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Happy almost Thanksgiving! Riviera Skateboards was nice enough to send me over a Jellies deck to review along with the City Slashers I have been rocking. The Jellies is a nice deck directional kicktail board with a wide platform for grown-up sized feet. I really like it for a number of riding styles and it is definitely a fun little board.
However, per usual, let me get into the technical specs on this deck before I let you know how it handles. The Jellies is 30inches long from nose to tail and 10inches wide. It has a huge kicktail in the back with a tiny bit of unkicked nose up front. It is composed of pressed maple plies and is not terribly thick, so there is definitely a little more thickness to it than your average street deck but less than most longboards.
As a relatively thin 30in board you have probably already guess what the Jellies is not the best board in the world to try and break skate speed records on. The small wheelbase and general design of the board don't lend themselves to going over 30mph, however this board is more than capable of hitting an average hill without a problem. I generally don't try and bomb hills on this board, not because I think I am doomed to wobble to death, but because I can't help but start to carve and freeride on the way down.
Freeride
Jellies wasn't really designed to be a freeride board, buuuuut it has a few traits that make it really fun for some lower speed freeride. The first of which is the big ol' wide platform that I mentioned. It is pretty flat so you aren't going to have a bunch of concave locking you, however, just by being nice and wide you can hit lots of slides from the platform without a problem, especially if you throw a little bit of really course grip on the deck. The other things that makes this board fun for some freeride is the kicktail. The tail is a very nice length and has a bunch of fatness behind it. This makes it great for slides of the blunt variety.
The Riviera Jellies is a fantastic board to commute on! In fact, I'm pretty sure that it is what the rad peeps over at Riviera has in mind when they designed the board. The wide platform gives you lots of real estate to put your feet on. The tail is ideal for dropping curbs and then hopping back up them. You can also carve super hard on this deck because you can easily run Paris 180 or 150mm trucks. The 150's let you carve like a madman all around town. Jellies is a great board for cruising to class or maybe going a quick beer run (if you're of age of course...)
I really like freestyling on the Jellies. I started skating on a longboard and not a street deck so I am very used to having lots of space for my feet. Having this disposition made the Jellies feel very very comfortable for me. I really liked the wide platform because when I hit a fliptrick I have plenty of space to land my feet. I have already mentioned how much I like the tail on this board, but it really excels in freestyle skating. The tail makes hitting ollies and even kickflips nice and easy! I even took Jellies to a little skatepark around here and it held up pretty well.
I would say that the biggest downside to this board is probably the length. I think that even though it was meant to be small little cruiser an extra inch or two wouldn't hurt. It would bring the possibility of a little more downhill into the game and it would give you a little more platform to hit some fun ol' fashion board dancing.
The Bottom Line
I think that Riviera really hit the nail on the head with this board. It is a compact, light, and fun board. It is most useful for cruising around town or campus and hit some fun freestyle on the way. That being said it can definitely handle its own on some light to moderate hills and with some freeride. If you are the market for a compact board with a fat tail, then check out the Jellies.
Any Questions, Comments, Concerns, Love Letters, Hatemail???
Send them my way!
Thanks for reading
Stay Awesome,
Wayne
My Current Favorite Setup:
-RIVIERA JELLIES
-Paris 180mm Trucks
-Orangatang Nipples (Yellow)
-Daddies Bearings
-Divine City Slasher 64mm 78a
