San Diego Man Creates a Skateboard That Carves Uphill (and No, It’s Not Electric)
San Diego’s Chris Corrente seems to be a bit of a mad scientist when it comes to skateboards. The Connecticut-born surfer/skater/48-year-old lifetime grom used to work for Carve where he experimented with board designs and tinkered with all the components that went into revolutionizing a piece of equipment that’s nothing like what people rode decades ago. But Corrente’s biggest project, it seems, has been a board he’s developed on his own for more than a decade. He calls it the Kuwmaz Carve Ultra Light.
Corrente builds custom skateboards designed specifically for individuals based on factors like their height, weight, and ability — like any local surfboard shaper running their own mom-and-pop shop. His boards can reportedly accommodate a person up to 350 pounds. But it’s a quirky suspension extending between the trucks that makes his system pretty revolutionary. The combination of the board’s flex, patented suspension plates, and leaf springs allows the board to carve uphill.
“These plates are spring-loaded and this turn buckle and bushing assembly act, as I want to call it, as an organic novelty. It’s maybe the last thing that is not battery-powered or combustion-powered and it really gets down to the essence of surfing,” he told CBS8 while giving a demo.
As he mentions, just about everything gets an electric motor attached to it nowadays. From hydrofoils to bikes and skateboards, if you can ride it, somebody will find a way to power it. Electric-motorized skateboards can run you just $100 on the low end to a few thousand dollars if you’re really ambitious. To get a custom board from Corrente, you’re going to drop about $600 as a base price.
Call it the flat day fund, swap out the next purchase you planned for your surf quiver, and trip everybody in your neighborhood out when they see you bombing hills in the wrong direction.
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