Concrete Wave Articles

Michael Brooke: What was it like being a part of the ‘70s skate scene? Chris Carmichael: Living in southern California in the early ‘70s was the epicenter for surfing and skateboarding. I was 14 years old when my grandfather gave me my first movie camera. I started surfing and entering contests and became No. 1 in 1969, in the boys division in the US. This also continued the following year in the Junior Men’s division. I was No. 1 in 1970 and 1971.

When I was asked to write about speed wobbles for the magazine, it made me realize that while I had spent the better part of my life on a skateboard, I didn’t really know that much about the wobs. Sure, we all have our stories, complete with tales of how we survived them. And from these we’ve created all kinds of homespun theories, many of which seem to contradict each other. One skater I asked said he crouches down and touches the nose of his board to gain control during wobble onset; another said not to crouch or make any drastic body movements. So how do we know what is good advice and what is fiction? I decided to explore the wobble phenomenon from two perspectives, alternating between the scientific and the experiential, in hopes that between the two a better understanding of wobbles would emerge

Marcus Vorwaller is the creator and webmaster of Silverfishlongboarding.com (SF). If you don’t know about SF already, it’s a website that offers longboard forums, reviews, and articles. Marcus may be better known to the riding community by his online username, zzzMarcus. Since inception five years ago, SF has seen dramatic growth and currently gets about sixty thousand unique visits a month. No marketing, no advertising – just strong word of mouth.

Maria Carrasco wraps up the 2008 slalom season for Concrete Wave.