.
The luxury of being an adult with money to get whatever I want outweighs the kid who skated whatever he could get back then, but I also wonder how much harder (or easier) people went on their gear back then, be it pre teens, then teens, then early adult to now older adult life and skateboarding accordingly.
Boards lasted way longer in the 80s purely because most of us didn't do the sort of things we were trying in the 90s, but also because they were made better too. 90s boards were not something I really want to think about - some lasted, most didn't from what I recall. How long depended on what was tried, but learning flip tricks meant boards had a very limited life.
Trucks also had mixed quality, but I do think they still lasted longer than anything else, as was the way, kingpins and bushings problems aside, bushings just being way harder in general, or at least trucks just not having the same amount of ease of turn as modern trucks do now. Kingpins broke and were easily replaced as they were not pressed into the baseplate, just a hex head sitting in there. Don't recall a lot of issues with axle slip, but I know there were some.
Wheels were a funny one for me - often skating a set of wheels down to almost nothing and loving street stuff, then getting new wheels and skating parks and transition for a while a lot more because they were just too big to easily slide curbs like I did on the older way smaller wheels, so it cycled around a bit in the mid to late 90s. Never really recall flatspot issues, even though I know I did have some dramas now and then, but again I don't recall the good well known brand names until later in the 00s.
I still have some of the old parts, or even some old completes from various eras and some things still skate well, but other things leave me thinking "What were we doing?" or "How could we skate this stuff back then?" maybe more so with how tight the trucks were, or the concave or shape of boards, but also thinking that was 20+ years ago, 30+ for some things, even 40+ for a few things, so from that perspective, everything has come such a long way, it is hard to even contemplate going back to old product now for a lot of things.
Last thing, not part of the original question, but shoes also played a huge part of everything through that entire time. Some shoes over the years have been so thin and basically a rubber pad under foot and almost nothing more, whereas other shoes got so tech that they had almost nothing in common with original skateboard shoes, so depending on what era you were used to, some people swear by some shoes and others swear by a totally different type of shoe, eg Osiris D3 vs Vans Era vs Converse all star vs Airwalk 540 and on and on.
Sure could go on about it a lot more, but I will leave it at that, even though I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface with most of the products I had over the years, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s, to current / last decade of gear.
I do like where we are now the most though, the variation and quality of product is the best it has ever been.
Topic: Evolution of product Ex. Wheels Trucks Decks (Read 5522 times)