 If you're not familiar with Arbor, they make two products, Snowboards and Longboards. You can almost instantly recogize an Arbor board because they all are made of beautiful woods and the design is usually the stained wood and the Arbor logo.
The PocketRocket is a short board made for quick trips up and down the street or on campus, or possibly for taking on trips where you don't have much space but need your skate. The boards length is about that of a regular shortboard (26"), but the feel is all longboard. Mine came with Randal 150's, the 65 mm Kryptos and felt smooth and fast.
The shortboarder kids (and the short kids in general) around the neighborhood couldn't get enough of the PocketRocket. They loved the smooth feel, and felt at home on the short sized board. They were also impressed with the good looks of the Rosewood. It's a fun little board. Can you ollie it? I guess, I mean it's not made for doing ollies, but there are kids who can kickflip a roller-skate.
For me, however, the highlight of reviewing the Arbor boards was not the PocketRocket. That came with the Hybrid. This is easily one of the most versatile boards I've ever ridden. A long time ago... as in more than 3 years ago, I reviewed a Sector 9 board that compared. Since then, I've reviewed dozens of other boards, many excellent boards that I'd still highly recommend, but for versatility, you'll be hard pressed to find a better board than the Arbor Cruiser.
The Hybrid is a great length for both carving and cruising (38"), but also has the one feature that so many longboards are lacking, a kicktail. I don't miss much about skating shortboards, but I often do really miss having a kicktail. When you're just messing around on the street, feel like tic-tacking, doing quick turns around corners on sidewalks or just feel like putting some wood to the pavement, a kicktail is a great feature.
The Hybrid I reviewed has a top layer of gorgeous and rare Hawaiian Koa. The only downside to it is that you almost feel bad skating it because it's so beautiful and you're afraid you'll mess it up. The board really is a work of art with great attention paid to every detail.
I took the Hybrid with me up to Boston for some skating in the hills of fellow skater Mark Rondina's neighborhood. We found some decent runs to test the board on. Our hills were medium speed (about 25 mph) and the board handled well and was a lot of fun. We didn't feel any wobbles or instability, even dropping a knee and bombing.
Arbor makes some nice, classy longboards. They were great to deal with. Laura Johnson was quick to respond to emails with questions and comments and shipped exactly on time with some super-sweet stickers thrown in. If you're looking for a new board, check them out. www.arborsports.com |
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