A couple of things

Question
Hey Justin!

I am going to get inexpensive agressive sk8s (I`m a daredevil kid who can bust up a sk8board or blades in 2 mins.) and wondered whether I would be better to get plastic or metal grind plates as they come with the skates. Also, when I do recieve these how do I grind??

Thanx a lot :)

Lesley...

Answer
Ha, I know about busting up skates.  I've got three pairs hanging on my wall that I beat to death.  Anyways, the age-old question, plastic or metal.  Well, what skates are you getting?  A lot of new are making frames of all sorts of new materials that slide as well as plates, thus rendering the grind plate useless.  However, if you're getting an inexpensive pair, that's likely not the case.  Whether you get plastic or metal depends on what you're going to be grinding.  If you know for sure that you'll only be grinding metal objects, get metal plates.  This means that if you'll be skating mainly skateparks, you'll want metal, as parks have metal rails and metal coping.  However, if you'll be skating street, you'll likely want plastic.  Plastic grinds much better on curbs and concrete ledges than metal, for obvious reasons.  There's some debate as to whether metal plates are worth bothering with anymore.  Basically, metal plates slow you down on metal rails, thus making the grind easier.  They also make a really cool sound.  But, they make grinding on curbs and ledges near impossible, and are more apt to rip up your grinding surface.  Basically, if you're just going to skate park, go with metal.  If you're going to skate street, or aren't sure what you're going to skate, stick with plastic.  What you may consider, if you live in a temperate climate like I do, is use plastic plates in the summer when you'll be skating outdoors, and then slap on metal plates in the winter when you stick to parks.

Now, as far as your second question.  There's a lot of different types of grinds out there.  Probably the easiest to start out with is the frontside.  Before we get to that, let's go over what you're going to be grinding.  Skates don't slide on just anything.  On metal surfaces, you don't have a problem, but if you're planning on grinding curbs and concrete ledges, you'll need to wax them up.  If you've got experience with skateboarding, as you seem to imply in your message, than you know all about this.  You need to get a layer of wax over the concrete to enable sliding over it.  You can buy expensive skate waxes at skate shops or through mail order catalogs, but it's easier than that.  Parrafin wax, if you can find it at your local supermarket, works great, and you can use what I use - a candle.

Now that that's covered, the frontside.  A frontside grind is the name given to the grind where you are between the middle wheels on both skates.  Skate up to the rail (or whatever you're grinding, we'll just say rail) at a moderate speed, probably on the right side (this is the way that's comfortable for most people, you might be backwards like me), then jump up, turn 90 degrees to your left and land on the rail between your middle wheels.  Keep your feet at least shoulder width apart, and keep your weight centered over the rail.  There's a lot of other grinds out there.  It would take me too long to explain them all here.  Go to www.aggressive.com for a full list and explanation.

That should help you out for now.  Any more questions or clarifications, feel free to ask.

-justin