As the youngest of four children and the only girl, Jona Frank spent a fair amount of her youth forced to sit, and watch her older brothers at hockey games, piano recitals or at church as they served Mass as altar boys. And those observational skills would serve as a stepping stone to a career as a photographer.

Frank’s exhibit at DNJ Gallery, "Boys in Progress" is an homage to those days watching her siblings maneuver and figure out the world. On view are 20 photos of boys ages 8 to 22 taken at different phases of their adolescence, be it a surfer boy, a Boy Scout or a young Mormon proselytizing.

Frank shot some of her subjects a few years apart in this ongoing project focusing on the phases boys go through as they explore their identities.One example, "Simon," was initially shot in 2005 of a 10-year-old boy on a playground with wild blond hair in a Metallica shirt. She revisited him a year later; in "Simon One Year Later" he had clearly grown in size and was still into skating with a "Skate and Destroy" helmet but with less attitude.

My relatives has been structure up a amassment of skateboards and casterboards (Ripstik, Bladeboard, Xglider, WhipTide, and Welling up Board), and this discuss will juxtapose them based on the impressions of a 48yo dad, my 15yo son, and my 9yo daughter.

Skateboard - As a youth I built my own skateboards with the most adroitly trucks, wheels, etc., that I could give forth entangled with, and I built my own ramps and did some of the tricks that you see at skateparks, so I’ve got a lot of ordeal with skateboards. One affair about skateboards is that if you’re not systematic, they can toss out from under you when you put a foot on them, which can root injuries. There are a lot of fun tricks that can be done with skateboards, but for principled skateboarding on a sincere street they can be degree insensible compared to casterboards.

Ripstik - It feels precarious getting on a Ripstik for the first lifetime, but we pronto got the abashed of it. In my thought it’s safer than a skateboard in the tail that it doesn’t sprout out from under you very clearly (it unreservedly flops onto its side since it only has two wheels). On the au fait with street in front of our put up, the Ripstik is WAY more fun than a skateboard, and my kids and I time again business casterboards because we all paucity to have a disclose on the Ripstik. The only downside is that the Ripstik wheels weary down quick (see “A note about the wheels” below).

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