From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Skateboarding is the act of both riding on and performing tricks using a skateboard. A person who skateboards is most often referred to as a skateboarder or a skater.
Skateboarding is a recreational activity, a job, or a method of transportation.[1] Skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2002 report by American Sports Data
found that there were 18.5 million skateboarders in the world. 85
percent of skateboarders polled who had used a board in the last year
were under the age of 18, and 74 percent were male.[2]
Skateboarding is relatively modern. A key skateboarding maneuver, the ollie, was developed in the late 1970s. In the early '80s freestyle skateboarder Rodney Mullen invented the ollie kickflip which originally was called a Magic Flip.[3]
History
The 1940s-1960s
Skateboarding was probably born sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s when surfers in California,
wanted something to surf when the waves were flat. No one knows who
made the first board, rather, it seems that several people came up with
similar ideas at around the same time. These first skateboarders
started with wooden boxes or boards with roller skate wheels attached
to the bottom. The boxes turned into planks, and eventually companies
were producing decks of pressed layers of wood -- similar to the
skateboard decks of today. During this time, skateboarding was seen as
something to do for fun besides surfing, and was therefore often
referred to as "Sidewalk Surfing".
The first manufactured skateboards were ordered by a Los Angeles, California
surf shop, meant to be used by surfers in their downtime. The shop
owner, Bill Richard, made a deal with the Chicago Roller Skate Company
to produce sets of skate wheels, which they attached to square wooden
boards. Accordingly, skateboarding was originally denoted "sidewalk
surfing" and early skaters emulated surfing style and maneuvers. Crate scooters
preceded skateboards, and were borne of a similar concept, with the
exception of having a wooden crate attached to the nose (front of the
board), which formed rudimentary handlebars.[4]
A number of surfing manufacturers such as Makaha
started building skateboards that resembled small surfboards, and
assembling teams to promote their products. The popularity of
skateboarding at this time spawned a national magazine, Skateboarder Magazine,
and the 1965 international championships were broadcast on national
television. The growth of the sport during this period can also be seen
in sales figures for Makaha, which quoted $10 million worth of board
sales between 1963 and 1965 (Weyland, 2002:28). Yet by 1966 the sales
had dropped significantly (ibid) and Skateboarder Magazine had stopped
publication. The popularity of skateboarding dropped and remained low
until the early 1970s. [4][5]
The 1970s
In the early 1970s, Frank Nasworthy started to develop a skateboard wheel made of polyurethane, calling it the 'Cadillac', as he hoped this would convey the fat ride it afforded the rider.[4]
The improvement in traction and performance was so immense that from
the wheel's release in 1974 the popularity of skateboarding started to
rise rapidly again, causing companies to invest more in product
development. Many companies started to manufacture trucks (axles)
especially designed for skateboarding, reached in 1976 by Tracker Trucks.
As the equipment became more maneuverable, the decks started to get
wider, reaching widths of 10 inches (250 mm) and over, thus giving the
skateboarder even more control. Banana board is a term used to describe skateboards made of polypropylene
that were skinny, flexible, with ribs on the underside for structural
support and very popular during the mid-1970s. They were available in
myriad colors, bright yellow probably being the most memorable, hence
the name.
Manufacturers started to experiment with more exotic composites and metals, like fiberglass and aluminium,
but the common skateboards were made of maple plywood. The
skateboarders took advantage of the improved handling of their
skateboards and started inventing new tricks. Skateboarders, most
notably Ty Page, Bruce Logan, Bobby Piercy, Kevin Reed, and the Z-Boys
(so-called because of their local Zephyr surf shop) started to skate
the vertical walls of swimming pools that were left empty in the 1976
California drought. This started the vert trend in skateboarding. With
increased control, vert skaters could skate faster and perform more
dangerous tricks, such as slash grinds and frontside/backside airs.
This caused liability concerns and increased insurance costs to
skatepark owners, and the development (first by Norcon,then more successfully by Rector)
of improved knee pads that had a hard sliding cap and strong strapping
proved to be too-little-too-late. During this era, the "freestyle"
movement in skateboarding began to splinter off and develop into a much
more specialized discipline, characterized by the development of a wide
assortment of high flat-ground tricks.
As a result of the "vert" skating movement most notably skated by
vert baby brett swartz, skate parks had to contend with high-liability
costs that led to many park closures. In response, vert skaters started
making their own ramps, while freestyle skaters continued to evolve
their flatland style. Thus by the beginning of the 1980s, skateboarding
had once again fallen into obscurity. [5]
Skateboarder Brandon Cardone does a cliff
hanger pivot to fakie (a lip trick) at the former East Coast Terminal
Skateboard Park in Johnson City, NY.
The 1980s
This period was fuelled by skateboard companies that were run by skateboarders. The focus was initially on vert ramp skateboarding. The invention of the no-hands aerial (later known as the ollie) by Alan Gelfand in Florida in 1976[6] and the almost parallel development of the grabbed aerial by George Orton and Tony Alva
in California in had made it possible for skaters to perform airs on
vertical ramps. While this wave of skateboarding was sparked by
commercialized vert ramp skating, a majority of people who skateboarded
during this period never rode vert ramps. Because most people couldn't
afford to build vert ramps or didn't have access to nearby ramps,
street skating gained popularity. Freestyle skating remained healthy
throughout this period with pioneers such as Rodney Mullen
inventing the many of the basic tricks of modern street skating such as
the flat ground the kickflip, and the heelflip. The influence freestyle
had on street skating became apparent during the mid-eighties, but
street skating was still performed on wide vert boards with short
noses, slide rails, and large soft wheels. Skateboarding, however,
evolved quickly in the late 1980s to accommodate the street skater.
Since few skateparks were available to skaters at this time, street
skating pushed skaters to seek out shopping centres and public and
private property as their "spot" to skate. Public opposition, and the
threat of lawsuits, forced businesses and property owners to ban
skateboarding on their property[citation needed].
By 1992, only a small fraction of skateboarders remained as a highly
technical version of street skating, combined with the decline of vert
skating, produced a sport that lacked the mainstream appeal to attract
new skaters.
The 1990s to Present
The current generation of skateboards is dominated by street
skating. Most boards are about 7¼ to 8 inches wide and 30 to 32 inches
long. The wheels are made of an extremely hard polyurethane, with hardness(durometer)
approximately 99a. The wheel sizes are relatively small so that the
boards are lighter, and the wheel's inertia is overcome quicker, thus
making tricks more manageable. Board styles have changed dramatically
since the 1970s but have remained mostly alike since the mid 1990s. The
contemporary shape of the skateboard is derived from the freestyle
boards of the 1980s with a largely symmetrical shape and relatively
narrow width. This form had become standard by the mid '90s.
Go Skateboarding Day
was created in 2004 by a group of skateboarding companies to promote
skateboarding and help make it more noticeable to the world. It is
celebrated every year on June 21st.
Trick skating
- See Skateboarding trick for detailed descriptions of maneuvers
A skater performs a switch
kickflip off a stairset.
With the evolution of skateparks
and ramp riding, the skateboard began to change. Early skate tricks had
consisted mainly of two-dimensional manoeuvres like riding on only two
wheels ("wheelie" or "manual"), spinning only on the back wheels (a
"pivot"), high jumping over a bar and landing on the board again, long
jumping from one board to another (often over small barrels or fearless
teenagers) or slalom.
In 1976, skateboarding was transformed by the invention of the ollie by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand,
. It remained largely a unique Florida trick until the summer of 1978,
when Gelfand made his first visit to California. Gelfand and his
revolutionary manoeuvre caught the attention of the West Coast skaters
and the media where it began to spread worldwide. The ollie was adapted
to flat ground by Rodney Mullen in 1982. Mullen also invented the ollie kickflip,
which, at the time of its invention, was dubbed the "magic flip." The
flat ground ollie allowed skateboarders to perform tricks in mid-air
without any more equipment than the skateboard itself, it forms the
basis of many street skating tricks.
Culture
- See also: Skate punk
- See also: Punk fashion
Skateboarding was, at first, tied to the culture of surfing. As skateboarding spread across the United States to places unfamiliar with surfing or surfing culture, it developed an image of its own. For example, the classic film short Video Days (1991) portrayed skateboarders as reckless rebels.
The image of the skateboarder as a rebellious, non-conforming youth has faded in recent years[citation needed]. The rift between the old image of skateboarding and a newer one is quite visible: magazines such as Thrasher portray skateboarding as dirty, rebellious, and still firmly tied to punk, while other publications, Transworld Skateboarding as an example, paint a more diverse, and controlled picture of skateboarding. Furthermore, as more professional skaters use hip hop
music accompaniment in their videos, many urban youths and hip-hop fans
are drawn to skateboarding, further diluting the sport's punk image.[7]
Films such as Grind and Lords Of Dogtown, have helped improve the reputation of skateboarding youth[citation needed],
depicting individuals of this subculture as having a positive outlook
on life, prone to poking harmless fun at each other, and engaging in
healthy sportsman's competition. According to the film, lack of
respect, egotism and hostility towards fellow skateboarders is
generally frowned upon, albeit each of the characters (and as such,
proxies of the "stereotypical" skateboarder) have a firm disrespect for
authority and for rules in general. Group spirit is supposed to heavily
influence the members of this community. In presentations of this sort,
showcasing of criminal tendencies is absent, and no attempt is made to
tie extreme sports to any kind of illegal activity[citation needed].
Gleaming the Cube, a 1989 movie starring Christian Slater as
a skateboarding teen investigating the death of his adopted Vietnamese
brother was somewhat of an iconic landmark to the skateboarding genre
of the era[citation needed]. Many well-known skaters had cameos in the film, including Tony Hawk.
Skateboarding video games have also become very popular in skateboarding culture[citation needed] and are supported by many systems such as the Xbox and Playstation. Some of the most popular are Tony Hawk's Underground, and Skate. for the Xbox 360
Skateboarding as a form of transportation
The use of skateboards solely as a form of transportation is often associated with the longboard[citation needed].
Depending on local laws, using skateboards as a form of transportation
outside residential areas may or may not be legal. Backers cite
portability, exercise, and environmental friendliness as some of the
benefits of skateboarding as an alternative to automobiles.
Skateboards, along with other small-wheeled transportation such as
in-line skates and scooters, suffer a safety caveat where riders may
easily be thrown from small cracks and outcroppings in pavement,
especially where the cracks run perpendicular to the direction of
travel. However, high average travel speeds help mitigate this;
injuries are more likely to be minor[citation needed], although head injuries still pose a major health risk.
Miscellaneous
A member of Charlie Company 1st Battalion 5th Marines carries a skateboard during military exercise
Urban Warrior '99
Skateboard ban in Norway
The use, ownership and sale of skateboards were forbidden in Norway,
during the period between 1978 and 1989. The ban was said to be due to
the perceived high number of injuries caused by boards. The ban led
skateboarders to construct ramps in the forest and other secluded areas
to avoid the police.[8]
Military experimentation in the United States
The United States Marine Corps tested the usefulness of commercial off-the-shelf skateboards during urban combat military exercises in the late 1990s. Their special purpose was "for maneuvering inside buildings in order to detect tripwires and sniper fire".[9][10]
Novice and amateur skate teams
Many novice and amateur skateboarding teams have emerged in the last
ten years consisting of groups of talented skateboarders. Amateur
skateboarding competitions such as the Free Flow tour among many others
allows such teams to compete with each other even though they are not
professionals.[11][12][13][14]
Notes
Further reading and information
- Borden, Iain. (2001). Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body. Oxford: Berg.
- Hocking, Justin, Jeffrey Knutson and Jared Maher (Eds.). (2004). Life and Limb: Skateboarders Write from the Deep End. New York: Soft Skull Press.
- Weyland, Jocko. (2002). The Answer is Never: a History and Memoir of Skateboarding. New York: Grove Press.
- Hawk, Tony and Mortimer, Sean. (2000). Hawk: Occupation: Skateboarder. New York: HarperCollins.
- Thrasher Magazine. (2001). Thrasher: Insane Terrain. New York: Universe.
- Brooke, Michael (1999) The Concrete Wave - the History of Skateboarding. Warwick Publishing
- Mullen, Rodney and Mortimer, Sean (2003). The Mutt
- Skateboard Kings, a 1978 documentary on skateboarding
- SkateSpotter, a directory of skate spots
External links
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