Not all skate shirts are black! Check out the Silverfish Gear Page . There are new men's, women's and kids' shirts! (Some are even black.)
We're using "spreadshirt", so you order straight from them. Dig through the listings and you'll find some classic 'Fish designs, including shirts with art taken from member Ryan's art-pen drawings. Have an idea for a shirt? Send it in!
Out of dormancy, our crew of skateboard reviewers, wreckers and tuners is back with a review of the Never Summer pintail.
A Pintail for All Seasons
The Longboard Consortium has spent nearly a year of hard riding on the 47” Never Summer Eclipse, and we’re here to tell you that the snowboard wizards are onto something with their flagship board. If you don’t know, Never Summer started production of snowboards in 1983 and have established themselves on the high-end of the market with a reputation for extremely well-built, technically advanced boards. Well, last year, the same two guys that started the company decided to apply their skills and designs to longboards. When the smoke cleared, they had produced the Eclipse, an eight-layer, wood and composite deck with P-tex nose and tail inserts.
We took the Eclipse across the country, from the Pacific waterfront, to the hills of Colorado, the streets of New York City and the roads of Los Angeles. One board, but many sessions, styles and skaters. We found the Eclipse to be a reliable, lively performer and a solid entry into the longboard market for a buncha summer-hatin’ snowboarders.
There is no other reputable longboard company in SoCal that’s more synonymous with Longboarding culture and flow than Gravity Skateboards. While much of the coverage on the ‘fish has been of the support and stoke Gravity provides the sliding community, that’s just a small aspect of Gravity’s field of interests and lineup of skateboards. We thought it was time to revisit a taste of Gravity’s roots in the SoCal flow, so we borrowed one of the classic Gravity decks, The 47” Hyper-Carve 2.
EarthWing Skateboards has brought a huge load of skateboard stoke to the New York City scene, and well beyond.With a line of decks utilizing advanced design measures and materials, Brian Petrie has proven he’s not just about stoke and street cred, but also a keen skateboard engineer with an eye for both the practical and the artistic.Recently the Longboard Consortium took possession ofthe latest offerings from Earthwing, the 35.5” sliding board and the Superballs slide wheels.We pushed them, ravaged them, passed them around like a forty of malt and grew to appreciate them.This is our report.
A while back, we heard that the crew at Loaded was playing with bamboo deck construction.With the recent popularity of ‘boo for various builders, this wasn’t too much of a surprise:there are good reasons to look at bamboo for longboard construction.It turns out that Loaded has evolved their entire lineup to incorporate bamboo construction.
To evaluate the effect, the Longboard Consortium have ridden a pair of Vanguards:a 38”, flexy deck and a 42”, somewhat stiffer, version.They’re both providers of a unique ride and proof positive that “sustainable means” don’t exclude material performance.
Definitely one of the most interesting items we’ve reviewed to date, the FlexBoardz Karrika is a platform of Gallic innovation. This is a unique carving machine from a maker that proclaims a very interesting concept: “open source deck design”. With their 2006 line already well into production and group testing rides taking place soon in Leucate, France, the company is constantly seeking to improve the design and performance of their line of on road, off-road and kite decks. We took a while to test out the Karrika in our home turf of San Diego and finally, after riding, breaking and writing, we bring to you our thoughts on the FlexBoardz.
Consortium Reviews 
