It’s a bittersweet time for everyone here at the shop. The snow is melting faster by the day, bringing the snowboard season to it’s inevitable yearly demise. But with death, comes new life [deep, right?]. The beautifully warm weather means skate season is more than underway, and new 2015 skate and longboard gear is coming in by the truckload [literally]. Our latest efforts to push the longboard love prompted us to get into the online world of Silverfish Longboarding. Our newest sales wizard/Longboard Team member, Alex Fishburn, has been hitting the forums hard to spread the stoke and help people figure out their perfect set-up. His first review is of the latest and greatest from Rayne Longboards, the Darkside Series, which consists of the Brightside, Darkside, and Otherside decks. Read below for all the nitty gritty details on these versatile boards, and be sure to friend us on Silverfish for many more reviews in the near future!
“Rayne has been at the top of the industry for a long time, and that ain’t just random chance. Rayne excels at extremely high quality constructions, foot snuggling concaves and shapes, and graphics that blow your mind and last forever. We got a package full of love and stoke from the guys at Rayne today, and what we found inside was the three new Darkside Series boards; the Brightside, the Darkside, and the Otherside. With three radical new decks to check out, we couldn’t resist snapping some shots to show you some of the awesome features that Rayne has come up with this time!
The Darkside series has some pretty cool concave. The main feature here is the 3-stage rocker, a rocker system that first appeared on Douglas Dalua’s Pro Model deck, the Rayne Amazon. Shrunken down and focused in for the Darkside Series, the 3-stage Rocker is a rocker system that, you guessed it, has three distinct sections that provide some different topographical points for your foot to nuzzle into for greater confidence when drifting and cornering. The first bend allows the heel of your front foot to have a lateral bracing point to increase leverage in heelside leaners and corners, and the back bend creates the perfect little hump for the ball of your back foot to press against for toeside cornering.
Besides the 3-stage Rocker, the Darkside Series utilizes the combination of radial bubble drops and wheel well flares to produce a bit of a bowl shape, but one that matches the shape of your foot better than a regular bowl-style concave/drop combination would. Because of the radial drop, you can get a bit closer to those trucks which equates to more control and better feedback when sliding, and combined with the wheel well flare, your feet will be locked in from both sides. With all of these features working in tandem, the risk of foot slippage is low, and forget about having to look down at your feet while riding, these features ensure confidence in foot placement so you can concentrate on that next meaty slide you’re about to push out!
New to the 2015 Darkside Series boards are the integrated wheel wells. Instead of cutting into an already finished deck and ruining the aesthetics, Rayne used their extensive board building knowledge to create a deep and functional wheel well early on in production, so that when they lay the fiberglass and epoxy on the bamboo deck, the wheel wells are sealed in and covered by the board-strengthening composites and the sublimated graphic. So now you’ve got the best of both worlds, a board that you can run loose trucks and big wheels on without a worry, and a board that isn’t visually interrupted by post-production wheel well cuts!
As was alluded to before, the Rayne Darkside Series has three decks in the line-up. This is perfect for creating a range of boards that will suit any type of rider, and because they all have the same features, but are just sized differently, no matter how big or small you are, you can enjoy the performance features of the Darkside!
The Darkside Series also come with some pretty meaty kicktails. What could be better than a hill shredding downhill freeride machine that you can then commute to class with or pop down stair sets on?! Because Rayne utilizes bamboo and fiberglass in all of their constructions, any Rayne deck with a kicktail is going to have some pretty immense pop, and that definitely holds true for the Darkside Series boards. City slashing is made even better when you can lay down thane on a driveway then pop over a grow box or over a bush to move on to your next feature! So the Darkside can handle the curvy mountain roads and the steep city streets? Sounds like a good deal to me!
The Rayne Darkside is my go to board, and with good reason. When blasting down mountain roads at high speeds, it’s important to have a board under foot that contains features that assist in every movement the rider makes, whether it’s performing a toeside predrift in preparation for a tight corner, or if it’s trying to get around a heelside leaner as efficiently as possible, the Darkside Series boards handle it well. But not all skating is done in the mountains, sometimes commuting or city shredding is on the docket for the day, and having a board that is versatile enough to do both so well is a selling point in our book.
So the Rayne Darkside Series longboards can do just about everything, and do it well. But is there any downside? Well, even on the Otherside, the standing platforms of all three boards are shorter than most, and if you aren’t used to a small platform, it can be difficult to get used to a board that forces your feet in. And despite the pressed in wheel wells and wheel well flares, these are still boards with rocker and micro drops, so you may need to use a riser if you want to ride big wheels and extremely turny, low angle trucks.
We’re extremely stoked on the new 2015 Darkside Series boards, if you want to check them out, head over to our store front at 3055 East 3300 South in Salt Lake City, Utah, or order online at Salty Peaks Snowboard and Skate Shop – Salt Lake City, Utah. And as always, if you have any questions, feel free to give us a call at 801-467-8000!”
Up next, Alex reviews the Gullwing Reverse Trucks!
