Skateboarding: New Levels: Tips and Tricks for Serious Riders

Skateboarding books have yet to truly capture the art, but Steve Badillo makes a valiant attempt in Skateboarding: New Levels. In Skateboarding, Steve combines interviews with seasoned pros, trick tips, and information about how to upstart a skateboard following in anytown, USA. While the interviews with some well known professional skateboarders seem like a good idea, the questions asked and the responses given do little to help a skateboarder just starting out or an intermediate trying to further his or her expertise. The questions are well intended with an example being "how do you deal with fear?", but the responses seem to general and generic to help like "I try to be relaxed." As the book progresses to trick tips, anyone would realize that the trick tips are way too specific and random to help someone trying to progress. The combinations make no sense, going from a one footed Japan air to a backside feeble 180 out. This random assortment of trick tips feels unbalanced and voids the potential for real help once again. The final segment, "building a park", is actually the only useful and helpful section of the book. In this chapter, Werner and Badillo identify the advantages to all types of skateparks and approaches to get them funded and approved. Without the chapter on skatepark construction, this book would have been a 2 star book, but with the useful information about building a park and the fact that the information is true because it was written by a real skateboarder, this book is a 4 star contender.