Tony Tave had one of the radder parts in the last Element video but still seems a little off the radar compared to his team mates. I guess this is possibly due to this OC local focusing on his skating rather than TV career. Tave is right up there with the best on street and has a switch tre to even compete with Stefan Janowski’s switch skills.
The appearance is a bit of a departure for Element, this graphic looks like something Alien Workshop would put out, but Element seem to be going in new directions as far as art goes, so I guess anything goes at the moment.
This is a pretty standard construction from Element, still very light even without it being a helium/fibrelight. As standard it has a huge nose and relatively sharp tail, all the better for crisp ollies. The concave is a little mellower than I prefer riding, but it ran full length so forwards or backwards it still felt like it wanted to stick to my feet (thankfully!).
These boards are a straight up trade off between durability and weight, the deck itself was very stiff and had a good pop, but I feared for how thin the deck was. Its flex was convincing enough, but tail wear was a bit of an issue, I was through to the last play within a month, but I had rode some pretty gnarled up floors. Even after a few weeks to the woods credit the pop hadn’t subsided and it rode as new still.
I’d say Element’s regular wood is happier in the skatepark rather than rough streets, but that’s my own opinion. On the whole it performed right through to the hand-me-down stages of a decks life and is still going strong. Once you get hooked on the angles of this deck, I think it might make a few other decks feel a little alien in comparison.
Sweet ride – 8/10
Find more at www.elementskateboards.com
Phil Procter
If you have not seen Slam’s Game of S.K.A.T.E yet then it’s up and running now over at their site. You can win £500 worth of product by simply picking the overall winner from a bunch of UK riders.
‘Think Flat, Think Green” is a new feature that French company