A skateboard pirouettes in the air and slides down a yellow handrail belonging to a block of stairs—only the stairs and board are miniature and fingers control the maneuvers.
This is the world of fingerboarding, where riders recreate skateboarding tricks using their middle and index fingers on boards averaging about 3.9 inches long. The boards are sometimes just toys, but for the advanced, a slew of pro fingerboard companies now exist.
Similar to skateboarding, riders can “heel flip” and perform some of the board tricks perfected by skateboarding pioneers Tony Alva or Stacy Peralta by using their fingers.
“If it’s raining outside, you can’t skate, so why not try [fingerboarding]?” professional fingerboarder Nash Keanu Jacquez said of the allure of the sport.
Jacquez has played a major role in bringing the sport to life in Long Beach and the rest of the West Coast with the creation of his company Sorry for Fingerboarding in 2014.
Since the company’s inception, Jacquez and his team have hosted events throughout the West Coast to bring the fingerboarding community together, regularly hosting sessions at First Fridays in Bixby Knolls.
Events consist of boarding sessions with an option to compete with other fingerboarders. Aside from the Street League format, which consists of a qualifier, semi-final, quarterfinal and a final, competitors are usually offered cash for tricks in $5 increments. Those who land impressive tricks can go home with up to $100, according to Jacquez.
Some show up just to film for their Instagram or YouTube channels, which—like traditional skateboarding—tend to have a cult-like following.
“Fingerboarding has always been an outlet for me and for a lot of people to be creative and pull away from that screen time,” Jacquez said, noting that he turned to the sport to avoid skateboarding injuries while he maintained a cycling career.
Jacquez, the current U.S.A. Fingerboarding National Champion, was born into the world of skating—his father worked out of a skate shop in Los Alamitos in the mid-90s, making boards and ramps a ubiquitous part of his childhood.
“I started with selling Tech Decks to kids in middle school,” Jacquez said. Under different brands, he started making fingerboards at home in 2007 with the help of his father.
About five years ago and with the success of the events, Jacquez went back to his origins and expanded the Sorry for Fingerboarding brand to include professional fingerboards, board accessories and clothing.
The boards are handcrafted out of Canadian maple and the trucks and wheels come from Germany. Miniature parks are also made in-house and usually brought on tour. At First Fridays, about 14 parks are set up for people to compete or carry out a session.
Although boards were part of Jacquez’s life growing up, it was a segment on pop culture TV program “Attack of the Show!”—which dives into the latest internet trends—that helped him realize he could create the fingerboarding empire he’s now forming.
“I was mind blown,” Jacquez said, noting he spent hours at a local library researching his new passion. “I was like ‘Woah, this is what I want to do.’”
Today, he is backed by German sponsor Blackriver and competes in faraway places like Berlin and Portugal. In 2019, the Sorry team filmed a fingerboarding video at The Berrics, the holy grail private indoor skate park in LA.
Still, one of Jacquez favorite moments as a professional fingerboarder was earning the top spot in May 2021 at the U.S. National Championship hosted by U.S.A. Skateboarding, the governing body for skateboarding in the nation.
“To be able to win that, I have the trophy in my dining room that’s huge,” Jacquez said.
With his father at his side in the company, Jacquez is aware of his responsibility to continue to bring the boarding community together. Their next event in Long Beach is coming in February.
“I don’t want to see [fingerboarding] go away,” Jacquez said of his motivation to keep the scene growing. “If anyone leaves we lose a part of our scene. We want and I want everyone else to keep the scene alive.”
To stay up to date with events from Sorry for Fingerboarding follow them on Instagram at @sorryforfingerboarding. To shop their products visit www.sorryforfingerboarding.com.
