Skateboarding
From Freepedia
Skateboarding is the act of rolling on or interacting with a skateboard. Someone who skateboards is a skater (or skateboarder or most fully skateboard rider), though the 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. Skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by skaters such as Jay Adams, Kenny "Spanky" Long, Rodney Mullen, Andrew Reynolds, Joe Collinge and Tony Hawk.
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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, California, who revolutionized skateboarding with the 'surf style' riding technique, and the Bones Brigade from the 1980s, who helped produce some of the greatest skateboarding videos ever made .
The First Skateboard
The first commercial skateboard was the Roller Derby Skateboard that was introduced in 1959. Before this skateboards were home made pieces of wooden planks with roller skates attached to the bottom. At the time there was a rapidly growing interest in skateboarding (sometimes referred to as "sidewalk surfing") and soon many other similar products emerged. The boards were from 6 to 7 inches wide. At first, wheels made of steel were used. They were not very high in quality and would dent if they hit a pebble. Then, clay wheels were made. They were a little better, but they would fall apart over time, and sometimes the bearings would come out, ejecting the skater and bringing the board to a stop. They had poor traction and would come to a dead stop when rolling over even small pebbles. This made skateboarding inherently a dangerous art and after a few years many cities banned skateboarding because of liability concerns. This development caused the first skateboarding fad to die completely in the fall of 1965. Many skateboard manufacturers went out of business because of losing money on canceled orders for the Christmas holiday season.
The Second Generation
In 1970, Frank Nasworthy started to develop a skateboard wheel made of urethane. The improvement in traction and performance was so immense that popularity of skateboarding started to rise rapidly again. With the growing interest companies started to invest more in product development and many companies started to manufacture trucks (axles) especially designed for skateboarding. As the equipment became more maneuverable the decks started to get wider, reaching widths of 10 inches and over in the end, thus giving the skateboarder even more control. Manufacturers started to experiment with more exotic composites, 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 the Z-Boys, started to skate the vertical walls of swimming pools that were left empty in the 1976 California drought. With increased control skateboarders could skate faster and perform more dangerous tricks. This caused liability concerns and increased insurance costs to skatepark owners. Many skateparks went out of business and the parks were torn down or bulldozed. By the end of 1980, skateboarding had died again.
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 halfpipe and vert ramp skateboarding. The invention of the ollie 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 was gaining popularity, causing a change in both deck shape and wheel size. Manufacturers preferred maple plywood over more exotic composite materials almost exclusively, and concave decks became ubiquitous. The third skateboarding generation was 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 7¾ inches wide and 31½ inches long. The wheels have an extremely hard durometer so that they will slide better during grind and slide tricks. The wheel sizes are relatively small so that the boards will rotate more easily during flip tricks. In the early 1990s, the wheels were only marginally larger than the bearings they encased to make complicated flip tricks easier, a fad that lasted for a short time before dying out in 1994. 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, although the cost of manufacturing them has dropped.
Trick Skating
See Skateboarding trick for detailed description of trick skating maneuvers
With the evolution of skateboard parks (or "skateparks") and ramp riding, the skateboard began to change. Skating was originally basically two-dimensional tricks (e.g. riding on only the front wheels (nose manual), 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, the first modern skateboarding trick, by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand. At first, none of his companions believed it was possible to perform a feat like this, and they thought he was attaching his feet to the board somehow. People would actually steal his board and shoes to see if he was using velcro or some kind of sticky glue. To ollie is to fly off the ground (flat or a wall) with the board without holding onto the board and land back on the board. It requires using the feet to press against the board in various complicated combinations, depending on the trick to be performed. 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). 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).
Skateboarding and Popular Culture
Skateboarders often become famous through sponsorship and endorsements, sometimes being accused as "sellouts." Tony Hawk has recently appeared in the MTV music video awards. Danny Way is considered by some to be one of the most innovative and daring skaters, flying across the "DC Megaramps" and The Great Wall of China, and rumored to be planning on jumping the Grand Canyon. Many styles today are mimics of Tom Penny a pioneer of street skateboarding and in the early 1990s were the first skaters to catch their flip tricks in mid-air. Many inovations in skateboard design and specialty pads for tricks were made by Tom Miller and David Midthunder.
All this from an object that was never designed to lock into grinds, flip in the air or do the tricks performed by today's skateboarders. Throwing themselves down large stairs and handrails only ups the ante in the modern skateboarding world. Today's skateboarders not only differ greatly from those only 10 years ago in terms of tricks and consistency, but also style, which is a very important aspect in the way skateboarders are marketed by skateboarding companies.
Skaters and Social Groups
Since the 1990s a significant amount of skateboarders, commonly known as "skaters," have been catagorized into their own social group. Though they have always existed, it wasn't until relatively recently that skaters broke free of the common "metal-head" or "stoner" stereotypes and came to be seen as their own subculture, with their own fashion, slang, and music. The popularity of skate shoes and clothing has led to a corresponding increase of so-called "poseurs," people who adopt the look of skateboarding culture without a dedication to skateboarding itself.
