Have you ever done a darkslide?

[bob george]

It's fun to do some whacky tricks here and there.

The last two nights I have done some darkslides - I had never done it before but was doing some silly casper spinny things with some friends and was like, why not try a darkslide. Now I've done like 5 or 6, probably 2 or 3 smooth ones and the rest pretty bodgy or kind of stopping before popping it back out.

The way I do them is; backside, half kickflip, land front foot behind the front truck and back foot on the tail, my whole board except the tail is sliding on the ledge (manual pad), then i do like a half heelflip out to forwards.

Not as hard as I thought (not easy as such either).

I guess my question/s is/are; have you done them, how did you do them i.e what flip in/out, what was your foot position during the slide, how do you feel about the trick in general (impressive, sickening, comical, unnecessary etc).

10 year old me would've been stoked. To me it's a fun, silly trick.

[Mean salto]

Me and friends used to always joke around about cool people like you can't trust them they've never worn a darkstar shirt/pair of globes or done a Darkslide etc it's a phase everybody should go thru.

I've def done a bunch of slides (but landing prob very few lol) especially on the typical grommy wooden flatbar. I think I was maybe even better at the frontside version because you can half kickflip out. Never got how people do that half inward heel half body varial thing

[bob george]

oh wild, so you would like, half kickflip into frontside slide and then half kickflip back to forwards? I don't think I've ever seen that.

yeah, the body varial inward heel thing seems like a really nasty way to finish a trick that's already pretty disturbing. the way i was doing it i guess is that same flip but no body varial, just seems like extra work to make the trick extra bad.

[Mean salto]

Yeah pretty much like that but realistically prob barely even turned out land then tic Tac. Foot position like you with front foot in the middle section. Def have zero desire to do one ever again tho

[silhouette]

Frontside ones I learned with a half heelflip in in my first year of skating around the same time I was figuring out heelflips, frontside 50-50's and front boards (and also nollie pressure flips and nollie front foot impossibles, I always ever was so strict about trick linearity and while I was self-conscious about respecting the basic order of things I also didn't restrict myself when it comes to experimenting, if something seemed possible I'd do it). Sliding them came naturally but I remember it took weeks or perhaps months before I finally understood how to dismount, after that though I had them on lock. I do those with my front foot on the nose and back foot in the middle, sometimes that has resulted in frontside dark noseslides before, other times in some even weirder shit. Most 'daring' obstacle I tried taking it to was a baby-sized (but really rough) 6-stair concrete hubba with a downhill landing back in 2004 or so, slipped out on a couple to fakie but didn't make it (then never tried again). I'll still do those on the occasion when I'm just about to retire a deck and it's my last day skating the current one.

I can do the backside ones too with one foot on the nose and one foot on the tail then pop out to fakie (whereas the frontside ones are more like front board shove out). Learned them later and maybe not as fun but surprisingly easy if one is comfortable with frontside flips on flat, it's basically just that with a ledge in the middle of the trick.

I remember messing around with frontside nollie heelflip darkslides (technically lipslides) once on some somber skatepark box 15+ years ago and landing a few of those but that's neither a pretty nor fun trick at all and so was fitting for fifteen minutes at the gloomy skatepark but only so much in the grander reality. Fakie ones on the other hand I think have potential. Felipe Oliveira has filmed a good one before.

Casper stuff on banks and whatnot is some fun shit once your deck has no pop left. One variation I like doing is on a pyramid hip, approaching like you would to just frontside blunt tap the hip while going over but you pop half a low kickflip and casper tap like that instead. Kind of puts you in casper back tail position for a split balanced second (but from the easier front blunt approach) and then you just half flip the board again on the hop to ride down the other side of the hip, it's like an illusion and some stupid fun.

[Kombuch-A-Holic]

Last year I had a pretty trashed deck and started doing cave man darkslides. I had a lot of fun doing them. I was doing the feet on nose and tail and the Rowley style. It felt cool. Not all of the homies where stoked on it like I was. I felt like I was Rodney Mullen. haha

[SneakySecrets]

I remember messing around with frontside nollie heelflip darkslides (technically lipslides) once on some somber skatepark box 15+ years ago

Was it still somber after such a wild trick was performed upon it?

[silhouette]

Expand Quote

I remember messing around with frontside nollie heelflip darkslides (technically lipslides) once on some somber skatepark box 15+ years ago

[close]

Was it still somber after such a wild trick was performed upon it?

It actually went from somber to sepulchral, which could have been either instant karma or the sunset as I barely rolled away from using my skateboard wrong, but technically triumphant.

Meanwhile, trying from backside nollie heelflip in instead maybe would have ended wars.

(On a serious note the nollie frontside heelflip ones probably aren't hard at all, I feel like one wouldn't even need good nollie heels for those, IIRC they mostly feel more like a pop-and-flop type of motion. Backside would simultaneously be cooler and a lot harder.)