It’s hard to watch Polar Skate Co’s We Blew It At Some Point without noticing the size of the tires carrying Nick Boserio across the Pacific North West. In this instalment of the ‘Rules’ Boserio puts his set-up up on the tool bench for a closer look at skateboard wheel sizes.
This story is part of ‘New Year, New Rules’ which welcomes Ian Browning and his ‘Rules of Skateboarding’ column to Skate Bylines.
Interview by Ian Browning
Illustration by Cosme Fernández Gonzales
Videos from Polar Skate Co.’s We Blew It At Some Point by Tor Ström and Pontus Alv
It seems like your wheels have gotten bigger over the course of your career. Is that true?
That’s pretty accurate.
Growing up in the northeastern US, I’ve seen a lot of people go through a Ricky Oyola/Matt Reason phase where they ran bigger wheels and wide decks. Are your wheels reflecting something like that? Or did you go through a Fred Gall phase growing up in Perth?
That’s funny actually. Fred Gall is one of the people that I like the most now and did not understand the most growing up. So I definitely did not have a Fred Gall phase when I was younger. I was like, “Why is this gross dude with weird hair in this Habitat video? I don’t get it. Where is Mark Appleyard?”
Am I going through a Ricky Oyola/Fred Gall phase? I don’t really know, I think I just thought [big wheels] looked really cool. Probably because of them. So, short answer: Yes, maybe? I don’t know.
I don’t have the focus that makes me really want to go do a phase right. I just pick up shit. Do you know what I mean? People did really good fake PJ Ladds and really good fake Brian Wennings and really good fake Appleyards, and I never really did a great job of that. Even now as an adult if I said, “Yeah, maybe it’s kind of a phase,” I don’t think I’m doing it right.
Big man, big beard, big wheels. Art for art’s sake. Nick Boserio in We Blew It At Some Point (2018) Polar Skate Co., Tor Ström, Pontus Alv
So what made you want to start to size up then?
I think when I got on OJ [Wheels] and I realised I could order whatever I want. One of those things was really big wheels. I just set them up. I can’t even blame the Pacific Northwest, it was before I moved to Portland.
It was an option, and I tried, and I liked it. I think it looks cool. Honestly, the initial attraction was that it looked sick when I looked at my board. It’s not like I was skating more transition or a Fred Gall phase or any of those things. I looked at my board and it looked cool.
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That’s interesting though, because in a lot of popular skateboarding there is this unwritten rule that you kinda don’t go out and film tricks on wheels that are bigger than 55mm. You don’t see cruiser wheels or anything like that, so you’re kind of bucking the trend.
This is where the ‘Rules of Skateboarding’ theme of this interview comes into play, right? I was wondering if it was going to be a rule about wheels or the rules when riding big wheels. I wasn’t sure where you guys were going with it.
Nick Boserio in Portland: roll-in (left) for the cover of Transworld Skateboarding #389 and boardslide (right) for Golden Hour #1 (both late 2017) Matt Price
It’ll probably be, like, ‘Nick Bosiero on big wheels’. That’d be the headline.
Gotta know my headline. So what was the question?
It seems like there’s an unwritten rule in skateboarding that you don’t go out and film tricks on wheels bigger than 55mm. I guess it wasn’t a question as much as a prompt.
Yeah, maybe. That’s your wheels, not mine. Maybe. The cruiser wheels thing I get. A lot of the setups, you know shaped boards, all that shit’s breaking down.
I remember when there was no fucking way that anyone was riding over 52mm. I remember when nobody’s board was bigger than eight inches. I’m not saying that shit is getting bigger in general, I just think maybe companies are scrambling to produce anything that sets them aside. Maybe more things are kosher? I don’t really know. Maybe there is an unwritten rule.
“I can’t even blame the Pacific Northwest, it was before I moved to Portland,” says Nick Boserio, seen here skating in Portland,in his shared video part with Emile Laurent for We Blew It At Some Point (2018), of upping wheel size Polar Skate Co., Tor Ström, Pontus Alv
So are you on loose trucks too? Do you get crazy wheelbite? What size wheels do you ride?
They are 60mm Slimeballs, and then most of the footage you’re referring to is on 60mm Combos.
Do you get a lot of wheelbite on 60mm wheels?
My trucks are not super loose, but they’re definitely not tight. Yeah, I get some wheelbite. But, I have the small riser pads. They’re like 3mm and hard. They’re the standard ones people are riding. And I wax my wheel wells. Have you heard of that before?
Yeah, yeah.
You should do that. Like, a lot. That’s pretty helpful for anyone riding big wheels or really loose trucks. You wax the wheel wells. Yes, I wheelbite, and yes I try to make an effort to stop it, and waxing my wheel wells is the main thing.
Loose man, loose trucks, lacquered wheel wells. Nick Boserio in We Blew It At Some Point (2018). Polar Skate Co., Tor Ström, Pontus Alv
That’s good for the kids. So Portland isn’t the East Coast but the stuff that you’re skating in We Blew It At Some Point look pretty crusty. Do you like what big wheels do in terms of opening up options of spots you can skate?
It definitely helps with rough shit. But I don’t know if it unlocked anything. Cruiser wheels can unlock spots big time. But I don’t know if the gimicky, fat, regular wheels that I’m riding have really made that big of a difference to me. I’m not sure.
But it helps, fuck yeah, I’m not going to lie. But then you see Dane [Brady] skate some of the same spots as me with those little pinwheel things. You know?
Yeah, it’s the total opposite end of the spectrum.
One of the first times I pushed around with Dane, he was riding those tiny things and he was pushing faster than me. I don’t know what that says about wheels. Maybe it says more about him. It helps, but it’s not unlocked anything for me.
It seems to me they work with your trick selection, and that a lot of your tricks are more about taking a stab at whether something is even possible to roll away from, as opposed to trying something technical on a straight ledge.
Yes. I specifically deal in that side of skateboarding. Just a really complicated A to B.
Handling cracks and threading needles: “a really complicated A to B.” Nick Boserio in We Blew It At Some Point (2018). Polar Skate Co., Tor Ström, Pontus Alv
So gear trends are cyclical, and some of the setups in the new Polar video look like they came out of an old New Deal video. Which is tight. I think the return of the 7.75 is on the horizon, so I’ll wrap it up by asking if you think you’re down to size down when the time comes?
Well, that would suggest that my gimmicky board now is following a trend in the first place. And that I’m happy to follow the next trend that comes up. So I’m going to say no, because it seems like a setup question that implies that I’m following a trend or one or another. You can ask me, did I set up gimmick wheels before or after I rode for Polar?
Well, I think there are gimmicky trends in skateboarding, but there are also just waves that rise and fall.
Yeah, I wore brown pants and a flannel shirt for like a year straight, just like everyone else did. You know what I mean? I’m not in denial of that. Will I size down? Honestly, at this point, no. I couldn’t ride a 7.75″, I just don’t think I could do it. My board is like 9″ right now. 7.75″ just seems crazy. At some point in the next ten years am I going to be riding an 8″ board with 52mm wheels? Probably. I don’t think I have the attention span to stick with something for that long. I don’t know. Is there anything we haven’t milked yet? What’s left? That’s what we should be really figuring out.
Tricks on longboards dude. If you really want to talk about gimmicky shit, skating a longboard like it’s a real skateboard would be the final frontier. On some Simon Woodstock shit.
I don’t know, is Gonz the gateway drug to everyone skating longboards?
Holy shit, you might be on to something there.
Yeah, I don’t know. Short answer: no. Not 7.75″. Catch me on an 8 inch, and call me a liar maybe, but 7.75″ is fucking small, man.
Ian Browning is a journalist and essayist based in New York who writes about the intersection of skateboarding and culture. He has written for Quartersnacks, Simple Magic, PLANK, Closer Skateboarding, Jenkem and Eater. As a columnist for Skate Bylines his ‘Rules of Skateboarding’ series explores nuances with notable characters.
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This story was originally published by Village Psychic on September 17th 2018 with the headline ‘The Rules of Skateboarding #8: Nick Boserio’. Browning joined Skate Bylines in 2026, bringing over his previous columns and continuing ‘The Rules of Skateboarding’ series.