# Six tricks are already forgotten, the seventh isn't

> Six skate tricks ticked off a torn list are already automatic; the seventh, still unticked after four months, is the line that matters.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/skateboard-trick-list

A torn sheet of lined paper, ripped free of a pad. Seven tricks written down one side: ollie,
shove-it, kickflip, heelflip, 50-50, boardslide. Six have a tick beside them.

The seventh has no tick. Beside it, in pink, is a duration instead: 4 months.

A checklist is supposed to end in ticks. This one is more interesting for refusing to.

## What is this list actually keeping track of?

Not tricks — how long each one took to stop being difficult.

Once a trick is ticked it's left the list of things this skater thinks about while doing them. The
ollie at the top took an afternoon or a summer, depending on the skater, and by the time it's
ticked, nobody remembers which. That's what a tick means here: not landed once, but landed so
often it stopped being news.

## Why put the tricks in this order?

Because it's roughly the order most people actually learn them in — nobody graded this list, it
grew that way.

Ollie sits first because most of what follows depends on it: shove-it, kickflip and heelflip are
variations built on the same pop, and 50-50 and boardslide need a board already under control
before a ledge or a rail gets involved. Skateboarding has never settled on an official difficulty
scale the way [bouldering has argued its way to one](/stories/bouldering-grade-scale) — this
order came from skater to skater, not from a committee.

## What's the actual decision in a list like this?

Which trick sits in the unticked slot, and whether to put a duration beside it at all.

A bare unticked box says only "not yet". A duration says something sharper: this has been going
badly for a specific, countable stretch and is still being attempted. Four months is long enough
to be a small embarrassment and short enough to still be funny. That's the choice a version of
this list actually makes — not which seven tricks, but how honestly to describe the one that
hasn't happened.

## Can a real skate shop or crew's name go on this?

If a specific shop or crew is the point, ask them — their name and their mark are theirs to
license, the same as any other business's.

A skate shop, a board brand or a local crew's tag is a document somebody built, and shops license
their names for merchandise routinely. Where the point isn't a specific shop, the invented version
works at least as well, because a plain torn sheet with nobody's logo on it belongs entirely to the
skater who's still four months into the seventh trick, with no shop's reputation riding on it.

## Does this only work for skating?

No — it works for any skill with a line that hasn't moved yet.

A boxer's list of combinations, a run of guitar chords, a language learner's vocabulary set: the
form is the same wherever most items are automatic and one is stuck. A shorter version — three
tricks instead of seven, one unticked — works just as well as a gift for someone who's clearly
mid-way through learning something, because the honesty is in the gap, not the length of the list.

## What happens once the seventh trick finally lands?

Nothing to the shirt — it isn't a progress report, it's a record of a specific stretch of trying.

The tick would come off a fresh list, not this one. Four months unticked isn't a flaw the shirt
needs fixing; it's the exact thing the shirt is about, the same way
[a season that ends badly doesn't make the fixture card wrong](/stories/sunday-league-fixture-card) —
the card was never claiming to know the score in advance.

## Does it print well?

Yes — treated as handwriting on a torn page rather than a clean printed list.

White ink on washed black keeps the paper feel; save the pink for the tick marks and the TREFLIP
line so the eye goes there first. The tear at the top edge should stay ragged rather than
straight-cut — a straight edge reads as a printed border, a ragged one reads as paper that was
actually ripped off a pad.

## How do I get one made?

Describe your list at [JustOG](/) — the tricks, which one stays unticked, and whether it carries a
duration. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's
made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Still four months, still unticked, still pink against six tricks nobody thinks about any more.