Weird N Wacky: When Fingerboarders Get Out of the Ordinary

Fingerboarding is often associated with technical tricks, precise landings and the constant search for something harder to land. But sometimes the most interesting part of a session isn't how difficult a trick is. It's what a rider decides to put underneath the board.

That is the idea behind Armavation's Weird N Wacky Challenge, a community project that invited fingerboarders to step outside the usual boundaries of their sessions and explore what happens when creativity becomes the main objective.

Armavation is an educational and community-focused YouTube and Instagram channel that began on July 26, 2021 by Arma. Its creator built the channel not only as a place to express herself and document her own life journey, but also as a platform where people from around the world can share their backgrounds, experiences, opinions and the things they are passionate about. Through those stories, the hope is that viewers can learn something, discover new perspectives and find inspiration.

Fingerboarding eventually became an important part of that journey. The creator first received a Tech Deck when she was in fifth grade, but after a long hiatus, she returned to fingerboarding in 2025. Coming back to the hobby also opened a new door for Armavation. She began reaching out to fingerboarders through social media, interviewing them and learning more about their stories, while at the same time developing challenges that could give riders another way to showcase their skills and creativity.

The first community challenge leaned more toward technical fingerboarding. But while watching the entries come in, Armavation noticed something interesting. Some riders were finding creative ways to approach the challenge, and the response from participants was encouraging enough that many of them asked to be informed if another challenge was ever created. Rather than simply repeating the first format, Armavation decided to take the idea somewhere else.

On June 21, 2026, the Weird N Wacky Challenge was created. The concept was deliberately different. Instead of asking riders only to demonstrate technical ability, the challenge encouraged them to get out of their comfort zones, experiment with their sessions and try something outside the norm. The word “weird” was important to the idea because the things that make someone different can also be the things that make them memorable. For artists and other creative people, personal expression often comes from doing something that doesn't necessarily fit into what everyone else considers normal.

Armavation wanted to bring that freedom into fingerboarding. The result was a challenge where there was no single definition of what weird or wacky had to mean. Riders could interpret the idea in their own way, and some participants went beyond simply finding unusual obstacles. They incorporated objects that represented their culture, personality or even difficult experiences in their lives.

French rider @alex_le_ptitpouce_fingerboard, for example, chose a baguette. At first glance, putting a fingerboard trick over French bread might seem like nothing more than a funny idea. But for Alex, the baguette represented his home country, France, while the trick itself was connected to one of his signature moves. Humor and national identity became part of the same clip.

Other riders experimented with food, toys, office supplies and objects that would normally have nothing to do with a fingerboarding session. One participant even claimed to be the first person to perform a fingerboard trick over his own scab.

That variety was exactly what Armavation wanted. The challenge wasn't about producing the largest number of entries or finding one particular style that everyone had to follow. It was about giving riders an open space to think differently and let their personalities enter the session.

The project also extended beyond the clips themselves. Armavation has been interviewing participants so viewers can learn more about the people behind the tricks, whether they are riders the audience already knows or people they are discovering for the first time. In that way, the challenge becomes another way of connecting members of the fingerboarding community, rather than simply putting their names on a list of participants.

There was also a formal judging system behind all that creativity. @mentexxo.fb took on the role of secret judge, evaluating each submission across four categories: creativity, accuracy, presentation, and how well the rider met the criteria of the challenge. Each category received a score from one to four, with four representing the highest score. Mentexxo also volunteered to provide rewards for the three riders with the highest scores, adding another element of community support to the project.

The submissions began to show just how broad the idea could become.

One of the most personal came from Codey Horn, a fingerboarder living with cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. For his entry, Codey used a piece from one of his first wheelchairs, which he had received following his disability, as a rail for a tre flip. What might have initially looked like an unusual obstacle carried a much deeper meaning. The entry led Armavation into a deeper conversation with Codey about his life and personal struggles. He explained that challenges like this help him become a better fingerboarder, while fingerboarding itself has become such an important part of his life that it helps him keep his motor function from declining as quickly.

Then there was @slix.m4, also known as Caleb, who perhaps took the “weird” part of the challenge as literally as anyone could. He performed a fingerboard kickflip over his own scab, describing himself as the first person in the world to do it. For Caleb, the challenge was a chance to have fun and bring out a more creative side of his fingerboarding.

@sloppycoyote.fb went in another direction, performing a tre flip from a box and landing on his own foot. The idea came after Armavation contacted him on July 5, 2026, which happened to be his sister's birthday. He liked the idea of trying to be unique and eventually decided that landing a tre flip on a body part would be weird enough. He chose his foot simply because it was easier to film than his shoulder.

@loogie.g_fb combined a 5-0 with a backflip over a LEGO bonsai tree built by his wife, while @xolkin.fb created a flip combination up a set of stairs before flipping off the stairs. Xolkin initially considered another idea before deciding to build the entry around his favorite trick, the flip. Filming himself while performing the sequence made the attempt more difficult, but after several tries he managed to land it.

For @laylowbuckz.fb, the challenge was an opportunity to have fun after a previous Armavation challenge had pushed him much harder. The rider from El Paso, Texas, who rides for Boneshard Fingerboards, chose a line consisting of a kickflip on a bank leading into a fakie backflip 5-0. The backflip had a personal connection: it was his daughter's favorite trick. He added the 5-0 to make the sequence more challenging.

The French fingerboarding community also showed strong support for the project, with riders including @pr41.fb and Ralph Pernot taking part. Ralph, who rides for Bims Fingerdecks, said he was drawn to the challenge because of the way Armavation creates connections between riders around the world and promotes fingerboarding in different ways. For him, the Weird N Wacky concept was appealing precisely because it asked riders to find an original and fun way to approach a trick or combination.

Across the submissions, the tricks ranged from Ralph's blinded impossible over a gap and Caleb's kickflip over a scab to Alex's grind impossible out on a French baguette, Codey's tre flip over the wheelchair piece, Sloppycoyote's tre flip to foot landing, Jhay Baay's kickflip-to-grab-to-handflip-to-frontside-boardslide 180 out, Xolkin's stair sequence and Armavation's own pop shuv it on a wall.

For Jhay Baay, a fingerboarder from the Philippines, receiving the invitation was a pleasant surprise. He had already seen Armavation's videos on Instagram, so when he was asked to participate, he began brainstorming unusual tricks before settling on his combination. Being chosen as one of the riders gave him a chance to contribute to a project he had already been following.

Alex's entry, meanwhile, carried perhaps the clearest connection between a trick, an object and personal identity. His signature trick is the Smith grind impossible out, something he says he does everywhere. If he had to choose one trick for the challenge, that was the obvious choice. The baguette was equally obvious for another reason.

“French baguette is more than food,” Alex explained. For him, it is a symbol of France, his home and his family. He also sees humor as an important part of his personality, enjoying the opportunity to play with stereotypes and turn the whole thing into a kind of comedy. The result was his decision to simply ride a baguette.

Representing France matters to him, he said, not because he believes his country or family is perfect, but because it is home. That personal element appeared repeatedly throughout the challenge. The objects may have been strange, but they weren't always meaningless.

For @whujuju, the challenge demonstrated how fingerboarding can offer even more creative possibilities than skateboarding, particularly when riders begin experimenting with new tricks and obstacles. He saw the project as a way to bring together the variety of a global fingerboarding community and hoped the challenge would continue to surprise people with what participants could create.

Patrick, who rides under the name @bajaextrablast5, brought another perspective. He began skateboarding at 13 in 2008 and picked up his first Tech Deck after rolling his ankle. In 2020, he discovered professional fingerboarding through TikTok and began making edits and presenting his skills. That eventually led to sponsors, competitions and a collection of medals and awards from local events.

For Patrick, creativity and competition can coexist, but fingerboarding doesn't have to be a competition to be enjoyable. His message to the community is simple: fingerboarding is a wonderful hobby, so have fun with it.

That idea runs through the entire Weird N Wacky Challenge.

Mentexxo, who watched the submissions as the challenge's judge, said the project gave riders an opportunity to show not only their talent but also how far they could take their own abilities without pressure. He saw riders grinding on French bread and performing technical combinations on everyday office supplies, but what stood out to him was the inspiration created by the participants themselves.

He wanted to give every rider credit for their submissions and hoped they would carry the same creativity into their future sessions, using what they had learned to progress and discover new things in fingerboarding.

Because ultimately, the Weird N Wacky Challenge wasn't created simply to determine who could land the best trick. It gave riders a reason to look at their surroundings differently, to bring their own stories into their sessions and to discover possibilities outside the usual boundaries of fingerboarding.

A baguette became a symbol of home. A piece of a wheelchair became a rail. A LEGO bonsai became an obstacle. A body part became a landing zone.

And somewhere between the strange objects, difficult tricks and jokes, a global group of fingerboarders found another reason to ride together. As Mentexxo put it to everyone who participated: keep on ridin'.