I grip mine after a certain age or time into skating it weird having someone else do it.
When I was a kid if the shop gripped it they would take the stickers that was in with the board. Which always bummed me out. Fuck them.
Also lately mob has been air bubbling on me and I have to poke holes with a razor. It won’t be there when I’m done gripping then next day few bubbles are there.
What kind of shop would cheat a kid out of their free stickers? What shitty, shitty people. I’m assuming they probably took the free stickers to sell them too; despicable. How greedy do you gotta be? Tsk tsk.
As far as gripping goes, I gotta grip my own board. Haven’t had someone grip my board for me since I was like 16 or 17; to put into perspective how long its been I’m in my early 30s now. Can’t have anyone set up my trucks or wheels or anything else on my setup as well actually, it’s all gotta be me; I don’t want some random motherfucker touching up on all my shit before I skate it.
I remember my first few times gripping my board; hooo-weeee, was I terrible; jagged, chunked out edges for days. These days I got that shit down to a science though. I’ll still fuck up on occasion tho. Fucking up on my grip job used to bother me so much too, I had horrible OCD with it, to the point where I’d rip the sheet off and buy a new one and regrip it sometimes, but these days I don’t really even care as much if it’s fucked up as long as it’s not a super bad fuck up.