In the beginning there were neither single deck nor double deck, none of them existed as skateboards were flat.

As skateboard equipment progressed some skaters started to put on wooden blocks on the rear side of the board, and thus the kicktail was invented.

In 1979 I saw my first double kicked board, it was a freestyle deck from Bad Company. Per Holknekt also made his homemade double kicked freestyle decks and he called them Ellips.

I am back on a modern shaped double kick and there is no going back.

My first true freestyle board was a single deck board from Bad Company, and when I started to focus more on freestyle in 1980 or 1981 I had Per Holknekt make me custom made boards within his line of boards called Micro Concave. Yes, concave. Back then not only there were already double kicked freestyle boards but also with concave. These Micro Concave boards had a slight concave and therefore the self explanatory name.

In 1983 I got sponsored by Tracker and I rode the Rodney Mullen board from Powell. Tracker came out with the Per Holknekt Flipside board and Per Welinder with his board from Powell. Both of these friends of mine asked if I wanted to ride their boards. I chosed Tracker, and what many do not know is that the Flipside nose came from one of mine custom made boards by Per Holknekt.

The Flipside (Per Holknekt signature model from Tracker) was a true tech board. I think every imagineable trick could be done on it, many thanks to the small size. But the small size took away some of the skateboarding feeling for me, and even Per Holknekt made the switch over to a bigger board than me. Bigger… well, that is very relative. When Tracker released the Jean MarcV7 deck I switched over to that and it felt like a really big board. As I said, big is relative… looking at it now, compared to modern decks of today it was a very small board. Small enough for me to pull off different 540 shove its with ease, and pull off rolling double fingerflips, and land flips in truckstands.

One of my most technical routine was at the European Championships in 1987. I won it but something did not feel right. After the contest I rolled around on the freestyle area with no shinguards and no ducttaped shoes and just did a few rolling tricks. It was an amazing feeling, a feeling of freedom, a feeling of how skateboarding felt when I started. I realized I had pushed myself a bit too much with tricks and forgot the pure skateboarding that makes skating so fun for me. I am sometimes exaggerating things, and took away all stationary tricks and decided that only tricks where I use my wheels would be allowed. I did do a few railflips though, as the wheels did touch the ground…

I had lots of fun with the 99.999% rolling tricks style. But then something happened. Tracker discontinued the Flipside! I panicked, what to skate on now? The answer was the Cameron Martin deck from Powell. It felt huge compared to the Jean Marc V7 deck, and it had sme kind of rocker. First thing I noticed was that I could not do my rolling double fingerflips on it. Panic! And exaggerating again I decided to quit all my fingerflips… For a while I ended up doing only footworks and wheelies, but why that happened is another story I may share in a future blog post if you want to hear about it…

I did not skate much freestyle for a year and did not enter any contests, but more cruised around. Then I wanted to get back into it and compete but something had happened in the freestyle world: It was non-existent, it was gone, erased. Which meant there were no freestyle boards any longer. Why freestyle disappeared and how we brought it back is another story, maybe another blog post…

I was forced to look for a streetdeck, and they felt huge to me. But easy to find. Wheels were harder to find, and one reason was that in the early 1990´s or so they were so small they were even hard to detect…

I relearned some freestyle tricks on streetdecks and had fun. I tried different sizes and for quite some time I rode a mini street deck from Birdhouse. The width was perfect but the length made it feel like a long board for me. Due to the transitions from different shapes and sizes I had lots of problems with 540 shove its and double fingerflips, tricks I was known for always doing in contests and demos.

Then came a breakthrough for freestyle: I became co-founder/owner of Reverse Freestyle and I beleive we created the first signature pro freestyle model in a decade. We made it slightly bigger with longer tail and nose than the 1980´s freestyle decks. Classic but still modern. We decided to make it a single deck. It did take some time to get used to it and I had to relearn most tricks once again. The flat nose felt good for  high railflips and power in fingerflips. I was happy… for awhile. Some friends told me I should skate a double kick as that would make kids feel freestyle was more accessible and that no special and hard to fins producats was needed. But I refused, I was happy with my deck.

Then one winter I got myself a snowskate and later on a snowboard and suddenly it felt like all my boards were double kicks except my freestyle board. The thought nagged me, should a skate a double kick? And one day alst wintwr, out of the blue it all came clear to me: I must try a modern shaped double kick again. I put together the Lynn Cooper ministreet/freestyle and after a few minutes of skating it I was convinced there were no going back. I had so much fun, this deck did not felt too long as the double kicks I had skated before, and not too short. It was perfect, and it gave me that special skateboarding feeling I love so much. Now I had a few days to learn skate it as a show was coming up…

540 shove its are more difficult and I have only landed them on slick surfaces and I have so far landed only one double fingerflip. But footworks and wheelies feels much better and there are so many other tricks to learn. And, this switch once again mean I have to relearn it all… and in that process I will loose some stuff and gain some stuff. It all feels new to me right now, it fels like every single trick is a new trick. It’s a great feeling!