You don’t need SnA anymore.
A tutorial on removing your bearings can be found at About.com which is a New York Times venture.
About’s treatment of Skateboarding is squeaky clean. Marketers to youth and school teachers should find the site useful, making it easier for them to rap with the young people. Amazing that this Steve Cave character gets paid to rewrite the book of skateboarding making sure everything is spelled correctly. I’m waiting for the Time Life how-to series.
Are there skateboarders out there who haven’t figured out how to use an axle to remove a bearing? I wonder if About.com can help?
Which brings to mind an amazing skate repair tip I watched at Pier Park one day. A kid was looking for spare bearings because his were totally seized. Mike Swim took one of the kid’s non-rolling bearings and applied a little PBR. No shit, it freed up the previously frozen bearing. You can’t learn nothin’ in school they don’t teach you on the streets.
As much as about.com’s treatment of skateboarding is absolutely elementary, I do believe that most kids don’t know anything the care and maintenance of their boards. I’m convinced that most kids with popsicle sticks at the parks don’t ever do any adjusting or anything on their boards.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think a lot of smaller kids know anything abour their skateboards.
I think I learned maintenance of my board and bearings (especially because I rode rain or shine in the Seattle area) from the super great guys at my local board shop (Gravity Sports). I don’t think that you get the same kind of help when you buy your gear at the mall, toy store and the like. The countless hours I spent hanging at the shop led to doing the little things to maintain my gear as well as having limited funds to replace things with. Cleaning an lubricating bearings was an important job. A good local shop is a great thing. Where else would you be able to buy a bag of collected grip tape scraps for a dollar.
The same About.com article about wheel bearings keeps popping up in the news feeds every other week. As “editor” I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day every time I see it.
I agree, if they can’t figure out how to remove a skateboard bearing on their own, I have to question their ability to work the Interwebs™! as well.
PBR is the new duct tape.