of the skateboarding industry welcomed the new trend, seeing it as a way to bring in more customers like me to the sport. Kids loved them: According to one estimate, sales of Tech Decks and other fingerboard products hit $120 million in 1999, the year after Tech Decks first hit store shelves.

The original had removable plastic wheels, screwed-on metal trucks (the hardware used to fasten wheels to the deck), and licensed graphics from the most popular board makers of the day.

#Tech deck grip tape pro

But Tech Decks, created in the late ’90s by toy distributors Peter Asher and Tom Davidson (with help from pro skater Chet Thomas as well as Asher’s middle-school-aged son), changed the fingerboarding game. It’s a sport that’s not really a sport, pursued by people playing with a toy that’s not really a toy.įingerboards have been around since the late ’70s pro skater Lance Mountain famously rides one that he fashioned himself in the 1985 Powell Peralta video, Future Primitive. Fingerboarding these days is painstakingly modeled on skateboarding, but also completely independent from it, unfolding in small gatherings across the globe, flourishing in hidden corners of social media and online retail. It was just a little fun for old time’s sake.īut little did I know, the fingerboard craze that first took hold when I was a kid has evolved over the past 20 years into a highly specialized subculture all its own.

I wasn’t seeking out fellow fingerboarders, or going to fingerboard events. Even as an adult, I could still pop an ollie on a Tech Deck with confidence.Īs I got older, fingerboarding was mostly a personal pursuit. Sometimes I would stick my hand out of the car window, riding the wind and pretending to do tricks, like an ex-smoker wishing they had a cigarette between their digits. My friends and I collected them, sneaking in trick sessions in between classes at school. Tech Decks ended up becoming one of the beloved totems of my childhood. In 1998, I was strolling through the aisles of the California sporting goods store Sport Chalet when I spotted one of the first Tech Decks, a brand new style of fingerboard designed to look and feel like the real thing. And so, I was an early adopter of the fingerboard, miniature skateboard toys that became massively popular right when skate culture was entering the mainstream.Īt Sun Diego, I would buy chunky, plastic, skateboard-shaped keychains, ripping the keyrings off and slapping on a miniature strip of grip tape to bust ollies off park benches, smashing to the ground and rolling away like a tiny pro. But I loved skateboarding - the aesthetic that came with it, the music playing in the background of skate videos, and the general outlaw vibe that a wooden board could confer upon whoever was associated with it - and I wanted to be involved with it in some capacity. I hated falling over and getting hurt, which is one of the main prerequisites for skating. Sadly, I wasn’t a very good skater myself.

#Tech deck grip tape tv

At the skate shop near my house, Sun Diego, now-iconic videos like Toy Machine’s Welcome to Hell and the Shorty’s team showcase Fulfill the Dream played in mesmerizing loops on a small TV behind the counter. Kids at my middle school spoke of local pros like Peter Smolik and Jamie Thomas in reverent tones. I grew up in San Diego, a major hub for skateboarding in the 1990s.