Skated my production 93a dragons one last time today before giving to a friend. Some more observations on grind drag:
Rockridge curbs (so those in the bay area have some reference). Ground ish rough ish but nothing 99 f4s cant handle. Curbs are pretty good, but I'm guessing nowhere near as icy as the venice curbs. Everything I previously said was true, but on curbs this smooth (or better), I could see myself getting used to pushing tricks like reg/sw slappy crooks a bit harder to compensate, and just getting used to the way these wheels climb onto curbs. Its pretty noticeably worse than a hard wheel after doing side by side comparisons, but if you value the smooth ride that much, you could probably adjust and deal with a bit more grind drag.
There's also a wooden box with metal coping there right now. If you wax the metal coping, it crooked grinds, tailslides etc just fine. But if its a little drier then it'll be noticeably stickier than f4s.
What I noticed about the drag for other tricks (smiths, 5-0s etc) is that its fine if you lock in perfectly... but if you don't lock in perfectly and have to adjust into the correct position, these aren't as forgiving as a hard wheel. I could see this being an even bigger problem on round rails where often you shimmy into a cross lock after your trucks make initial contact with the rail.
Again, a hearty coat of wax would solve most of these problems, but I really don't like waxing stuff too much, especially if there's a bunch of people skating the obstacle.
I don't skate around and between spots much nowadays, and even for spots with less ideal ground that I often skate, the increased grind friction, and other minor drawbacks, isn't worth the much smoother ride 90% of the time.
Still keeping my protoype 95as for the occasional days where I really dont want to push but still want to skate a little bit. Maybe the production 95 or 97as are going to be perfect