I've always been a price conscious consumer and more often than not I choose the cheaper option. However, some things like Playstations and lattes have no cheaper option. The only way to save money here is buying used, but by then the coffee is usually cold.
The dancing longboard, not to be confused with carving, cruising, downhill, drop-through, drop-down, pintail, fishtail, surf skate, all-terrain, freeride, topmount, racing, or electric longboards is a niche product nestled within an already niche activity, so the sheer variety of dancer boards available online was bewildering.
On Amazon, for every recognizable product from a well-known brand, there were droves of copycat items from overseas companies that use numerals or all-caps in misspelling their English adjacent trademarks. Commonalities include poorly photoshopped images of the product pasted onto stock photos, grammatically incorrect product descriptions that often include the words: professional, engineered, precision, and empowerment, and anywhere from five thousand reviews consisting of a single sentence written in broken English, or no reviews at all. And, of course, they were all cheap.
I had no qualms about magically matching the elegance of the skaters I watched online, nor was I even sure that I would take to longboard dancing, so the initial investment had to be small enough that I wouldn’t regret quitting, but sufficient to give me some peace of mind about my safety. There were too many options to choose from, so I devised a list of rules to filter out the rejects.
Nothing over $200.
No reviews, no bueno.
Too much broken English is a no no, unless it’s really funny.
If a paid model won’t stand on the fucking thing, neither will I.
Enough with the skulls and roses.
Broken English. Printed. On the board. Unless it’s really funny.
Nonsensical product diversity. “This company makes longboards and light-up, Bluetooth, outdoor survival Christmas socks?”
Shipping charges more expensive than the item itself.
Rules 1 and 2 eliminated most of the available choices and some other feasible options were sold out. Eventually I narrowed it down to two.
These boards had decent reviews, videos of people actually riding them, and similar pricing. They also had cool, unique designs. The Bamboo Dancer featured a reversible logo and a natural wood finish, while the Whome Pro had an unusual angular shape and prided itself in being a “Fresh Cream Longboard.” When life boils down to a decision between a natural wood finish or fresh cream things are going well. In the end, price was the deciding factor. At $139.99, the Magneto Bamboo Dancer was $10 cheaper—and two inches longer—than the Whome Pro Design 44. I’ve been skating the Bamboo Dancer for 6 months as of this writing and I have no regrets about buying it, but from time to time I wonder if the extra $10 along with a dose of fresh cream, to go with my used coffee, would’ve been worth it.
*music provided by www.bensound.com
