LA's Biggest Block Party

Last weekend, I was stuck at home with nothing to do.  While I surfed the web, I came across an event called CycLAvia. I had never heard of it before and for those who don't know, I'll share a little of what I discovered. CycLAvia is an annual event that takes place in Downtown Los Angeles. For an entire day (10 AM to 3 PM), select streets running through LA are fenced off. These streets will only be available to bicyclists, skateboarders, joggers, and anything that isn't a car. 



CycLAvia has only been around for four years, but it originated from a tradition that started 30 years ago in Bogota, Colombia. Surprisingly, in my last four years of living in Los Angeles, I have never heard about this event.




I am posting about this because I'm sure I can't be the only one who just made this amazing discovery. The next CycLAvia is only a week away and will be held on Sunday, October 7.

Whoever thought of this idea is a genius. Not only does this event help give us the exercise we need, it also raises community awareness of the inefficiency of automobiles. With all the traffic and congestion that usually builds up in downtown, it is probably faster to bike than it is to drive. For me, biking and boarding around on the streets is scary only because of the oblivious drivers. There is a lot at risk if drivers are not used to waiting for bicyclists, boarders, and even pedestrians. This event will probably get some people to start biking regularly and maybe drivers will also start noticing.

CycLAvia is primarily aimed at bicyclists, but anyone is free to roam into the streets and play. Grab your longboards, find some rope, make a good friend, and maybe they'll let you tug along.


This looks like it is going to be a crazy event and I will definitely be going. Whoever can make it should go too, just don't forget your helmet.

Lone Surfer

Hello boarders! Today feels like a surfing blog day. I didn't go surfing, so I guess I'll just blog about it. Maybe one day I will blog about why my favorite board is the surfboard, but today I want to talk about being that lonely surfer out in the water. One thing I always find hard to do is go surfing alone. I can skateboard alone just fine, but I can never bring myself to surf without a few friends. If someone tells me they don’t want to skateboard with me, I wouldn’t mind too much. I would still go regardless. If someone tells me they don’t want to surf with me, my day is completely ruined. If you’re not going, I’m not going.


Obviously, nobody wanted to go with me today, so I decided to reflect on why I hate surfing alone. After some thought, I have discovered that the biggest factor is fear. In California, unless you get down to San Diego, you are pretty much stuck with murky green ocean water. If you have even the slightest imagination, the ocean can become a mysterious and frightening setting. Even if it’s just kelp brushing up against my foot or leg, I still flinch every time. With friends, I am too caught up racing for waves that I somehow forget about the creatures in the ocean.

I have only been out surfing alone a handful of times, but I have never found it very fun. Without my friends, I kind of sit in the water waiting for a perfect wave. Some people call this soul surfing. There is nothing between them and mother nature during their surf session and they can just relax. If only the relax part were true. While sitting, there isn't much to do besides think. The longer I wait, the more I imagine about what could be swimming underneath me. With friends, we pressure and push each other to catch as many waves as possible. It's usually easy to stay out for 2+ hours, but by myself, I usually won't even make it to 1 hour. Even if it was a great day, I would feel a bit bummed that nobody was there to enjoy it with me.

Here is a short post I read about surfing alone. I envy these people.

Tips

Hello again! I hope you can all relate when I talk about that extremely satisfying feeling you get after teaching a friend something new. They’re wearing an extremely big smile across their face while you bask in the “I Did That” feeling. Of course, once your friend gets better at it than you, it becomes a completely different story…

Today, I feel like doing a tutorial on how to skateboard!

Here is a little bit about myself: I go to college. Stay tuned for more!
On the campus of the University I go to, I see a lot of people riding skateboards and I think I can tell who has been skateboarding longer than others. I look for the awkward moment when a person is pushing the board. As they lean over to put their foot on the ground, it looks as if they are losing balance.

Dr. Huangmo is here to fix this problem!
The problem here is that the rider has yet to “become one” with his skateboard. He/she simply needs to skateboard more and get used to it. The best way to learn how to skateboard is to go out and skateboard up and down your street until you feel pro. Unfortunately, not many college students have the time or self-esteem for that. We’re just way too busy doing homework or we don’t want to ruin our image and let everyone know that we are trying a new sport.

Here are a few pointers and tips that I would like to share with the beginners who just received their board-in-a-box within the past few months. Reading these tips won’t magically make you a better rider, but if you try them out, I think it will help speed up your learning process. 

Tip #1: The Slow-Mo game.

Life seems to pass by faster on the board, people whizz past you and it’s hard to pick who you run into. One of the things I find fun while riding a skateboard with my friends is to pretend I am moving in slow motion. I don’t know if it is fun for my friends, but it is fun for me. Pretend that all your movements have to be slowed. You push slowly. You turn slowly. You fall slowly.  

NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS!

To your dismay, playing this game won’t actually slow down time, but I find this exercise extremely useful because moving slowly gives you a great core workout and these are the muscles you need to maintain balance.

Tip #2: The Ballerina Game.

For this game, the goal is to stand on your skateboard with one foot. The foot you stand on is the foot you don’t use to push the skateboard. This trick is much easier said than done. If you can’t stand on one foot while rolling, I suggest starting off on a carpet or somewhere where the skateboard won’t be shooting out from under you. I don’t really know the purpose of this tip, but my friends tell me it helps and it definitely makes you look cool.

Tip #3: That is all the tips I have to offer.

I know it’s only two tips, but while I was learning, if I had known about the Ballerina Game, I would have had a much easier time progressing. Plus, girls would have been all over me. “Look at that beautiful man!”

Hopefully these tips will help you guys out and make your day better.

GoPro's Success

It’s only September. The temperature still averages in the mid 80’s during the day in SoCal, but winter is already knocking. It’s almost time for snowboarding and skiing! Every week, I get a few emails from resorts like Mammoth, Big Bear, and Mt. High, claiming that this year’s snow will be much better than the last. In addition to the weather forecasts, they also link me to some of their promo vids that they put up on YouTube. After watching one, I’ll click on the next related video, and then the next, until my brain goes numb and I realize that I can’t possibly watch them all. The number of skiing and snowboarding videos out there is surprising.

What is even more surprising is that half of these videos are recorded with a certain type of camera: The GoPro HD Hero. Last season, I noticed a large number of people with those GoPro cameras attached to their helmets. It was actually quite amazing. At the beginning of the season, only a few people had those cameras. By the end, there were too many to count. Whether GoPro planned it out or not, their advertising campaign is extremely successful and I actually think it’s ingenious. Their advertising is so effective that I even bought a GoPro simply due to the hype.

If you watch any of GoPro’s videos or “ads,” you’ll notice that the company targets the outgoing, active, thrill-seeking crowd. Their videos are just a mash-up of people performing stunts from different sports, but it works because they make me want to get off my computer and just go out and play.

And here is what people look like when they go out and play:

You may be wondering: How does me wanting to go out and play help GoPro? In this new era of sharing, not only is it fun to watch the videos made, it’s also really fun to make the videos. After a good day on the hill, my friends and I are usually so excited to make a video that after we get home, we’ll spend around three to four hours watching all our recordings and trying to create a montage. By this time, we are usually exhausted from snowboarding and making a video becomes ridiculously fun. Even better is when we wake up the next morning and find the video is magically completed and uploaded onto Facebook. None of this fun would be possible unless we had a camera to play with during the day.

Looking at the YouTube videos I linked, we can see that GoPro builds its success off the people who use it. The people supply the thrill while GoPro supplies the means of recording and sharing it. As more people want to get out and play, more people will want to share what happened. This is what I find amazing: every video made is like an advertisement for GoPro. People with similar interests will find the videos and as long as GoPro is mentioned, its name becomes more prominent.

I’ll admit that I also fell victim to their campaign. Before I bought my GoPro, I had already owned a Kodak camera, but because of the sheer number of videos made with the GoPro Hero, I figured it must blow everything else out of the water. After buying the GoPro camera and playing with it, I realized that the videos I created didn’t turn out much better than the ones I already had. The GoPro camera was good, but considering that I still had one that worked, it was not worth the $300. Regardless of its functionality, it is amazing how prominent GoPro has become within the past year.

Hello World!

Don’t you hate it when you get all snuggly in your comfy chair ready to read a book and then off in the distance you hear the faint noise of a jackhammer? Chigachigachigachiga. You put it off and keep reading, but then the sound only gets louder and closer. When it gets so loud that you can’t concentrate, you look out your window and see a skateboarder roll by. His wheels make annoying clicking sounds as they run over every bump on the road.

As you watch, he attempts to pop-shuvit onto a sidewalk, producing a "boink" sound that resonates through your room. The boarder spins his deck 180 degrees under his feet, but he doesn’t jump high enough. The board makes a bunch of clacking noises as it gets caught on the curb. Then, when you hope he will just walk away, he starts cursing at his board and at everything around him. You’re thinking to yourself, Boo Hoo, I just want to read my book.

I used to be that person … the one in the room reading the book. I would wonder how skateboarders could have fun “terrorizing” the community. They seemed to always be causing public disturbance and being super emo. That didn’t seem like much fun … Well, it didn't until I went to college and met my roommate Felix. Skateboarding became so cool all of a sudden (being emo still didn't).

Once upon a time, I was a freshman in college and I had a crazy  roommate. I have him to thank for getting me interested in skateboarding. My roommate's name was Felix, and he taught me my first trick on a skateboard. 

 

The trick Felix taught me was the ollie, which is demonstrated in the picture above.  

The first time I saw Felix jump with his skateboard, I was amazed. I had never actually seen anyone ollie in real life. Only in videos.

I asked him to show me the trick again. And again...

As I observed closely, it looked as if the board were glued to his feet. How was that possible? I remember my first attempt at the ollie. When I jumped, the board remained on the ground and when I landed back on it, I lost my balance and fell.   

Felix was kind enough to explain the ollie to me, but I was dumbfounded by its complexity. The simple trick of jumping on a skateboard involved perfect placement of the body, flawless foot movement, and perfect timing as well. In order to pick the board off the ground, you have to create friction between your shoes and the griptape while you jump.

That day, I made it a goal to eventually learn the ollie. Who knew eventually meant 6 months? Yep, 6 MONTHS of continuous falling, painful wrists, and a nice pair of DC shoes before I finally executed my first successful ollie. This process of learning the most elementary skateboard trick helped me gain a new respect for skateboarders. When I finally performed my first ollie, it was like my life was complete (seriously) and I was really glad I didn’t quit in the process.

After I learned the ollie, I just wanted to learn more and more. A snowball effect started and skateboarding flew to the top of my hobby list. I underestimated how much fun a person could have with a piece of wood and 4 wheels. I literally had to put myself in a skateboarder’s shoes to realize what the big commotion was about.

It’s been 4 years since I learned the ollie, but skateboarding is still my favorite hobby. This blog I’m creating will revolve around skateboarding and the other hobbies i’ve picked up as a result of it (surfing, snowboarding, and kitesurfing). Through the sharing of my experiences and random thoughts, my goal is to get others interested in skateboarding, or to at least see it in a different light. I’m grateful that Felix shared his skateboarding experience with me and hopefully the things I share will benefit others as well.

I’m Shaun Huangmo and I welcome you all to Get Board!