Growing up in the Pacific Northwest meant skating 100% dry streets was pretty rare as even on dry days, puddles and perpetually soggy asphalt patches existed. It wasn’t ideal, but what are you gonna do, not skate? We survived and skated in all but the heaviest of rain, but then something happened. Powell started pressing their decks in what they called ‘Bonite’ which was allegedly an ultra-light and ultra-strong wood composite instead of the 7-ply laminated hard rock maple that most decks were made of. Being that we always wanted to ride the latest and greatest, a bunch of us jumped all over the Bonite decks, but quickly found the new miracle material’s weakness – water. Bonite begins to rapidly deteriorate with the introduction of water and with enough water or repeated applications of it, the previously unbreakable decks turned into paper mache, rapidly flaking away as the deck slid on concrete and eventually getting soft enough to have truck bolts and/or the trucks themselves come right through the deck on a hard landing. Needless to say, we learned our lesson pretty quick and went back to old-school maple decks.
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