philisophical skateboarding/ question?

"Does your setup determine your style, or does your style determine your setup?"

Any kid who's somewhat serious about skateboarding knows that the setup you ride has an immense impact on how you ride. Think about every time you've snatched a friend's board and tried throwing down some flatland. It feels like you've never skateboarded before, or you've gone through a freakish growth spurt since the last time you've stood on one of these things. It's because after years of skating you've made specific setup preferences, and straying from those preferences throws you completely out of whack.

With every setup there are several things that determine your preferences: Is your board skinny or is it an 8.5 so you can get your tech on? How's your pop? Do you like tons of concave, or do you prefer mellow and small? Trucks, loose or tight? Wheels, big or small, soft or hard? The combinations are virtually endless.

One could say that your style determines your setup. Your trucks stay tight if you love bombing hills or hammering 12-sets. Or you stick close to mini-pipes and the vert at the park so you like your wheels hard to keep you moving fast. If your style takes you to the streets you'll be riding soft wheels so you don't feel every bump and crack of the nasty Canadian pavement. So if you look at it this way, that would mean your style determines your setup.

But there is another way you can look at it. Remember way back when you were just a little termite, who looked with awe upon those that could let out the occasional heelflip? Those were the days. Remember your first setup? I'm not sure about you but I remember my first lasting me something like, 2 years! But when you were a rookie shredding your first setup, you had no clue about the fundamentals of a proper setup. You didn't question the tightness of your trucks, or the width of your board, you simply accepted it. So really, wouldn't that mean that your setup determined your style? Your trucks couldn't get any looser, so that probably meant you avoided big hills and speed at all costs. All your fellow chumps could bomb the hill by your school, but you couldn't keep your wobbles under control for the life of you. Your board was a 7-wide, so you felt like flip-tricks were your thing. So technically... your board determined your style!

Actually, there's no right or wrong answer. I think that a combination of alot of things could determine what you shred today. Maybe when you first started skating, all the pavement in your neighborhood was dreadful so all you rode was your friend's mini-pipe. (actually, that was the only reason you were friends with him.) Or maybe your local skatepark was always packed with cracked out BMX losers, so you never had the chance to test out ledges and rails. You skated the streets, finding gaps, and that's why today you're claiming lives on 15-sets.

I think I will leave it up to you to answer this philosophical skateboarding question, young grasshopper...