A skateboarder performing a frontside lipslide.
Skateboarding the act of rolling on or interacting with a skateboard. Someone who skateboards is a skater (or skateboarder), though skater may also refer to someone ice skating or roller skating.
Like roller skating, skateboarding is often done for recreation and as a sport, but, more often than ice skating, it is a method of transportation. Skateboarding has been thought of by many as part of the extreme sports family, or as an art form for its creative aspects. Skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by hundreds of skateboarders throughout the years. A 2002 report by American Sports Data found that there were 12.5 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[1].
History of the skateboard
Skateboarding has its origins in surfing, and was originally called "sidewalk surfing". While surfing influenced skateboarding in its early days, now the reverse is also true. Surfers are adapting skateboarding tricks into surfing, and the result is evolution in both sports. The skateboarders most credited with the advancement of skateboarding are the Z-Boys from Venice Beach, California, who revolutionized skateboarding with the 'surf style' riding technique, and the Bones Brigade (including skateboarding icon Tony Hawk) from the 1980s, who helped produce some of the most revolutionary skateboarding videos ever made. They started riding skateboards in empty swimming pools, as portrayed in the movie Lords of Dogtown.
The third generation
The third skateboard generation, from the early eighties to early nineties, was started by skateboard companies that actively promoted their art. The focus was initially on half-pipe and vert ramp skateboarding. The invention of the no-hands aerial (later known as the ollie) by Alan Gelfand in 1978 made it possible for skaters to perform huge airs off vertical ramps. With vert skating being dominant, decks were initially very wide with large and wide wheels, though as time progressed and skateparks became fewer in number, street skating gained popularity, causing a change in both deck shape and wheel size. Street skating became skateboarding's most popular form. Mark Gonzales pioneered street skating and was the first person to ollie up a curb and to clear a set of stairs. Manufacturers preferred maple plywood over more exotic composite materials almost exclusively, and concave decks became ubiquitous. The third skateboarding generation was nearly killed by the global economical recession in the early nineties.
The current generation
The size and shape of the fourth and current generation of skateboards is dominated by one trick: the ollie. Most boards are about 7 1/4 to 8 inches wide and 30 to 32 inches long. The wheels have an extremely hard durometer (approximately 99) so that they will slide better during grind and slide tricks. Additionally, very high durometers offer the benefit of reduced drag on hard surfaces, resulting in an overall faster ride. The wheel sizes are relatively small so that the boards will rotate more easily during flip tricks. In the early 1990s, Dave McGann began the first professional urethane wheel company also known as SpitFire. Today, modern wheels are currently around 50 to 58mm in diameter and advances in technology have made them extremely light compared to the wheels of the eighties. The decks are still almost always constructed out of Canadian Maple, with 7-plys being the industry standard for strength and durability. Interest in high technology materials has increased slightly as the cost of manufacturing them has dropped.
Trick skating
See Skateboarding trick for detailed description of trick skating maneuvers
Young skater in front of a bank.
With the evolution of skateparks and ramp riding, the skateboard began to change. Early skate tricks consisted mainly of two-dimensional maneuvers (e.g. riding on only the front wheels (nose manual), spinning like an ice skater on the back wheels (a 360 pivot), high jumping over a bar, long jumping from one board to another (often over fearless teenagers lying on their backs), slalom, etc.) Around 1978, street riding became transformed by the invention of the first modern skateboarding trick, by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand. An ollie is performed by pressing down quickly on the back of a skateboard, and controlling the resulting upward motion of the skateboard with the skater's front foot. This results in the skateboarder, along with his or her skateboard, lifting into the air. At first, none of Gelfand's companions believed it was possible to perform a feat like this, and they thought he was attaching his feet to the board somehow. The trick was reinvented by Rodney Mullen in the 80's, being transferred to the horizontal plane and used as a trick for freestyle skating (a style of skating popular in the seventies and eighties based on stationary maneuvers). (Rodney Mullen also invented the kickflip.) No longer is the trick simply to fly from one place to another. On the way the board can twist and flip, as can the rider. The development of these complex tricks by Rodney Mullen and others transformed skateboarding. Skateboarding went from being performed only on the street to the vertical tops of the half pipes (and other terrain like huge stairs and handrails). The act of "ollieing" onto a rail or pole, and sliding along it on the trucks of the board, is known as grinding and has become a mainstay of modern skateboarding.
Skateboarding culture
Skateboarding in its inception was tied to the culture of surfing. As skateboarding spread across the United States to places that were unfamiliar with surfing or its culture, it developed an image of its own. Skateboarding culture has long been tied to the punk subculture, but over the last decade skateboarding has broken from even its loose cultural ties with punk to form its own subculture. Skateboarding now has its own stereotypes, music, fashion, and slang. The "modern skateboarder" is no longer perceived as a degenerate or malfeasant, on account of the mainstream popularity and respectability of skateboarders like Tony Hawk. Previously, skateboarding was looked down on by most of society because of most skateboarders perceived affinity for crime and delinquency. Now that skateboarding has become an international sport and many have made their livings out of professional skateboarding, the sport is no longer considered meaningless and is considered by many to be a legitimate sport. However, skateboarding still has a bad reputation throughout the world, and is often seen as destructive and obnoxious.
The former image of the skateboarder as a rebellious, nonconforming youth has come in direct conflict with the modern image of skateboarding in recent years. The word "poser" is used quite often by people who consider themselves to be "authentic" skateboarders to deride people who they believe only skateboard in order to imitate the fashionability of skateboarding. The word is derived from the fact these people often "pose" as skateboarders, despite the fact that they aren't. According to many skaters, anybody who skateboards for fun is not considered a poser, as the use of the word doesn't depend on the skill of the skater. This rift between the old image of skateboarding and the new one is quite visible: magazines like Thrasher [2] portray an image of skateboarding that is dirty, rebellious, and still firmly tied to punk, while magazines like Transworld Skateboarding [3] portray a more modernized, diverse, and controlled image of skateboarding.
"Walmart Skateboard" is a derogatory term for a skateboard sold at a department store(deriving from the fact that Walmart sells skateboards for 9 dollars). People with these skateboards are often considered posers due to their lack of prior knowledge that these boards are counterfeit, however, this is not always the case.
Many posers can often be spotted through their shoes. You can often see people wearing skateboarding shoes. Skateboarder's shoes often rip, tear, or scuff at the front of the shoes. This is due to the friction between the corse-grip tape and the softer shoe's material that occurs when flip tricks are preformed. This effect isn't present right away, and may take a couple months before any sort of marks appear.
Some companies that make skateboarding shoes produce other types of shoes, such as lesiure shoes. The company may be popular with non-skaters, and become known as a poser company. The best example of this is the company Vans. Their shoes can commonly be seen in schools and public places throughout the United States and other countries. This angers skaters, and can cause some of them to have a negative outlook on the company.
Skateboarding perception change
In more recent years skateboarding has began growing greatly in appeal. What once was looked at as a sport for angry punk suburban 16-year olds, is not the case anymore with skateboarding. There's a new generation which has much more range than people generally think of when they think of skateboarding. Some of the most popular X-games skaters are african american or even asian. Skateboarding is also considered a form of transportation by many that definitely don't look as though they fit the typical mold that is often cast upon skaterboarders. People of all ages use them to get to school, go to the library, get to the gym, it's not uncommon to see a mix of all ages and looks these days on a skateboard. In the past, that was not the case. In the future, it appears as though this will change even more as skateboarding gets more widely picked up on and accepted as a mainstream activity.
Further reading
- 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.
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