C ross Academy Background
References and other ideas behind Cross Academy
Motivation for Cross Academy
Like Cruise Power, this is a project for advanced longboard skaters who are trying to push the potential of what can be done with these boards. Aside from the central Skate Reef theme of crossover styles, my more recent projects come out of a personal interest in trying to push my skateboards to do things they weren't designed for. Some of this is curiosity, but mostly it's something that happens when you reach a high level with a set of sports skills, and wonder what's the next step. You could say that the motivation is that there's nothing left to do. Once I could do all my stand up slides on a 45 inch light street board, there was nothing left to do but see if I could do them on a much heavier and longer board. After intensive practice I documented the project as Cruise Power.
This project started the same way, but it involved the reverse change of skateboards. After my earlier footwork projects, I could walk the board in every way I could think of on a big flat board. It made sense to adapt the cross steps to my lighter more responsive street longboards. Since other tricks could be performed on those boards, the styles began to form a hybrid. I worked out a system of developing tricks and kept practicing, trying to gain consistency with performing the tricks. Eventually I had enough material worth shooting to present the Cross Academy project on the site.
Longboarders who have worked through a lot of my basic material should find Cross Academy to be a challenge. It wouldn't hurt if I could get some skaters who normally ride short boards and have already mastered street tricks to cross over and contribute their ideas as well. I can imagine one of them looking at his/her board and going "there's nothing left to do. I wonder if I can do these tricks on a bigger heavier board?"
Background on the name Cross Academy
I published an early draft of this project under the name Neo Classic. That referred to a cross between New School and Classic Style. Since then, I realized there was a lot more to the style than just New and Classic in the hybrid. I looked for a different name to call it.
The name Cross Academy has several meanings. It basically means a crossover style between different schools of skateboarding and surfing. It is a hybrid of styles borrowed from various sources and periods from the 1950s to the present.
I chose the word Academy because it's an ancient Greek word for school, which is what we use in skateboarding to describe an era of tricks. The Academy was a line of schools handed down from Socrates to Plato and on and on, passing down and reinterpreting a method of thought and philosophy. There is a strong parallel to the history of surfing and skateboarding, where styles are handed down from one to the next, and they are constantly being created, forgotten, rediscovered, and recycled into new styles.
Using an ancient or classic word for school is a way to refer to the Classic Style of surfing, in which walking on the board and sweeping turns are basic elements.
I didn't choose academy because of any military school or film academy, but that doesn't mean I won't throw in some puns referring to them.
The word Cross has a double meaning, because it's a crossover style, and also, the fundamental move in the style is the cross step. The one thing that this style reverts to again and again is that your legs are crossed. To put it simply, Cross Academy style starts with an old school or new school skate trick, and adds a cross step.
Skating influences and parallels
There are other folks doing cross step tricks on skateboards, but I don't think anyone has tried to logically and methodically add cross steps to most basic tricks.
Brad Edwards of Gravity's team does some tricks where he grinds the coping and walks up the board while grinding. That's definitely Cross Academy in my view. Brad since he's using walks while about to drop in on pools is at the radical end of the style. I skate mostly on flatland and mild banks, and I'm more technical and thorough in the way I am trying to develop the style.
I once saw an article in Big Brother with Billy Valdez. The article showed him ollieing to a cross stance. He called it a pretzel. On a short board it was a trick, and he didn't seem to know what to do with it in his interview. With a longboard, the trick would be functional.
Bob of Bob's Trick Tips tells me that there are freestyle tricks that involve ollieing to a cross step. So there is a precedent here.
