From top to bottom, Week 1 to Week 4

We posted the First Glance for the Supra Skytop 3 back in July and I never imagined that this review would be out 3 months later. Ideally, I wanted any review to be done within a 1-2 month period. The truth is, aside from being extremely busy, the Supra Skytop 3 has been one of the most difficult shoes we've reviewed yet. That's definitely not a back handed remark, the shoe just seems to be indestructible.

I won't spoil too much about the shoes performance before getting into the review but because of it's high grade of durability, I questioned myself on whether to extend the review any further than I had originally planned. The Supra Skytop 3 is a great example of the time, devotion and technology you should be expecting from your fellow skate brands. While taking a step forward in design and support, I feel like we, as an industry are stepping back in time where we test the standards and instead of sticking with what is safe and profitable, we go with whats risky and original. That, in my opinion, is truth essence of skateboarding. Let's get into the review.

The review was done using our month long format and the shoe was skated for a total of 20 hours. Check below after each section to view the grading system. We base our ratings from 1-10. 10 being the best and 1 being the absolute worst. Enjoy.

Probably the nicest guy in skateboarding today, on and off the board, Ronnie Creager has blessed us with some product from his new brand, Etcetera. During the month of October, we'll be taking a closer look into Etcetera products which include two types of strongly constructed insoles and an ankle stabilizer for those of you with fucked ankles. I have no doubt in my mind that Etcetera will exceed our expectations much like their founder. If these products are as good as Ronnie, we'll be seeing them for a long time. Look out for the review to drop soon and check out the Etcetera Project online for more details.

Shout out to Bobby Spero for suggesting we review Etcetera products. Thanks Bobby! Bother him on Twitter!

Not to long ago I was lurking on our Ripped Laces FB, just dicking around not doing much. Occasionally I post, answer any shoe related questions you might have and chat with you about a shoe you're interested in. I may not know everything but I do pride myself in being able to help you guys out and field some questions. As I was just chilin on Facebook, I get a chat notification. It was from a dedicated reader and skater, Dave Van Housen.

Dave hit me up on Facebook chat and wanted to know if I had any suggestions on Vegan skate shoes. We went back and forth trying to figure out what canvas skate shoes could last the test of time and not rape your wallet in the process. I, myself, use to be Vegan for 5 years so I know this situation too well.

Since the mid 90's, vegan friendly shoes haven't been as easy to obtain without putting a tremendous hole in your wallet and shoes. Most vegan friendly shoes (when I say "most" I mean Ed Templeton and Geoff Rowley models) use to be indestructible and better than performance suede. They would always have a nice, thick rubber toe piece kinda like the Emerica Templeton 4. Since those days are over, I dug deeply into my skate nerdery of a brain and looked online to help Dave find a solution to his problem. In the end, I told him that a CONS CTS in canvas should do the trick. It has a solid rubber toe cap to manage his kickflip problems and has a strong layered toe box to handle some abuse. In helping Dave, I also came to a conclusion myself. I must review a canvas skate shoe.

Originally, this review started because Timothy Olson of Roger skateboards asked me if I'd like to do an Adidas review. I was all like "Fuck yeah, brah!" and he was all like "Oh-kay…..brah" and the rest is history. Weeks later, I received a package from Adidas to find the Ronan and the Adi-Ease. Obviously, I wanted to skate the Ronan and feature them in our reviews but after remembering my conversation with Dave, I knew that skating the Adi-Ease would make for an interesting and insightful article. It all lined up incredibly well so here is your Adidas Adi-Ease shoe review.

The review was done using our month long format and the shoe was skated for a total of 20 hours. Check below after each section to view the grading system. We base our ratings from 1-10. 10 being the best and 1 being the absolute worst. Enjoy.

As you might've read or completely ignored, we suggested not to skate The Edgar out of the box and to give it a 1-2 day breaking in period. Now, because we're completely impatient and have no sense of direction, we went ahead and skated the Edgar right out of the box. The Edgar is so tempting that we caved and tested it out for 4 hours to let you know what potential battle you'd be facing. Here are some of the our conclusions.

The Edgar can be skated out the box but you'll have a difficult time. We strictly did it because we're insanely impatient and wanted to test them out asap. As stated before, it's a stiff shoe and despite it's wide appearance, it feels somewhat narrow. This is all attributed to the hidden rubber toe cap that lays beneath the suede. It's added layer is ultimately what makes the shoe in itself stiff. For those with larger and wider feet, I'd suggest to carefully decide whether you want The Edgar that bad. For myself personally, speaking from a wider foot point of view, I can say that the pain is worth it. During the 1st and 2nd hour of skating, you'll feel slight discomfort on the sides of your foot. It isn't overwhelming enough to add any blistering to your foot or toes but nevertheless it's something that cannot go unnoticed. During the 3rd and 4th hour of skating the shoe, I felt it loosening up a bit and making my skating a little easier. It's one of those shoes that pay off in the long run after dealing with some minor setbacks. The hidden rubber toe cap is a bitch at first but overall adds to the durability and takes an extreme amount of damage like nothing. Skating them out the box felt uncomfortable but was awesome in retrospect. The height and placement of the toe cap is in perfect position to do any flip trick with ease. Normally, with a shoe like this, you wouldn't even attempt any flip tricks on the first day because you'd end up annoyed and flustered. But again, we went against the grain and broke the rules to see how far our boundaries stretched. I did try some flip tricks at the very beginning of skating The Edgar and I'd say about 75% to 80% of them were successful. Now, I'm no Cory Kennedy but because of the positioning of the toe cap and it's height, with a simple flick of the ankle, all flips tricks seemed plausible.

We're going to continue to face the Edgar and give you a full month review in the future. Look out for it and see how well we really did against The eS Edgar.
Peace.

A staple in any house hold kitchen

Before every review, we place careful consideration into effect so that each review is as appealing as the next. The shoe & brand should represent a quality that we would love to recognize, a unique design and offer some form of new technology during the process.

When we reviewed the eS First Blood awhile back, we threw all those thoughts to the side. They were still our guidelines but we strictly just wanted to skate the fuck out of that shoes. It was the best and most organic way to skate them. Normally, after reviewing more than a dozen of shoes, reviews can potentially become more of a "job" than actually skating. Sure, you get to skate free shoes but you have to make sure you're on top of how many hours have gone by, record the data and then publish it before you get blacked out wasted. On top of this, schedule each review carefully to make sure everyone of them remain relevant. This can all be very tedious and at times annoying. You're starting to see what I'm talking about, right? But I'll save my bitching for a later time and wipe my pussy now so we can continue on with this post.

Luckily, every so often their is a shoe that I would actually love to skate, even if I had to pay for them. This was the feeling I got when we were approached to review the eS Edgar. It's a shoe that brought back all these feelings of nostalgia from the First Blood review. Sure, it wasn't long ago but it did in a sense reminded me why I started doing these reviews. When we first started out, we paid for every single shoe out of pocket up until the C1RCA Gallant review. Since then, shoes have been piling up and everything has been getting crazy. Regardless of that fact, we still push on to let you know what shoes are durable and worth your hard earned money.

This post is titled "Ripped Laces v.s. The Edgar." Why? I don't know, it sounds cool but also, it's about showing the initial test we put it through and our "breaking in process."

1st Test of The Edgar

In order to make this article work, we had to get into the "Bobby Worrest" state of mind. Which leads us to our first two photos. Before doing that, we had to figure out the blueprint of the shoe to make sure it could clench our ice cold beverages.

2nd Test

At first, we tested it with an Australian beer to see if it could hold it's extra large bee-ear. We then moved onto a Heineken. This was possibly the best review I've ever done.

Our Blueprint

Our testing isn't at all complete. This was just sort of a cock tease of whats to come. Check back in tomorrow to see the first day of skating The Edgar.