After arriving at the hotel the first point on the scedule was a buffet lunch. The invited people consisted mostly of retailers, team riders and media. No need to mention that the served food was beyond delicious and was a great base for the things to come.

After lunch, footwear designer Shawn Carboy held a small presentation about the Zoom FP in one of the conference rooms. He provided a very interesting look into the history of Nike SBs technical footwear releases and explained the main goals the design team wanted to achieve with the FP. The bottom line “keep it simple” is pretty much visible at first sight if you have a look at the FP and compared to its ancestor, the Tre A.D. the goal was definitely achieved since the FP consists of less pieces than you have fingers on your hands.

One of the big inspirations for the FP was the Nike Presto. The idea of a single, sock-like bootie was succesfully transfered to a skate shoe which is the main reason for a fit that no other skate shoe on the market can provide right now.

In this picture you see one of the basically two pieces of upper material the whole shoe consists of. The red layer under the top layer is made from TPU and ensures that the FP is as durable as its ancestors, even without the Tre/Tre A.D. mesh in the front.

From left to right: Nike Zoom  Tre , Nike Presto, Nike Zoom Tre A.D. Nike definitely manages to take it a step further with every release and successfully incooperates technologies of other sports.

After the presentation that was a little short in my opinion (but let’s face it, I could listen for 2-3 hours to a guy that talks about one single  shoe without getting bored at all…) everybody entered a bus to the Skatepark of Amsterdam to get some first hand impression of how the FP performs.

The skatepark of Amsterdam is located in an industrial area a bit outside of Amsterdam.

The smallest part of the huge hangar like building is the actual skate park. The wooden construction suspended from the ceiling on which the course is build on looks pretty small in such an environment…

What you see on this picture is not even half of the actual course. Nike SB also has a showroom there and everybody was able to have a look at fall 2011. Agra, product manager of Nike SB Europe gave me a tour and showed me what they have to offer during the next year and I have to say it doesn’t dissapoint.

Just a small teaser: The Koston 1 might be the first shoe I can’t really review because there’s simply nothing to criticise. It’s pretty much the shoe I’d design if I’d be in charge. Oh and they finally managed to solve the problem of the Swoosh falling off because of worn out stiching, but I won’t spoil the surpise how they did that…you’ll see soon.

In the skatepark there was a new pair of the Zoom FP waiting for every guest. Brad Staba took a small nap on the boxes. Rumor has it that the American team riders consisting of Eric Koston, Ishod Wair and Brad Staba watched baseball until the early morning and apparently Staba had to compensate the lack of sleep.

Amsterdam | Nike SB ZOOM FP Wear Test from ZUPPORT on Vimeo.

This video was filmed by Alex Schmitz of the Zupport store in Trier, Germany.

Since I’ll post review about the Zoom FP in rougly two weeks, I won’t get too much into detail here, but compared to the Tre family the FP is a huge step forward in almost every category and the slimmer and more subtle design looks very appealing in my opinion.

When the two hour session with the Nike SB teamriders was over (especially Ishod Wair left a huge impression on everybody!), we went back to the hotel to freshen up for  dinner and the 5 years of Ben G skate shop party. The invitation consisted of a dog tattoo that was necessary to enter the party and the bouncers wouldn’t let you in without it being applied on your body.

The hotel we stayed in, calling it fancy is slighly understated.

As mentioned, before the party we went to a nice restaurant for dinner. Appart from eating delicious food yet again a sample of the Prod 5 was shown. I won’t reveal too much if I say it looks definitely promising…

One member of the German delegation that was invited to the wear test was Kenny Hopf, Nike SBs newest German team rider. His personal highlight was definitely meeting Eric Koston in person and you can’t really see it in this picture, but he was super nervous about meeting him. They talked for a bit and Koston seemed really nice and down to earth.

The Ben G afterparty was great, and the open bar and live music was just the cherry on top.

All in all it was an outstanding day that was totally worth the journey! The additional infos about the FP will make the upcoming review a lot more interesting.

Thanks again to Kaspar, Bjorn and Agra of Nike SB for the great event and for inviting me, I had a great time and I really appreciate the support I get from you. Thanks as well to the German delegation including Pascal Schmidt.

For more coverage of the FP weartest, skate pictures and the Ben-G party have a look at these links, I’ll update them as soon as more articles are online:

Tacky.NL

SlamCity

And to answer one question right away: No, the invitation won’t affect my review. I will still review the FP as objective as possible, eventhough I got invited by Nike to this event. Most probably I will criticise it even more strict so there’s no way anybody could say I was influenced…

The post Nike SB: Weartest(ed) in Amsterdam again appeared first on Weartested - detailed skate shoe reviews.

Martin Ottosson( www.semesterskate.com , www.defekt.se) sent me a few more pictures of the Amsterdam launch event that where too good to be kept unpublished.

The post Update: Nike SB Salazar appeared first on Weartested - detailed skate shoe reviews.

This was the hotel in Amsterdam everybody was staying at. The invited people where retailers, team riders and press from all over Europe, plus a US delegation that consisted of Hunter Muraira, Daryl Angel, Justin Brock, Cory Kennedy and of course Omar ( I hope I didn’t forget anybody…)

When I entered my room, some more information was waiting for me plus a ticket to the party, a map and some recommondations where to go while in Amsterdam.

Since I still had 2 hours until the first official date of the scedule, I walked around for a bit and tried to see as much of Amsterdam as I could in such short time.

Right in front of the hotel was a square with perfect flatground and ledges, just a coincidence…? If chosen on purpose or not, the Spanish team riders took advantage of it and played some games of SKATE right in front of the hotel bar which was the meet up place. When everybody arrived, we entered a bus and we went to the skatepark.

When we arrived, this hangar-like blue illuminated door was waiting for us. After it slowly opened under the cheering of the crowd, the whole bus entered the building and everybody left the bus and was going through a tunnel that looked like the place the ads for Omars new shoe where shot.

In the space station or whatever you want to call the room at the end of the tunnel, Omar Salazar and James Arizumi, the designer of Nike SB where waiting for us. Once everybody got a seat, they started a very interesting presentation about the technology the shoe features and the whole process of developing Omars pro model, from the first drawings and sketch book pages Omar did until the final product.

Afterwards everybody entered the skate park that also fitted the whole outer space theme. Unfortunatelly my camera had a hard time handling the light situation inside the building, so most pictures didn’t turn out too good. At the end of this post I have a link list to sites that feature some nicer pictures though.

Everybody got a pair of Omars new shoe to test and shortly after that a great session with the Nike SB Euro and US team started.

Of cause Nike took good care of the invited people with free food and drinks. The guy above prepared ice cream sticks with frozen fruits wrapped in vanilla ice cream and chocolate coating with the help of liquid nitrogen.The warning “Please don’t start eating before it stops smoking” made my day.

After getting to know interesting people, some great conversations and watching the crème de la crème of European and American skateboarding, we went back to the hotel to hit the shower and get ready for the party, which was just across the street. As you can see it was pretty crowded and with an open bar a great night was guaranteed.

All in all it was a great day that was totally worth the journey! I got the chance to get introduced to many interesting people, I saw a lot of my favourite skaters skating a great park and on top of that all in a beatiful city that I’ll definitely visit again. With all the info I got about the Salazar I’m sure the review in the next Place Magazine and here on weartested.de will be a great read!

Thanks to Kaspar, Bjorn and Agra of Nike SB for the great event and for inviting me, to James Arizumi for his time and patience to answer all my hopefully not too annoying questions, to Martin Ottosson for being a great room mate and basically everybody else I got to know during that day.

For more coverage of the Salazar weartest and also the demo during the next day, have a look at these links:

Skatefamily.es

BenG skateshop

demo pictures

And to answer one question right away: No, the invitation won’t affect my review. I will still review the Salazar as objective as possible, eventhough I got invited by Nike to this event. Most probably I will criticise it even more strict so there’s no way anybody could say I was influenced…

The post Nike SB Omar Salazar: Weartest(ed) in Amsterdam appeared first on Weartested - detailed skate shoe reviews.