What about the other countries? With their own languages and smaller communities? What do they get left with? It seems almost, as if a product or community is ignored if its not from one of the main countries. I mean, someone might say something about a new company once, if someone has a friend on FFI, but, does anyone really consider those products? The companies and communities from smaller places seem to be left on their own, whilst the 'global' scene sits happily, with an outward illusion that its equal.
And right now I know you're probably thinking, 'well, if they cant speak English, its not really our fault is it?'. And, well, no, but, at the same time, I think we need to make more effort to communicate with the other places. We have a small, widely unknown and ridiculed ('u play wiv tek deks ur a n00b' and the like), but equally amazing thing, that we all love, and we should come together more. I'm not suggesting everyone who cant speak anything but English go hop over to the Indonesian or French communities and start annoying them by not knowing their language, but, there should be some connection between us. We all fingerboard, and we all love it, why not at least appreciate what we're each offering in way of products and such things? I've seen the odd shout out to a few companies, but, not nearly enough appreciation for things that people world wide would LOVE, if they could just try them. I mean, recently I was browsing the french forums (I studied french for 6 years, so, whilst that was a fair while ago and I'm rusty, reading things I can understand what they're saying normally) and, there were some really interesting products that looked really nice. Not a word of them on FFI, nor anyone from other countries even seeing them, to discuss whether they look nice or not! I appreciate buying from overseas is expensive sometimes, but, discussion is free.
We all need to try a bit, just to say hello to the other parts of the fingerboarding world. I think it'd make our community as a whole a lot stronger, and would help to promote fingerboarding worldwide. The better we make fingerboarding, the more chance that it becomes more than just something a few (proportionally to the people that don't) of us do, and becomes something many people can enjoy. I want unite to become a place like that. I don't care what part of the world you're from, if you are from a fingerboard community that isn't well known, or have a company from somewhere that people don't know much about, contact me. Be a friend of unite, and together, we can, well, unite. I really want this place to be somewhere for fingerboarding to be globally connected. Even if its just saying hello, at least we'll see that theres more to global fingerboarding than a lot of people see.
You want to know what inspired this post? I got an email from a guy from Czech Republic, couldn't speak much English, but just wanted to show me his decks. I replied and he was really pleased that someone from somewhere else enjoyed looking at his decks. It made me think that if we could do that to more people, fingerboarding would be even better.
Cruiser decks:
Old school decks, called cruiser decks. Gonna be like.. £11 shipped, I think. Stock is up 1st October.
Little hidden gems like that might be all over the world. Would be nice to discover more!
http://cruiserdecks.webnode.cz
This is in no way meant as a negative post towards the big companies in the main countries of fingerboarding. They've done soo much and its always fantastic what they do. I just think we should extend a hello to everyone whos not so heard of as well. :)
