Velocity Skateboarding - Episode 5

Episode 5

This was actually the end of the season, but we kept the best footage for the final episodes of the series. That being said, I really enjoy this episode, both making it, and watching it. I would say this was the episode that captured the local scene here in Winnipeg the best, despite the lack of most of the skaters who never made it to the shoots. Big thanks to Jeff for showing up!

Parkades

Generally the only "downhill" in Winnipeg is parkades as we call them in Canada, or parking garages for most other people, and a few slopes that most people would hardly call a hill. We do have one hill we call Garbage Hill, but it's sadly got pretty rough pavement, and usually gets a headwind which makes it very slow.

So when it comes to a group of people wanting to actually go down a hill for more than a minute, we'll all meet up at our favourite parkades. The parkade you see in the video is easily the fastest one we have, as it's just a steady decline with 3 corners. To make the corners without sliding out, you have to take a proper racing line with the usual outside start, inside apex, and exit on the outside again. This is especially important when it's either wet or dirty, because then their is a lot less traction, as you can tell with the couple of wipeouts in the video.

Luckily it's easy to do a lot of runs, because you can just take the stairs back up to the top, rather than walking the length of the "hill" you just came down. Well at least until security comes to kick you out, because it's private property, even though we're not damaging anything, or causing harm. Honestly I think we scare away the people who are tagging parkades, drinking or doing drugs in them, and we always clean up after ourselves.

Kenora Trip

When the small hills of Winnipeg, and parkades become boring, we like to do short trips to places with actual hills. By short I mean a 3 hour drive, to skate for a bit, and then drive back, though sometimes we'll camp out and stay a extra day. Kenora is one of our favourite locations, since it as quite a few good hills, lots of unique spots, a few fast spots, and a nice long run known as airport road.

In this episode we went to one of the hills that actually had a few businesses on it, which meant more traffic, but it also looked really nice. It definitely turned a few heads, as very few people skate down these hills, much less with cameras following them! Luckily everyone was stoked with what we were doing, and didn't have anyone calling the cops on us like sometimes happens, though very rare.

Scotty at this point had started to get the hang of sliding, though was still learning how to be consistent. He was however a bit scared of going fast, as anyone who cares about their bodies should! Jeff on the other hand was still learning how to even do a slide, but was more willing to send it down bigger hills. Which brings us to the Airport Road!

Scotty's board was a bit looser than it should be for bombing hills, so I put together a board for him that was more suited for bombing hills. This however actually worked against him though, as he was not yet used to trying any other boards than his own, and caused him to freak out when it started going faster than he had gone before. Luckily I had taught him to footbrake, and he managed to slow down safely. I freaked out a little because he went into the oncoming lane while a little off-road vehicle was coming towards us, but he quickly got out of the way. I however decided to just keep bombing the hill, and met him at the bottom. Luckily we convinced Scotty to go back up, and bomb as much as he could, not just for the shot, but to leave the hill with a win for his confidence.

Jeff actually did really good on this hill, especially for how new he was to longboarding. It helped that he had the Landyachtz Evo, which is a board specifically designed to be stable at high speeds, though later I'd realize his trucks were super loose on it! He did get scared at one point when I was pushing him faster, but luckily never took a spill!

Velocity Skateboarding - Episode 5

Episode 5

Parkades

Kenora Trip

Previous Episodes

How To Find Me On All The Other Platforms