Kilian Martin: Freestyle Skateboarding Still Alive and Well

I remember in the 80s, every skateboard video you watched had elements of Street skating, Vert Skating and Freestyle skating….well, nowadays the freestyle skating seems to get left out.  Rodney Mullen, the father of freestyle skating and the inventor of pretty much all the tricks that street skaters do today still skates and has shown us in his series of Almost Round 1-3 videos several years ago that he made an adjustment to his freestyle skating and pretty much merged his freestyle with street.

Well, I wasn’t really looking for freestyle skating but was visiting Vision Street Wear’s site our of a nostalgic feeling I had.  You see, Vision Street Wear was one of the major companies for skateboards, wheels, shoes and clothes back in the 80s.  Their stuff was awesome and I would still wear and skate there products today.  To get a history lesson on what Vision Street Wear was like in the 70s-80s, click here.  I was just thinking, somewhere in my attic is a Vision Street Wear shirt with the arms cut off and a pair of VSW shorts and I also owned a pair of grey suede Vision shoes (which are long gone) with the patented Ollie pad!  So Rad! 🙂  What is even radder is that you can still buy them today!

Anyhow, while viewing their website, I clicked on one of their team riders by the name of Kilian Martin.  I checked out one of his videos and was just amazed by his skating…just awesome!  I hope freestyle can make it’s way back into the scene like it was in the 80s.  The things these guys do are just amazing and so creative.
Check out the two videos below where Kilian combines Freestyle and street skating.  The last video is more pure Freestyle skating like you would see in an 80s skate video.  It’s interesting to note that our modern day skateboard shape pretty much looks like a larger freestyle board with a little more rounded edges. 

Part 1

Part 2

Freestyle