FR UFR Street Antony Pottier Flat 4x65 - Black Inline Skates

UFR Street are newest addition to freeskating family of skates made by French brand. At a first glance, they look like older, well known FR models, with a soulplate. And this is basically correct because functionally, it is what they are. However, things are not as obvious as they seem.

The UFR has been created as a solution to a lack of UFS (Universal Frame System) compatible and aggressive skates in the brand’s catalogue. Bear in mind that after Seba and FR Skates have parted ways, the skates based around CJ boot (the only aggressive skates in Seba line-up) stayed with the former. Thus, new brand was left without a model in this segment. However, while CJ skates were an attempt to attract audience looking for high-end, carbon based skates, UFR Street is a more affordable, plastic boot. Interestingly, the first run of these skates consists of three models and all of them are signature skates of Antony Pottier:

-UFR Street AP, the basic option. It is a boot only with regular FR liner.

-UFR Street AP FLAT, the complete skates coming with regular liner and Anthony’s FLAT frames.

-UFR Street AP Intuition, once again a boot only, however coming with Intuition liner instead of FR one.

It is safe to say that if you are familiar with regular FR models, you are also familiar with the new UFR. The shell is modelled after the same cast, have the same shape (apart from underside of the heel) and a cuff. Surprisingly, no UFR model comes with canting (cuff position adjustment) option known from FR1 and FR2 skates. Instead, all of them use a simple screw just like lower end FR3 and FRX. All UFR Street models have plastic top buckle and 45 degree Velcro strap. This is intentional, seeing that aggressive skates make closure elements more prone to damage – metal buckles and ratchet straps would break way sooner than simpler, plastic ones.

The liner in UFR AP and AP FLAT models is also the same as in regular FRs – comfortable, anatomically shaped and surprisingly good in terms of quality for a stock one. It can be laced in the upper part, which prevents tongue moving around and damaging both your shin and the liner itself.

So, what’s the main difference compared to older models? Apart from the soulplate, the UFS compatibility, of course. But here’s the catch – while most raised heel aggressive skating boots use soulplate which is thicker under the heel, to make up for the rise, UFR uses a different solution. A thick block was added to the shell mould, which makes the boot having both mounting points on the same level even without the soulplate. This means several things:

-You can take off soulplates and attach frames directly to the boot. In fact, apart from UFR Street skates, FR has released three freeskating versions using this solution. Seeing that the boot itself is as streamlined and slim profile as regular FRs, this makes it a perfect candidate to put on big wheel rockered frames like Wizards!

-UFR soulplates won’t work with regular FR boots (sorry, you have to buy a new skate!).

-UFR boots will not work with raised heel, 165 mm mount spacing frames.

UFR Street AP FLAT are complete skates coming with FLAT frames designed by Antony Pottier himself. He used regular freeskating frames in street skating for several years, because of their agility and speed, but they were obviously limiting when it comes to rick vocabulary. Thus, he created concept of frames which will merge best aspects of aggressive and freeskating frames. FLAT are super solid, rigid and responsive thanks to being made out of aluminium, with level of quality you can find in best freeskating frames. At the same time, they come with generous, replaceable H-block, giving you comfort of locking onto groove tricks without worrying about wheelbite. Seeing that maximum wheel size is 65 mm, the frames are still pretty low profile, but give you decent roll and speed. In addition, going for this size means that even with wide groove, the frames are not that long and very manoeuvrable.

The FLAT frames allow you to get from spot to spot and explore urban environment on skates, which cannot be said about most “pure” aggressive skating models. In addition, these are dream come true in bowls and in skateparks. The metal-on-metal feel they give you while sliding on coping is something magical and you won’t want to get back to plastic frames!