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Revision as of 11:35, 25 September 2001

Skateboarding is the act of rolling on or interacting with a skateboard.

History of skateboarding

Skateboarding has its origins in surfing. Originally called "sidewalk surfing," skateboarding was an easy way for non-surfers to feel the great feeling of surfing. Now, with wakeboarding replacing much waterskiing and snowboarding replacing much skiing, the desire to feel this great motion is really catching on like never before.

In the 1970s skateboarding was still a sidewalk "sport" with surfboard shaped boards designed more for the California vibe than for function. Narrow trucks kept the wheels close together and made the board a bit unstable, but still fun. As boards and truck widened, there was also a growth of terrain skating. Originallly drainage ditches and such were uses, and for the lucky, empty swimming pools, but then skaters began to build their own terrains: the ramp. In the beginning, the ramp was a quarter pipe that you would skate up to and up to the edge at the top. A big improvement came with the "half pipe." Though there are skateboard parks with extremely complex 3-d terrains, the half-pipe is still the core of upper level skateboarding. Ski resorts have them for snowboarders, and the pipes for skateboarders are commonly used for rollerbladers and bicycles.

A very interesting evolution happened approximately simultaneously with the evolution of skateboard park and ramp riding. The street riding was originally basically two dimensional tricks (eg: riding on only the front wheels (nose wheelie), spinning like an ice skater on the back wheels (a 360), high jumping over a bar, long jumping from one board to another (often over fearless teenagers lying on their backs!), slalom, etc. Around 1978 or so, street riding became transformed by the invention of the "ollie". It was invented by a single person in a skateboard park and it spread like wildfire. The ollie is to fly off the ground (flat or a wall) with the board, but without holding onto the board and then landing back on the board. It involves using your feet to press against the board in various complicated compinations, depending on the trick to be performed. No longer is the trick to fly from one place to another. On the way the board can twist and flip, as can the rider, then to be united before hitting ground. The development of these complex tricks went from the street to the vertical tops of the half pipes (and other terrains). Truly an amazing transformation considering what is going on between rider and board.

History of the skateboard

In the beginning, a skateboard was just made of wooden planks, little more than two by fours with the wheels from roller skates attached to the bottom. Often the wheels were made of clay. Stage two was the plastic surfboard imitations that were small and unstable. The wheels began as clay but were later replaced with plastics. Stage three was the attempt to make them more interesting and flexible. They all had kicktails now, an approximately 20 degree slope up of the last 3 or 4 inches of the board, behind the back wheels. Materials included fiberglass ply (sucessful but seldom seen now) and aluminum (bad idea because the edges became very sharp). (The aluminum board, though, presaged the current skateboard style of having a kicktail at both ends). Stage four was when the wide boards and trucks came on the scene and everything changed. The tricks that could be performed expanded tremendously and the equipment and control needed to handle extreme vertical terrain was finally available. This was the first renaissance in skateboarding (later followed by the Ollie). Boards were now 8 to 10 inches wide, with wheels well out to the edges. Wheels were generally soft polyurethane and came in a large variety of colors, sizes and degrees of hardness (durometer). The decks had a kicktail still, and a very useful convex surface running the length of the board. Stage five was when the Ollie took over and the wide boards were too heavy and onedirectional to accomodate all of the tricks being invented. The boards narrowed to about 8 inches, with no front or back distinguishable. The wheels also narrowed to catch on things less and were made much harder to allow more sliding.

later, I will add info on: a few of the transformational personalities of the history of skateboarding. Also, a few links to interesting sites about the old days of the sport, magazines, press coverage, etc. (for ex: Wide World of Sports used to cover skateboarding competitons...Howard Cosell interviewing Tony Alva!)