Skateboarding Overview

Skateboarding is the act of rolling on or interacting with a skateboard. Someone who skateboards is called a skateboarder or skater. Skateboarding can be an art, hobby, sport or a method of transportation. It is often marketed as an extreme sport, although this is criticized by some skaters.Because of its creative aspects, it can also be seen as an art form. 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. Eighty percent of skateboarders polled who had used a board in the last year were under the age of 18, and 74 percent were male.

The first skateboard originated sometime in the 1950s and coincided with the initial popularization of surfing in California. The earliest skateboards were homemade and were constructed of flat wooden planks attached to roller-skate trucks and wheels. Skateboarding was originally called "sidewalk surfing" and early skaters emulated surfing style and moves. Skateboards may or may not have evolved from "crate scooters." Crate scooters preceded skateboards, and were essentially similar except for having a wooden crate attached to the front, which formed rudimentary handlebars. In the film Back to the Future, Marty McFly is seen confiscating such a scooter from an unsuspecting 50s youth, and ripping the crate off to fashion an improvised skateboard.

In the mid 1960s skateboarding became something of a craze. A number of surfing manufacturers such as Hobie and 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 skateboarding at this time can also be seen in Makaha's sales figures which quoted $4 million worth of boards between 1963 and 1965. Yet by 1966 sales had dropped significantly and skateboarder magazine had stopped publication. Skateboarding's popularity dropped and remained low until the early 1970s.

Second generation

In the early 1970s, Frank Nasworthy started to develop a skateboard wheel made of polyurethane. The improvement in traction and performance was so immense that the popularity of skateboarding started to rise rapidly again, and companies started to invest more in product development. 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 aluminum, 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. This started the vert trend in skateboarding. With increased control, skateboarders 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. Many skateparks went out of business and were torn down. By the beginning of the 1980s, skateboarding had died again.

Third generation

The third skateboard generation, from the mid eighties to early nineties, was started by skateboard companies that actively promoted their art. The focus was initially on vert ramp skateboarding. The invention of the no-hands aerial (later known as the ollie) by Alan Gelfand in 1976 made it possible for skaters to perform huge airs off vertical ramps. With vert skating being dominant, decks became very wide and acquired larger and wider wheels. But as time progressed and skateparks became fewer in number, street skateboarding gained popularity, causing a change in both deck shape and wheel size. Street skating became skateboarding's most popular form. Mark Gonzales is one of street skating's pioneers and is credited as being the first person to ollie up a curb and to clear a set of stairs - adapting Rodney Mullen's flatland ollie to street skating. Nearly all manufacturers preferred maple plywood over more exotic composite materials, and concave decks became ubiquitous. The third skateboarding generation was nearly ended by the global economic recession in the early 1990s, but wasn't and it continued on into a fourth generation.

Current generation

The fourth and 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 have an extremely hard durometer (approximately 99a). Additionally, very high durometers offer the benefit of reduced drag on hard surfaces which results in an overall faster ride. The wheel sizes are relatively small so that the boards are lighter, thus making tricks more manageable. Today, modern wheels are currently around 48 to 58 mm in diameter and advances in technology have made them extremely light compared to the wheels of the eighties. Most decks are still constructed out of Canadian Maple, with 7-plys being the industry standard for strength and durability. 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. During the 90s ramp or vert skateboarding dropped in popularity whilst street skateboarding, fused with freestyles techniques, progressed styles beyond the foundation of the ollie. Freestyle skateboarding has heavily influenced today's core street skating culture and while the ollie remains the base for many tricks, the flip has become the essential foundation of the most popular of current skateboarding moves.

Longboarding is a discipline in its own right and is ridden by some who believe that this type is better for carving. While the name suggests that it is littarally a "long board" many longboards are actually shorter than a regular skateboard. Longboards vary in size and shape, many being long and stiff for downhill, and many short and loose for slalom. The longboard makes for different ride characteristics than a regular skateboard. The longboard is usually outfited with very soft and very large wheels. These wheels are responsible for the smooth ride associated with long boards. It is popular with surfers because of the closer similarity to carving a wave compared to the quicker response of short boards.

Culture

Skateboarding was originally 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 many varied of its own stereotypes, music, fashion, and slang. Previously, skateboarding was looked down on by most of society because of skaters' perceived affinity for crime and delinquency. Now that skateboarding is considered by society as an international sport, and many have made their livings skateboarding. It is no longer considered an illegitimate activity; however, skating still has an unsavoury social reputation and is often seen as destructive and obnoxious.

The image of the skateboarder as a rebellious, nonconforming youth has come in direct conflict with the more modern image of skateboarding in recent years. This rift between the old image of skateboarding and the new one is quite visible: magazines like Thrasher portray an image of skateboarding that is dirty, rebellious, and still firmly tied to punk, while magazines like Transworld Skateboarding portray a more modernized, diverse, and controlled image of skateboarding stars.