Blackriver Wrapped 2025: a chaotic, perfect fingerboard year

Year-in-review posts are usually dry, so Blackriver's Wrapped post made me smile right away. The team describes 2025 as "loud, in the best way" and backs that up with a handful of numbers that give a decent sense of how big the scene has become.

They built or released ten new deck graphics and seven ramps. One graphic is said to have sold out in 0.3 seconds, and three secret collaborations leaked before the team could even pretend they were secret. On top of that come nine new shops in the Blackriver family and nearly 100 supported events.

What I find more interesting than the stats is the tone. There are many kilometres driven in a van with gear that really shouldn't have fit, encounters with people who felt like old friends right away, and a whole wave of new fingerboarders pulled in by the community. In between are anecdotes like vanished wheels, lock nuts eaten by a vacuum cleaner, and Wi-Fi that always dropped at the worst possible moment.

In the end the team thanks the community: "chaotic, messy, sleep-deprived and somehow perfect", built by the fans and held together with stickers. The full review is supposed to follow later. For me the post is a nice reminder of how much happens in such a small niche when many people put their time into it.

Source: Blackriver Fingerboard Shop