There are tons of different skate shoe companies out there, and what they offer differs in durability, style. size, bulk. and so on, but if I had to choose a great overall shoe that I would keep coming back to, it would have to be the Elby Skate Shoe. They’re just so comfy to wear and I love the amount of feel they give you as you walk/board around. The look of the shoe is not as stylish as some, but luckily they have a good amount of colours to choose from. If you’re after a durable shoe that offers substance over style, then grab these!
The Elby skate shoe, made by Brooklyn Workshop, is an amazing, long lasting, low profile, comfortable shoe that was made with Longboarders in mind.
Where to even being on how awesome these shoes are? Let’s start with what this shoe is about. Brooklyn Workhop and Michael Ditullo, a well known shoe designer who has worked with Nike, Jordan, and Converse, teamed up and created the Elby Skate shoe. The Elby is a very technical shoe with lots of great features that make it much better then your regular shoes. These features include:
-High abrasion sole, designed to withstand abuse while also gripping
-Edges reinforced with leather and stitching
-Strong rubber underlayer toe cap
-Highly grippy rubber overlayer toe cap “drag patch”
-Metal lace eyelets and metal lace tips
-Double stitched suede overlay protects lowest lace loops, providing strength and style
-Changeable insole if you want to rock your own
-Two pairs of laces in two colours
Holding and seeing the Elby shoe really shows the quality and time put into creating it. They just feel great to hold, let alone to wear.
I love these shoes! Why do I love them so much?! Well tons of reasons, but one of the biggest is how much I can feel everything in them, even with my own insoles.
By feeling everything I mean these shoes give you a great sense of where you are on your board, you can feel the “W” concave, the flares, the pockets, the grip tape. You can feel it all through these shoes. This being said, it means you can feel all the rocks, bumps, cracks and imperfections in the road. This can be a little weird if you are used to riding bulkier skate shoes, but despite it being a small shoe and with less bulk I was surprised at just how long they lasted.
I got my first pair – the Black/Gum/Canvas, mid- May 2013 and they lasted me until January 15th, 2014. The first 4 months or so I was really putting them to the test, putting my foot down and foot breaking a lot more than I usually would. Also I was putting my foot down and dragging it at all different speeds to see how long they’d last. To my great surprise they were lasting and not wearing down as fast as
I expected. This means that if you aren’t trying to thrash these shoes they will last you a long long time!
They’re super comfy, too! The insole they come with doesn’t have much arch support, so after a lot of boarding around your feet may start to get a little bit sore, but what’s awesome about these shoes is you can remove the insoles! I put a pair of my Medic Insoles in, which have arch support, and they became the most comfortable shoe I have worn. All they need is a little arch support and they become the ultimate feel-everything shoe.Who could ask for more?! This shoe is made for Longboarding!
Being born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, we get used to a lot of rain here. Even with all this rain, the shoes kept my feet a lot dryer then most shoes. Nice surprise! The shoe has a large rubber overlay over the toe area which stops a lot of the rain from getting in. The only parts of my feet that got wet were the sides near the kicktail pads, but my toes kept nice and dry! This is a great all season shoe, nice and light during the summer and hot weather, but keeps your feet dry during the wet weather. Even rocking these shoes sockless feels comfortable. I brought these shoes to Hawaii to see how they would fare against the warmer pavement there.
The hot roads didn’t effect them too much. It did soften the rubber but the foot I used for pushing didn’t get any holes. The only shoe that got holes was my support foot, which surprised me most. I guess all the slight foot pivoting on the board wore the sole down a lot faster than pushing and or foot breaking, which is surprising. Not sure if it had to do with the hot weather or if it sped the process up but in the end I was still satisfied that I could use them for a bit longer. They retired in Hawaii (this is 8 months after I got them) after thrashing them harshly there.