Reissued decks are carrying fingerboarding's memory, and they can't carry all of it

Courtesy of Berlinwood

Berlinwood's 2002 logo and the returning Crisis Retro put earlier eras back under two fingers. Read alongside the gaps we hit placing ASI Berlin and Yellowood in the timeline, they argue for treating old decks as prompts for history, not the history itself.

Lena Vogel31. Okt. 20264 Minuten Lesezeit

Teil 1 von 5

Six colors, one mark

Fan out six Berlinwood Old School decks and the same orange-and-red mark sits over six different bottom plies: yellow, purple, white, green, blue, grey. It is the logo the brand started with in 2002, and as we noted when Berlinwood put its 2002 logo back on the bottom ply, it is printed transparent so a randomly chosen colored ply shows through. You don't choose the color. The deck chooses it for you.

That small piece of chance is a good place to begin, because it says something true about how this scene remembers itself. The mark comes back, and the year comes back with it. What doesn't come back on its own is everything around the year: who drew it, what it was first printed on, what those first decks were pressed from and sold beside. A reissue returns a surface. The record behind it has to be rebuilt by hand.

My read, after a month of this desk's coverage, is that reissues and old listings have quietly become the closest thing fingerboarding has to an archive. That is worth celebrating, and worth being careful about.

Teil 2 von 5

Where it comes from

The German end of the timeline, as our knowledge bank holds it, runs close together. Blackriver dates to 1999, founded the Fast Fingers contest in 2000 and built the first fingerboard park. Berlinwood was founded in 2002 by Timo Lieben, making hand-pressed 5-ply maple decks, and is sold through the Blackriver shop while remaining a brand of its own. ASI Berlin was founded in 2003 as one of the first fingerboard teams, has organised events since 2006, opened the first fingerboard concept store with Blackriver-Ramps in 2010 and has run independently as the ASI Berlin Shop since 2017.

Further west, Yellowood was founded in Portugal in 2007 as a premium exotic-wood deck brand and later developed YTrucks.

Laid side by side, those dates make a plausible spine for the boutique-wood years. But nearly every one of them comes from the brands' own pages, and a spine is not a body.

Crisis Retro

What a deck can and can't carry

A natural wood fingerboard deck with mounting holes and a boxed graphic reading “CRISIS FINGER BOARDS” on a white background. — A natural wood Crisis deck with mounting holes and the boxed CRISIS FINGER BOARDS graphic. Photo courtesy of Crisis. · Courtesy of Crisis

The clearest case of an object outrunning its paperwork is the Retro from German maker Crisis Fingerboards. When we covered it, Crisis had put fiberglass in a 37 mm deck, and the listing stopped there: back in stock at Approved Fingerboard Shop on October 7, in one width, 37 mm, as a wood and fiberglass composite.

Read the deck as a document and it gives you a width, a layup and a name. A 37 mm board sits wider than the 32 to 34 mm most setups run, so the width alone says something about who it's for. The name points backward, and so does the boxed "CRISIS FINGER BOARDS" graphic. What neither says is what era Retro refers to, or whether an earlier version existed in this shape at all. We didn't guess then and won't now.

That is the pattern in miniature. The object is real and in hand. The history it implies is a question, not an answer.

Teil 4 von 5

The gaps we hit

The front of the ASI Berlin shop: graffiti-covered walls under a hand-painted Finger ASI-Berlin Shop Skateboard sign, with fingerboard tables and benches set out on the pavement. — The ASI Berlin shopfront, with fingerboard tables and benches set out on the pavement under the hand-painted sign. Photo courtesy of ASI Berlin. · Courtesy of ASI Berlin

Placing ASI Berlin and Yellowood in the timeline, this desk ran into the same wall twice. The ASI history was written from the brand's own pages, with the gaps named rather than filled. The Yellowood piece set out what the record actually supports about where the brand sits, which is a polite way of saying the record supports less than a reader might expect from a brand with a 2007 founding date.

The gaps aren't scandalous. They are the ordinary result of a scene that grew up in shops, contests and forums rather than in catalogs. And they hide a distinction that matters to anyone writing history: founded, registered and first sold are three different dates. Chicken Fingerboards is the living example. Charlie has pressed decks for about a decade and sold them for barely two years, since a coming-soon page in early 2025. Ask when Chicken started and the honest answer depends on which question you meant. Twenty years from now, a reissued Chicken graphic will carry one of those dates, and someone will have to remember there were two.

Teil 5 von 5

Why the scene should care

Here is the take. Reissues are doing archival work nobody assigned them. A 2002 logo on a new deck puts that year back into circulation for riders who weren't around for it, and that is more than most of the scene's paper record manages. But a reissue carries a mark, not a provenance. If we let it stand in for the history, the history becomes whatever the reissue happens to show.

So treat these decks as prompts. When an old mark comes back, the useful response is to ask the follow-up questions while the people who were there can still answer them: what it was first printed on, what the layup was, who drew it. Keep the old listings. Note the date you checked them.

My prediction: expect more earlier-era graphics and names to return from the brands with roots in the early 2000s, and expect most of them to ship, as these two did, with the mark and very little of the story. I'd be wrong if, by the end of 2027, reissues routinely arrive with their own provenance on the listing or the box: the original year, the original layup, the original width. I would be glad to be wrong. Until then, the archive is in the racks, a deck at a time, and somebody has to read it carefully.

Sources

Reference links used for this piece. Confidence labels show how firmly each source is established.

1.
Berlinwood puts its 2002 logo back on the bottom ply
Kingpin MagazineOffiziell
Reissue of Berlinwood's first mark, printed transparent over a randomly chosen colored bottom ply.
2.
Crisis puts fiberglass in a 37 mm deck, and the listing stops there
Kingpin MagazineOffiziell
Crisis Retro restock at Approved Fingerboard Shop on October 7; 37 mm, wood and fiberglass composite.
3.
ASI Berlin: a team that turned into a shop, and stayed one
Kingpin MagazineOffiziell
ASI Berlin history from the brand's own pages, with gaps named.
4.
Yellowood, Portugal, 2007: a deck brand that built its own trucks
Kingpin MagazineOffiziell
Placement of Yellowood and YTrucks in the timeline and the limits of the record.
5.
Chicken Fingerboards, ten drops in: three molds and a $35 deck
Kingpin MagazineOffiziell
Pressing for about a decade versus selling for about two years; coming-soon page in early 2025.

Mehr von Kingpin

Alle Storys

A black fingerboard with silver trucks, white wheels, purple hardware and an Adidas graphic rests upside down on a wooden surface.

Markengeschichten

Three German names, one setup, and an Adidas deck nobody can source

A gifted fingerboard posted to r/Fingerboards pairs a Berlinwood deck with Blackriver trucks and Winkler wheels — and an Adidas graphic that doesn't appear anywhere in the public record. Here is what's confirmed and what isn't.

27. Okt., 5 Min.

Markengeschichten

Decks are selling the layup, not the graphic — my bet for spring 2027

Across eight recent deck and wheel drops, the thing carrying the release was construction: serial numbers, hand-cut split plies, ply color that changes board to board. Here is where I think that goes, and what would kill the call by April 30, 2027.

25. Okt., 4 Min.

Fingers guide a fingerboard across a lit wooden obstacle in a dark room.

Produkte im Fokus

FlatFace puts the G4 in front of a camera with James O'Neill

Mike Schneider posted a 90-second G4 deck clip ridden by James O'Neill on September 2. The footage came first; the listings that followed date the mold to around 2005 and put the deck on sale.

31. Okt., 3 Min.

Six colors, one mark

Where it comes from

Further west, Yellowood was founded in Portugal in 2007 as a premium exotic-wood deck brand and later developed YTrucks.

Laid side by side, those dates make a plausible spine for the boutique-wood years. But nearly every one of them comes from the brands' own pages, and a spine is not a body.

What a deck can and can't carry

That is the pattern in miniature. The object is real and in hand. The history it implies is a question, not an answer.

The gaps we hit

Why the scene should care

Six colors, one mark

Where it comes from

What a deck can and can't carry

The gaps we hit

Why the scene should care

Sources

Newsletter

Three German names, one setup, and an Adidas deck nobody can source

Decks are selling the layup, not the graphic — my bet for spring 2027

FlatFace puts the G4 in front of a camera with James O'Neill

Six colors, one mark

Where it comes from

What a deck can and can't carry

The gaps we hit

Why the scene should care

Sources

Newsletter

Three German names, one setup, and an Adidas deck nobody can source

Decks are selling the layup, not the graphic — my bet for spring 2027

FlatFace puts the G4 in front of a camera with James O'Neill