Soap shoes

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The official Soap logo, copyrighted, and with all rights strictly reserved to HSL

Soap Shoes are shoes made for grinding. They were introduced by Chris Morris of Artemis Innovations Inc. with the brand name "Soap" around 1997 and simultaneously invented a new extreme sport based on Aggressive Inline Skating. They have a plastic concavity in the bottom, which allows the wearer to grind on surfaces such as pipes, handrails, and stone ledges. It was because of these properties that the name Soap was decided upon. The act of grinding on rails and ledges specifically using soap shoes has been dubbed "soaping," with the "soaper" being the one performing said act.

Mart Anthony of the UKFSW Crew - Royale - photographed by Joey Hardy

1 History
2 Techniques
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] History

In 2001, Mr. Morris ducked out of the company for beliefs that grinding with shoes was simply a trend, and would not last. Activity within the company slowed down, and eventually the remaining executives sold Soap.

In-Stride, a company whose products were aimed for use by wrestlers, purchased Soap. The company's industrial focus made some believe In-Stride wouldn't be able to properly manage Soap, and keep the brand's focus in its original place. Throughout the time that In-Stride owned Soap, new designs and models were not produced. The company went bankrupt in 2002, and Soap was once again available for purchase.

Heeling Sports Limited, the company behind the shoes with a wheel in the sole known as Heelys, acquired Soap later that year. In early 2003, a number of shoe models were released, each in multiple color schemes. HSL has been criticized for releasing too many models at first, and not supplying requested stock to retailers frequently enough. There were also complaints for a more distinguishable variety of shoes (nearly all the models used the same fixed grindplate and had the same sole). There are two models still in production from the first generation released by HSL.

After departing from Soap, Mr. Morris started a skate-park design and construction company named TrueRide. TrueRide has created a number of high-quality skate-parks mainly throughout the Midwestern United States, however they do work internationally also. Mr. Morris left TrueRide and invented shoes that generally appeal to toddlers and young children, called Dinosoles. As of 2006, this is where his business resides. {UPDATE} Mr. Morris did NOT start the company named TrueRide. TrueRide was started and incorporated by David Benson, Greg Benson and Tony Ciardelli in 1997.

The sport never caught on to the mass market in comparison to, for instance, skateboarding, but the brand "Soap" does have a professional team mostly consisting of pro inline skaters. Soap's best heydey was in the late 90's and early 2000's, when many competing crews from across America and the world were releasing internet videos on a regular basis, spurring a dedicated, albeit small, online community of "soapers". However since then most of the crews have disbanded along with the website forums, and now there are only pockets of proponents of this marginal extreme discipline all over the globe.

[edit] Techniques

Soap shoes can go hand-in-hand with freestyle walking to form lines or multiple tricks strung together. An example would be landing into a royale and grinding, finishing the trick with a 360 Method out.

It is one of the few land-based extreme sports that can be easily practiced in both dry and wet conditions.

There are two schools of thought for basic frontside/backside grinding with Soap Shoes; the first using the leading leg (your right foot if you are goofy and vice versa for regular) as the leg you leap off, landing with your back foot on the rail/ledge/etc. first and subsequently placing your leading foot on moments later. The second technique is to leap off your trailing leg (left foot if goofy etc.) and place your leading foot on the rail/ledge/etc. first following it with your trailing foot moments later. You can also endeavour to land both feet simultaneously on the rail.

There is little advantage from one technique to the other; leading leg first often yields more speed but this is at the expense of control, and abandoning a trick if your trail leg fails to lock onto the obstacle proves difficult without risking injury, as your leading leg will be sliding away from you. On the other hand, the trail leg first technique is much more controlled and safer in the event of poor execution, but speed is sacrificed.

The technique used is mostly based on preference due to your natural bias. e.g. a right footed person who is of regular stance (the most common combination) will find it far easier to leap off their left foot and land with their right foot on the rail first using the trailing leg technique outlined above.

[edit] Trivia

Soap Shoes were featured in the videogame Sonic Adventure 2 developed by the Sonic Team at SEGA. This game presented many billboards advertising the shoes; also, hero Sonic wears a custom version of the Scorcher shoe while the darker character Shadow wears hybrid rocketskate/grinding shoes, as grinding (or "soaping") is an important gameplay element in the game. Grinding is now a core element of recent Sonic games, though now he sports his original trademark shoes. This is because after In-Stride bought control of Soap, no actions were taken dealing with the continuation of the partnership, and neither has HSL. However, in one episode of the anime Sonic X, Sonic uses his Soap Scorchers to grind a mutant plant.