settling in...

...the third press is finally finished! We will be settling into a known-quantity of production this month! That means that you'll probably see a lot more of our boards around in the Cincinnati area, at shops that believe in the kind of grassroots board-crafting that we're doing here. Again, let me (Lewcif) stress to you that... FickleBoards is a workshop, not a factory. The boards we make here are pressed 2-deep in 3 presses, for 4-hours minimum. They are cured for 4 days, so all the glue bonds are solid. Then they are hand-shaped into our classic and popsickle designs... The holes are calibrated to the thousandth of an inch, centered on the plank at the center of the truck... the graphics are screened directly on the raw wood, then the poly is applied in multiple layers over the top of the paints. and the boards... they are all a skateboard can be. within reason.

YESTERDAY

Barney has Risen!

Here at FickleBoards, we take the term "Barney" pretty seriously. This comes mainly by merit of us being made up of castoffs from skateboarding's "core", or "mainstream". You see, "Barney" is a term coined long ago among the surfers of Hawaii, referring to non-islanders (farmers from the mainland who had "barns").  These mainlander "Barneys" choked up the surf scene when word got out.

Skateboarding is different from surfing. Barneys don't choke up anything for us. The "Noobs", beginners, and Old Men are an important part of any scene. People who love to fly on a wheeled board, no matter where they are from are skateboarding (activity), and they are Skateboarding (community), when they love it enough to dream it.

Barneys don't fit the molds. Not the "Mainstream" mold of super-ripper-machines, winning contests and bagging up high-dollar sponsorships.

Not the "Core" mold of super-serious elite iconoclast, "holding it down" "on the block".

Nope. Barneys are just skateboarders who go skateboarding. Some do it a lot, and some get good at it. Others are not as proficient, but used to be 25 years ago. Some of us are on the rise.  Others are in their twilight. But the one thing all Barneys have is in common: Barneys love skateboarding.

Barneys love skateboarding in the face of how bad they are at it.
Barneys love skateboarding in the face of how good they used to be at it, and never will be again.
Barneys love skateboarding despite how good they could have gotten, if life had gone differently...
Barneys love skateboarding without the hope that they will win the comp, get the girl, or have a crew.
Barneys love skateboarding without fatcat sponsorships and cool points.
Barneys often go skate under the dark cloud of disapproval, because they didn't know you couldn't wear that.
Barneys often have no manners, when it comes to giving a shit about skate trivia prowess.
Barneys tend to be grateful for skateboarding, even if Skateboarding has loaded scorn on them.
Barneys who hang in there become heroes of a story nobody is reading, because those books are in the grown-ups section.
Barneys have to pick their kid up from school, or go to meetings, or go to dialysis...
Barneys have useless skills like being engineers, pastors, or Man At Arms for the Iron Horsemen...

Some of the Barneys are religious kooks.
Many have kids.
some even still have a wife or two in tow.

Some Barneys are hitting their forties and fifties.

Most of them have passed through the dope and party phase and would like you all to know that that's not going to work out well for any of you. ...and it'll kill more than a few of you.


When they got a snootful of "Anti-Barney" talk, they don't pull out of their scenes, tuck their tails and take up canasta. They hunker down and get the business of blessing their scene front and center.

You can find them in the Old Man Movement that's popping up on Sunday Mornings at parks across the USA.
You can find them holding it down with companies that are more than generic sticker-factory fashion show wannabes.

Companies like Bart's Legion, or Richard's Big Mess. Kits like Cockfight, Five Points, and guys like Bud Stratford.

Barneys are what they are, no apologies: Human Beings who love skateboarding (the activity) and Skateboarding (the community).

From that love comes this wood, made by a bunch of "Barneys"...
 who never got their priorities screwed up enough to be fooled into a corporate mold...
whose skating always came from our hearts for fun, not a head full of elitist/competitive bullshit...
who think YOU are insanely rad because You are being You,
not because of some trick you learned to impress someone who's just going to let you down anyway.

So do yourself a favor: Be a Barney. Do life and enjoy skateboarding as it comes.
Be the guy/gal who has a real life and skates for fun.
Be someone who knows the difference between a thing and another thing...
who raises kids instead of being some "shred clone".
who stokes others without worrying about losing territory.
who gets under and lifts, by example, instead of stacking up and sitting on the accolades of men.

And if that earns you "Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride" status--GOOD. If that puts you on the "outs" with some established clan of rippers who'll look down on you for not knowing your "pro skater trivia"--GOOD!

Because you know the difference! That we're not skating AT each other, we're skating WITH each other, life long.

It is in keeping with this sentiment of dedication to reality and the skateboarding community, that we are Putting this Mayhem Barney graphic on stuff for a while. No catalog. No reservations. Just shred the wood.

Give a FickleBoard a good death this week, and if it doesn't wear like iron, for all its imperfections, we'll take care of you, because we have your backs when we're under your feet out there.

Thanks to Terry from Disaster 77 for hand-sculpting our original Punk Mayhem RFD Barney graphic.

Here's an email we got this week from J, in CT.

... this is what it says:

fook yah.

Thank you for making such good boards, I really mean that. You guys save me a ton of money. Before I bought your deck, I went through 4 decks in 6 weeks...that's $200+ from my skate shop (I still make sure to go there for wheels and stuff though, it's a great shop!)

But yea, my 8.88 is falling apart and has pretty much no tail left but I can still skate it which is amazing. 

Even the 9x33 Creature I had snapped pretty quickly, and that's a much better size for me than the 8's I was riding.

So yea, keep up what you're doing, it's well fucking worth it and I hope other companies catch on to this whole "quality" stuff. 

All I have to say is that our process is so simple, our tools so basic... we have emerged AMAZED that making great skateboards is this simple! Not easy, but simple!

and these ARE the best skateboards we've ever ridden.

We still can't produce ENOUGH of them, but are working on balancing volume and quality. This year we'll see how MANY FickleBoards there can be.

And as stoked as we are about quality successes, we are ever humbled by the prospect of failures. If your board ever fails to "Wear Like Iron" out there, PLEASE contact us right here in Cincinnati and let us know. We will make sure you're stoked on wood built to be destroyed by your skateboarding!

Now please go destroy!

Email order if you don't see it...

If you are looking for an 8 in. Size, just email us and we will make it happen, whether its a straight 8.0, an 8.38, an 8.5, or an 8.88.

At least that's what we will shoot for! Hand making can cause some variants. Just make sure you destroy it with your skateboarding!

slammin them out...

Thanks for your orders this week!

I've got them all done, and am shipping them today/tomorrow.

We just got 55 Gal. of our amazing glue in this week and its all safely stored, ready for mixing, in the shop. That means we are ready to make mass boards for you!

We are also going to update your choices of paint jobs, now that we're implementing more background and layering in our graphics... that will roll out in the spring, in earnest.

But most of all, we are WITH YOU, out there skating, daily, loving the freedom of motion and creativity of skateboarding!

mission accomplished: store up again.

we are still updating the new paintjob options, so you might want to shoot us a call to see what we can do for you on graphics... black on natural remains a favorite in the shop...

...but we have been playing with paints and new designs. hit us up to see which screens are loaded and running this week.

we make them fresh as you order them, so get into the store and lets get ypu rolling! just click on voodoo boy over there.

Working on our Store!

Attention all customers who want boards!

Until we finish tweaking our store and getting it all perfect for you, please email us directly for boards! We are able to handle your orders directly, until the store is back up!

Thanks for contacting Fickle Boards!

You can also call us directly and get taken care of as well. We'll have this stuff taken care of in a jiffy!

Focusing a Fickle? Think again!

The boyos at Woody's Skate Park and Shop in Savannah show you why Fickleboards fly off the wall there... unparalleled contour and strength. They keep their pop, even under extreme abuse.

Is it new technologies? Maybe kevlar or carbon fiber?
Nope.
Just the coldest grown Maple, plus good cure times and good press times! Workshop Production that rivals any mass-production factory for quality and character. Period.

How do you get a fickleboard?

There are three ways to get your fickle boards:

1. Email us a request and see what we can do for you!

2. Catch us at Woody's in Savannah, or Anonymous or Konkrete City in Cincinnati!

3. Go on our store right there on the right side, click to Voodoo Kid and pick one!

You can always call us or email us with inquiries (and we thank all of you who do).

We also get a LOT of calls from folks asking where to find a friendly shop. We are here to help you connect with solutions to your skateboarding needs. So hit us up any time. We have time for you!

...made you a board today.

...'merican pride right there.

Welcome aboard Mr. Noland!

Fickleboards is stoked to welcome Mark Noland to our ranks, as "test-pilot-in chief".

Rest assured that our classic shapes are under his watch, and are old-school-gnartrooper approved.

beard knife

Here's the Old Man, on a board he made by hand, skating a ramp he built the week before christmas... and what is that on his hat? Is that sawdust?

yeah, that's Old Lew. From the workshop to the front slasher on your miniramp... nice beard knife, too.

The sound of fickleboards...

just listen to the audio on this one. that's what we're all about, right there...
that, and we also season, hand-roll, long-press, long-cure and hand cut all of our boards right in the workshop right here in cincinnati, for you to destroy.

please destroy a fickle board today.

when weston was fifteen...

toys r us kid for life.

this is weston's sponsor me vid...

weston's clips from fledits on Vimeo.


the kooky blunts in the fake death box in the almost unskateable peanut... that was what tipped us off to the fact that wes isn't trying to be anybody but himself when it comes to his skating...

rampasaurus rex and weston

Mr. Noland

All of us here at FickleBoards can't say enough good about Mr. Mark Noland. At somewhere around 53 years old, he's skated since the seventies or so... thirty+ years!
...and Mark knows a thing or two about what matters when it comes to keeping it real and keeping it fun, kiddos.

Keep em peeled for more from Mr. Noland, as we endeavor to get him in the van for a trip south this month.

a little treat from the summertime.

seriously, is there anything funner than all this transition to skate around here? Centerville Ohio has nailed it, with a complement to the DC skate plaza over there. nonstop flow, except for scooter kids and bikers... but we make a hole where we need to.

a sampling from boe parries' footage of us taken one day last trip to woody's in SAV. Woody's is a great example of the real deal in skate shops... with a full-service park, complete with DIY concrete on the back lot, they are keeping the home fires burning!

we will be leaving here, headed south again with a load of Fickle/Woody's collab graphic decks this January 12th...

till then, don't let anybody push you around.