This was my first longboard deck. I purchased it in the mid 90s to practice cross stepping on. It used to have a nose bone because I figured doing lots of nose wheelies might take a toll. But actually the tail suffered early on because the banked walls at the then new Kunsthalle extension building in Hamburg are rougher than they look.
So as the razor tail got worse and worse I had to start thinking about replacing this very special board. This season I put on 165mm 50° Paris V3 trucks. I got used to them quickly, only missed the old swing weight. You see, reverse kingpin trucks like Paris create a shorter wheel base. For years the board used to have heavily wedged Thunders. Wedging effectively increases the wheelbase (plus the Bolzen wedges added considerable mass).
Anyway, looking all summer for a replacement which has a classic sidewalk surfboard shape, nothing did materialize. Neither did a nice dancer like a Lush Legend (probably Brexit is to blame). The Loaded Mata Hari only came out very recently. So in autumn I discovered the Bastl Boards Bolero. It’s about the same length with a longer wheelbase. The necessary lean on the 70 mm 85a Cult Creator wheels will hopefully be kept from wheel bite with the new deck’s wheel wells.
I set this up asymmetrically because I’m used to a shorter nose and the variation in kick clearance that comes with it might be a good thing. Looking forward to ride it!
Bruce Walker, 1951-2011 et plus
The history of the 1966 BatMobile
A Peek Inside the World’s Greatest Record Store
These Are the People Who Built LA’s New Chinatown
Sisters with Transistors: inside the fascinating film about electronic music’s forgotten pioneers
Scientists find 25,000 barrels of possible DDT at ‘staggering’ dump site near California coast
Climate fight ‘is undermined by social media’s toxic reports’
If We Want to Clean Up the Oceans, We Have to Confront the Fossil Fuel Giants
Relocation of tribal people living around Similipal Tiger Reserve forceful, claim locals
LAistory: Val Verde, The ‘Black Palm Springs’
Vice Versa | Longboarding With Achel & Abou
Vintage Skateboard 1960?s Collection Rare Grails Museum Quality
Sidewalk Surfin’- The Skateboard Museum at Skatelab in Simi Valley
Bolivia’s “New Andean Architecture” by Freddy Mamani
Hop Podcast #14 Collecting Skateboards With Andrew Maunsell
Globalizing the War on Indigenous People: Bolsonaro and Modi
www.surfboardhoard.com/category/longboards/
LA’s Vintage Diners, Then And Now
Trust our expertise or face catastrophe, Amazon peoples warn on environment
How to Fall Down the Anti-SJW Rabbit Hole
Vintage Skateboard 1960’s Collection Rare Grails Museum Quality
The best conservationists made our environment and can save it
Welcome to Hawaii’s ‘plastic beach’, one of the world’s dirtiest places
A Youth Without a Future? – Australian Teenage Life in 1949 – Flashbak
First human ancestors to leave Africa died out in Java, scientists say
This Small Group of Women Master Blenders Are Reviving the Rum Industry
Spider Jazz
Crystal, October 2019 – Ben “Dicko” Dickens somewhere in Oz
Tear-down of the San Onofre nuclear plant – work on the distinctive containment domes first on the list
‘We loved each other’: America’s first racially integrated all-girl swing band
Climate Change Will Displace Millions
Scotty Moore Tells It Like It Was
World’s Largest Vintage Skateboard Collection and Tour of SkateLab in Simi Valley
Skateboard History Timeline
Google and Amazon are now in the oil business
Gregg Carroll
The Art of Dignity: Making Beauty Amid the Ugliness of WWII Japanese American Camps
Neoliberalism and Climate Change
Rip City or Die: The Tide of Gentrification Is Pushing Dogtown’s Oldest Skate Shop Elsewhere
Reducing music’s climate impact through innovation
Toxic Coastal Fog Linked to Dangerously High Levels of Mercury in Mountain Lions
An Old Brochure Reveals How the Palos Verdes Peninsula Became a Massive Planned Community
Where are the architects who will put the environment first?
Climate refugees cannot be sent back home, United Nations rules in landmark decision
The case for … making low-tech ‘dumb’ cities instead of ‘smart’ ones
Skateboard shop in LA and It’s large collection
California sues tech investor Vinod Khosla over beach access, reviving bitter legal battle
Mantra Skateboards
Morris J-Type van gets electric reboot after 58-year hiatus
Rampart Records’ essential box set mines East L.A.’s 1960s and ’70s soul-funk scene
Kris Hall – walk like a samba – vid by Laura Holman
Stacia Ahina & Ashley Ahina | Midday Longboard Surfing in Hawaii
The brutal history of Bougainville – in pictures
Unheard Voices, Unique Perspectives
Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think
Sea-level rise has claimed five whole islands in the Pacific: first scientific evidence
The Oceans We Know Won’t Survive Climate Change
Six takeaways from The Post’s analysis of the globe’s fastest-warming areas
If defending life on Earth is extremist, we must own that label
I am rebuilding my Makaha skateboard, which I bought in 1978. During online research I came across a 70s ad of Wentzle Ruml holding what looks like an earlier version of my board: surfboard shape, 3-stringer look of dark and light wood vertically laminated deck and the Makaha branded wheels – two orange and two green ones. However I couldn’t find mentions of a Wentzle/Makaha sponsorship, but instead learned that he used to be an original Dogtown surfer/skater on the Zephyr team.
Makaha is currently selling sets of an updated version of said wheels. And there’s actually a n.o.s. set on eBay right now, where you can also find the risers the boards came with in the 70s. I also discovered an image of another board similar to mine, but with a wider outline and two extra strips of “stringers”, with black printed “Jordie” on it. This had green risers, while mine had orange ones.
But I decided not to purchase 70s components – I have never seen the trucks offered anyway, reason enough to go with Bennetts, which are quite similar, with a high profile, considerable rake and hopefully sturdier baseplates.
My choice for wheels: here in Berlin there is Mantra Skateboard Co.. It’s one guy building 60s style mini cruiser boards. The wheels he offers are caramel or white colored ones resembling 60s clay wheels in size, shape and branding. The urethane used is quite soft 78a, so the ride will still be as smooth as it used to be, however with a much narrower contact patch, not extruding the deck’s outline.
The Mantra wheels match the deck’s style perfectly in my opinion, somehow bringing out the slight rocker and kick that have been Makaha design landmarks in skating history.
I will try and remove the dings and sand it carefully before finishing. I also hope to get rid of the ugly black graphic I sprayed on, some time in the 80s. The board originally had sand glued to the top which didn’t last long in the critical spots. So I’m contemplating whether to put on clear griptape (like it currently has), stripes of regular griptape on the stringers, or white on the light wood segments or actually put a coat of Solarez and sand onto the deck. Hm…
Update:
The new trucks are latest generation Bennett Vectors 4.3. They are so similar to the Makahas that I would call the latter Bennett copies. I carefully smoothed and polished the pivots and they turn perfectly now, better than the Makahas, which no longer had the tall board-side bushings the geometry calls for, to be fair.
For grip I went with Lucid Grip. It’s very close to the way it was gripped originally, but it was a little hard to distribute the ground glass evenly. The amount is enough for two longboards, so I gripped my Powell Diamond with it as well. And there’s still a good volume left in the bottles!
The Mantras are rolling great and the board is a lot of fun to cruise around on. Once Corona is under control I will check some banks.
Makaha: The Story of the Originator – Film Trailer
