Mini skatepark with big tricks: Fingerboarding competition slides into London this weekend

A skatepark complete with ramps, handrails and a staircase is coming to a London brewery this weekend, ready to welcome competitive riders locally and from as far away as Toronto.

How will it fit? The skatepark lives on top of a table, and the skateboards fit right into the palms of competitors' hands.

It's called fingerboarding, and it involves people using their fingers to ride and do tricks on miniature skateboards.

"Physics-wise, it's all exactly the same, but the execution of it is a little bit different because you're translating from feet to fingers," London fingerboarder Dylan Salomons said. "If you want to figure out how to kickflip out of a manual on a fingerboard, you watch someone do it on a skateboard because it's the exact same way."

An all-day fingerboarding competition is happening at London Brewing Co-Op Saturday, which its organizers say is needed to amplify London's growing fingerboarding scene.

"There's people who fingerboard in London, but there's nothing bringing the fingerboard community together right now," said Salomons, who is one of the organizers.

Saturday's event will involve two fingerboarding competitions, which both emulate skateboarding competitions.

The best trick competition, which is sanctioned by the United States Fingerboarding League, will ask competitors to land their best trick in 45 seconds. The second competition uses a Street League Skateboarding format, where riders accumulate points from their best four out of 10 trick attempts.

The events will happen on a custom-built skatepark by Ryse Fingerboards, a fingerboard deck and obstacle shop located 30 minutes southwest of London.

"All our obstacles are either cement, steel or wooden and they're all replicates of skateboarding obstacles that you see on a regular basis at skateparks," said shop owner Adrian Teles, who is also organizing the event.

He said he hopes to keep building the fingerboarding community in southwestern Ontario through his shop and the upcoming competition.

"The London area is growing. What we're working on is building the area up so there's more of a community out here," Teles said. "We're trying to get it to the point where the London scene has a bigger presence so there will be a lot more events and maybe even a [brick-and-mortar] fingerboarding skate shop can open up."

Salomons got into fingerboarding four years ago after fracturing his wrist skateboarding, and receiving a fingerboard as a gift from a friend while healing. He started by using plastic Tech Decks, which can be bought at toy and big-box stores, before buying better equipment and getting into the craft more seriously.

"It's insane how intense the fingerboarding scene is once you get into it," Salomons said.

Meanwhile, Teles grew up as a professional skateboarder and spent time working on the video game Skater XL, but got into fingerboarding as a way to help manage his anxiety after he and his wife experienced a stillbirth.

"I find it's good for people who have anxiety and things like that because it keeps their hands going," he said.

Both fingerboarders said there is overlap between the skate and fingerboarding communities, with Teles adding that people are drawn to the two activities for the same reason.

"Skateboarding is obviously the motherland and where it all comes from, but fingerboarding is a lot like it when it comes to the feeling you get when you land a trick after trying for hours," he said. "There's the feeling of gratification."

The fingerboarding competition at London Brewing Co-Op in Old East Village is happening from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, and is free to both enter and watch.