Saying Goodbye to Silverfish

Because it’s more than just a longboarding message board, it’s a special place founded on the love of stoke and built by passion for longboarding

It happened last 22 of September, nothing momentous about the day. Fall looming in the Northern Hemisphere and Spring just sprung in the south. Everything was normal except it wasn’t.

September 22, 2017 will be the day lovers of the wooden plank on four wheels who made up the entire population of a magical place in the interwebs called Silverfish or just “the Fish” will remember as the day we all said goodbye to Silverfish Longboarding.

If you don’t know what the Silverfish is… in its heyday it was where groms and grommets acted like seasoned veterans and vice versa. Age was never an issue here and so was gender or race. It didn’t even matter if you push goofy, regular or mongo. Riding fast or doing freestyle on flats or pushing for crazy distances. All that ever mattered was how stoked you are for discovering what a dull existence you were leading before your first longboard experience.

Silverfish was the place you go to for longboarding education. Where you meet strangers for a skate session and became good friends. Where gears are reviewed by skaters for skaters. Where I discovered I was not alone in my quest to just have a good time with my first setup that quickly turned into a quiver.

Ahhh Silverfish with your outdated layout from the 1990’s. I am missing you already. Although it has been awhile since you were really your good old self. (Partly because of bad people of the internet attacking your servers incessantly and shaking you down into submission.)

But you are not really gone are you Silverfish? As long as there are boards to ride and spots to skate. As long as there is you who is reading this. Your friend next to you and your mates waiting for you at your favorite hill or spot. The guy you don’t even know the name who borrowed your slide gloves. All of us… the lovers of gnar and ambassadors of stoke. We are Silverfish and we will always be more than just an internet forum on the world wide web.

And as we say our last goodbye to the platform not the near immortal community that makes up Silverfish, who better to take us all for the last pack ride than Malakai Kingston himself.

Please indulge us with a brief bio and how it all started with “The Fish”.

So a little bit about Silverfish it started as a pet project by Marcus Vorwaller (Founder 2000). It grew and got to the point where it needed more hands on it so I got involved. It’s always been community driven and really just grew organically. Even from its inception.

What do you think made it become the longboard (even sometimes skateboard) resource beast that it was?

Inclusiveness, we worked real hard (the mods and the editors) to make sure that the content and the community were both geared towards all levels of the hobby. You could never have ridden a skateboard and still found people to help you in the forums and content in the site to help you make decisions.

We had vendors and retailers that wanted to reach out to all levels of skaters and I think at all points of the sites existence it was this inclusion that made the site the resource as it was. Then on the other side, well you had all you lunatics that lived, breathed and ate skateboarding. So all those people together.

What was the best moment(s) of Silverfish?

So many bests, personally I just enjoyed any session. No matter where it was any session I participated in I loved. To me I just wanted that to be available for everyone, so I feel that the high points for the fish is any session, someone heard about — and showed up to. That’s what we wanted was for sessions to be available to everyone and I know this is such a non specific answer but, it’s how we felt. Or at least how I felt.

I think when from the standpoint of the site as a whole we had event promotions where people out in the middle of anywhere, would get back to us after events to let us know how successful their session was. Those times were the high points for the site.

Any notable names you remember that was spring boarded into mainstream success through the platform?

I’m not going to take away from anyones merit. The fish doesn’t own anyone’s success. We rise by our own effort. I greatly respect everyone in this industry.

That said, I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who didn’t have some sort of opportunity or benefit that was created by the fish. We had an impact on events, manufacturing, industry trends, sessions, technique and skills, even style.

The community was massive and it is honestly such a huge factor in the industry. I know that things would be different if the ‘fish had never been.

We had an impact on events, manufacturing, industry trends, sessions, technique and skills, even style.

What went wrong? How did it lose its footing as being the best place to hang out and share the stoke and figure out things about longboarding?

The industry changed, internet marketing changed. People will say it’s other forces such as social networking but as with all things, our success and our inevitable failure is a product of our own effort and I own that.

I made mistakes and made decisions that put us in this situation and I won’t put the blame on anyone but myself. The lesson learned is, we should have stayed lean.

Do you want to share your thoughts when you realized it was time to take it down?

So many, It’s such a hard emotion to put into words. To be frank about this, I saw it about 2 years ago. I tried to be careful and put us in a more advantageous situation but I didn’t foresee some things as clearly as I could have.

I feel like I failed, like you would feel you failed a pet with cancer. Like there is something I could have done, but it is inevitable. The clock was ticking and it was just a matter of time.

Any messages to anyone who would want to try and be the next Silverfish?

Be inclusive, you will grow when you teach, when you share your passion. However you see fit. If you want to have people respect you show them how much you care and share it. Not because of ego but because what you love is so dear, and sacred to you that to not share it would be morally sacrilegious to you.

It’s love that made the site what it is, and that true love means not worrying about being core, or ownership, or territory and pride. If you truly care about the sport then take actions that are in IT’S best interest no just your own. If you want to be a driving force in this scene you can’t exclude people for any reason. We all start somewhere. Let’s remember that.

Be inclusive, you will grow when you teach, when you share your passion. However you see fit. If you want to have people respect you show them how much you care and share it.

If Silverfish was a person or a place you will never see again what would you say?

I hate this question. Simply because it made me realize I never posted “I love this place.” before the site went down. I loved the ‘fish. Like I loved the hills I sessioned on, like I loved the curbside talks and the walks back up this hill.

I loved the site like I loved skating with my wife, my dog and now my children. It gave me so much that I could never in any lifetime repay truly.

The community was so massive that I can’t tell every person, what they mean to me. With silverfish, it was a place, not just in time but a literal visceral place. Present any time we skated, something that was shared when the community was small and just as much when the hills became more active.

The site is down now. To me though that place still exists, because people are still sharing and skating and passing on what they took from that place and those session.

I may be an idealist but I believe we carry what we learn simply to share with others, and there is nothing more to it. So, I loved that place. To answer the question though, I’d tell the ‘fish. Keep sharing what you love with as many people as you can.

The site is down now. To me though that place still exists, because people are still sharing and skating and passing on what they took from that place and those session.

Would you like to thank the community who made Silverfish as dynamic as it was?

Yes.

We had some good times, didn’t we.

Thank you Malakai it was a really good ride and I am personally saddened that it is now over. There are just not enough words to say goodbye to something that has made such an impact in one’s life.

I hear ya, thank you and stay stoked.

Photo Credits: Images are all from the Silverfish Facebook Page timeline || Credit goes to the original owners.

Thank You Silverfish Longboarding you did good!

Ride safe everyone and thank you for coming…