Utah’s first fingerboard shop is banking on nostalgia and local community

On the busy corner of Main Street and Gentile Street in Layton, an inconspicuous hub is forming.

If you look and listen closely, you’ll pick up clues: the clack of wheels against a wooden surface. The quiet concentration that comes with trying to land a trick. The joyful chorus of cheers when someone does so successfully.

These are all markings of the atmosphere of a skate park. Yet, these moves are happening on a much smaller scale at Skatestation — Utah’s first fingerboard shop, which opens on June 14th.

“Fingerboarding is [where] you use your fingers and mimic skateboarding on the miniature level,” Clark Checketts, the owner of the store, said.

The inside of Skatestation is home to six different parks, display cases and merchandise like T-shirts. The floors are scuffed, the building is dated, but the camaraderie is ample.

On the Wednesday before opening weekend, locals descended on the shop for a session. They moved in a synchronized circle, watching each other land tricks in different parts of the park. Others hovered around to take videos on iPhones and GoPros.

Outside, a game of H-O-R-S-E was being played on the park right in front of the shop’s entrance — the goal is to hit the same trick in the same spot your opponents do.

There’s even “the basement” — an area under the shop that is accessible by a staircase out front. It’s fit with seven parks in a dimly lit room, the smell of acetone and monomer liquid from the nail salon next door lingers in the air.

But, the hobbyists don’t care about the state of the room as they check it out for the first time, eagerly pulling out their boards, ready to hit the parks and show off their skills.

The storefront is the latest development for Utah’s burgeoning fingerboard community — one that’s become a hub for connection, creativity and local business. The top row of the main display case in the store is dedicated to creations from Utah fingerboard businesses.

Where skateboarding and fidget toys meet

Fingerboarding is a nostalgic nod to the skateboard culture of the late 90’s and early 2000’s, but the only real injury risk is carpal tunnel.

Skatestation aims to provide a spot for the Utah fingerboard community to link up, and it’s attracting the attention of fingerboard greats from all corners of the world. For opening weekend, representatives from Germany’s BlackRiver fingerboards have flown in, including the 2019 World Champion of Fingerboarding, Jeldo Ulpts.

“There’s kind of two common core memories, especially [for] millennials with fingerboarding,” Checketts said. “One is the tiny plastic McDonald’s fingerboards … they were key chains, actually. But then people kind of started using them like a real skateboard.”

Then, came Tech Decks, a “fad” of the late ‘90s, according to a compiled history of fingerboarding.

For Checketts, fingerboarding became a lost hallmark of his youth until the COVID-19 pandemic came along. Stuck at home, he decided to get back into fingerboarding. He started posting on Reddit, Instagram and Youtube, and got together a group for Utah fingerboarders, finding connection with other nostalgia enthusiasts.

Checkett’s business partner, Shaun McBride, is a content creator who is bringing his brand, Spacestation, and its burgeoning group of followers to the world of fingerboarding. Combining McBride’s brand with Checketts’ fingerboarding expertise, is how the Skatestation store was born.

Customization craze

Checketts also started Dude Guy Fingerboard, where he sells custom wheels made out of urethane from old skateboard wheels.

Besides their miniature measurements, fingerboards operate very much like their full-size counterparts. The type of wheels, decks and other parts all play a role in individuality, as well as physics. Softer material wheels, for example, have more stickiness to it. Some boarders will even get the nails on their index and middle fingers painted to match their decks.

The customization is “one of the biggest draws” to the hobby, according to Checketts.

Teagan Moore, from North Ogden, is the owner of Holy Grail Fingerboards, where he creates custom fingerboard decks — some glow in the dark, while others change color in different weather and lighting conditions.

Moore first met Checketts through a Reddit post that invited fingerboarders to an outdoor park in Ogden. “I went to go meet a random stranger to play with my toys in the woods at a park that he had built,” Moore said.

Moore said Checketts helped him get his company running. Now, he has 100 of his own fingerboards.

“Fingerboarding has been way more than just a hobby to me, because it’s brought back a huge social part of my life that I didn’t have, where I’m able to make friends easily as an adult,” he said.

Customization also adds up. According to Checketts, a low-priced fingerboard is about $120 with all the necessary parts, but people will spend up to $250 for more high quality parts.

The creativity doesn’t stop at the boards. Seth Checketts, Clark’s brother, owns Level Ledges, a custom fingerboard obstacle course company. Skatestation store manager Ethan Alvey, owns Sketch Made, a company that designs fingerboard parks, many of which are at the store and “the basement.”

“Rails is my big thing,” Alvey said, pointing some out in the park in front of the store. He’s an expert on material: pointing out how granite feels different than wood for fingerboarders.

Alvey provides a crash course to fingerboard vocab: describing kick flips and 180s, and lists the four different stances: regular, switch, nollie and fakie. The boards, he says, also have different types of molds and widths, from 26 to 50 millimeters wide.

Community and creativity go hand-in-hand for fingerboarders in Utah.

Julio Sifuentes, who lives in Orem, doesn’t mind driving “just an hour” to Layton to hang out with the community. Sifuentes is originally from Peru, where his fingerboarding hobby started When he moved to Utah, he didn’t know of anyone else that did it. After going to fingerboard meetings out of state, he realized many fingerboarding companies were based in Utah.

While Sifuentes had to learn about the culture of Utah when he came here, fingerboarding was something he was familiar with — it became the shared language he used to get to know others like himself who find solace, comfort or simply fulfillment from flipping their boards.

“Fingerboarding, it’s always been around, passively, just in our pocket. Sometimes I don’t even have time to use it, but it’s always there. It’s like my little best friend,” Sifuentes said.