SKATEBOARDING, SKATEBOARDING TRICKS &

THE CULTURE OF SKATE PUNK:

Skateboarding is the act of riding and performing tricks using a skateboard. A person who skateboards is most often referred to as a skateboarder, or just skater.

Skateboarding can be a recreational activity, an artform, a job, or a method of transportation.Skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2002 report by American Sports Datafound 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.

Skateboarding is relatively modern. A key skateboarding maneuver, the ollie, was developed in the late 1970s by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand as a half-pipe maneuver. Freestyle skateboarder Rodney Mullen was the first to take it to flat ground and later invented the kickflip and its variations.

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.

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. 

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.The improvement in traction and performance was so immense that from the wheel's release in 1972 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 flat-ground tricks.

As a result of the "vert" skating movement, 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 declined in popularity. 

 

 

The 1980s

This period was fuelled by skateboard companies that were run by skateboarders. The focus was initially on vert rampskateboarding. The invention of the no-hands aerial (later known as the ollie) by Alan Gelfand in Florida in 1976 and the almost parallel development of the grabbed aerial by George Orton and Tony Alva in California 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 could nt afford to build vert ramps or did not have access to nearby ramps, street skating gained popularity. Freestyle skating remained healthy throughout this period with pioneers such as Rodney Mullen inventing many of the basic tricks of modern street skating such as the Impossible and the kickflip. 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. 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 the present

The current generation of skateboards is dominated by street skateboarding. 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

With the evolution of skateparks and ramp skating, 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, also known as a "hippie jump", 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 byRodney Mullen in 1982. Mullen also invented the "Magic Flip", which was later renamed the Kickflip, as well many other tricks including, the 360 Kickflip, which is a 360 pop shove it and a kickflip in the same motion. The flat ground ollie allowed skateboarders to perform tricks in mid-air without any more equipment than the skateboard itself, it has formed the basis of many street skating tricks.

Types of tricks

Skateboarding tricks can be grouped into the following five categories:

§                     Freestyle tricks involve balancing on some other part of the board than all four wheels, such as two wheels or one wheel, the tail of the board, or the edges on either side. Various ways to flip and manipulate the board in and out of these stances were invented in the earliest years of skateboarding and these form the basis of freestyle or flatground skateboarding. It is your own tricks

§                     Aerials involve floating in the air while using a hand to hold the board on his or her feet or by not keeping constant and careful pressure on the board with the feet to keep it from floating away. This class of tricks was first popularized when Tony Alva became famous for his Frontside Airs in empty swimming pools in the late 1970s and has expanded to include the bulk of skateboarding tricks to this day, including the Nollie and all of its variations.

§                     Flip tricks are a subset of aerials which are all based on the Ollie. The first such trick was the Kickflip. You can spin the board around many different axis, and even combine several rotations in to one trick. These tricks are undoughtfully most popular among street skateboarding purists, although skaters with other styles perform them as well.

§                     Boardslides and Grinds involve getting the board up on some type of ledge, rail, or coping and sliding or grinding along the board or trucks, respectively. When it is primarily the board which is contacting the edge, it's called a slide; when it's the truck, it is a grind. Grinding and sliding skateboards started with sliding the board on parking blocks and curbs, then extended to using the coping on swimming pools, then stairway handrails, and has now been expanded to include almost every possible type of edge.

§                     Lip tricks are done on the coping of a pool or skateboard ramp. Most grinds can be done on the coping of a ramp or pool as well, but there are some coping tricks which require the momentum and vertical attitude that can only be attained on a transitioned riding surface. These include Inverts and their variations as well as some dedicated air-to-lip combinations.

§                     Pressure tricks are performed differently than normal flip tricks in that the board flips using pressure technique in areas of the tail/nose with the foot you pop with.

§                     Manual tricks are performed by balancing the board while riding on either the two front or rear wheels, suspending the opposing wheels in the air.

Impossible Tricks- there are tricks that some people think of impossible but a large amount of people can, certain tricks are Impossible and Hardflips. A Hardflip is when the person riding flips the board a whole spin vertically towards themself. An Impossible is very close to a Hardflip but is flipped away from the performer.

Many types of tricks can be combined together. Finding new combinations and variations is often stated as the reason that skateboarding keeps its appeal amongst its followers.

 

Naming conventions

As with all recreational activities, skateboarding has its own vernacular and slang. Most of the names of standard tricks were made up by the person that invented them, and to some extent they reflect what the person was thinking about the trick at the time. The names range from descriptive (kickflip) to silly (Ho-Ho plant) to intentionally provocative (sac-tap, sex change). The earliest tricks were often named after the person that invented them (Andrecht after Dave Andrecht; Ollie after Alan "Ollie" Gelfand; Elguerial after Eddie Elguera). The origins of some trick names are obscure, either because the inventor didn't name the trick or intentionally gave it an obtuse meaning based on an inside joke that was never shared. Some tricks have more than one name, likely because several people independently invented the same trick around the same time and gave it different names, or because the original name was inadequate.

Most newer tricks are invented by combining existing tricks together rather than creating something completely new, and the naming reflects that. For example, when Danny Way became the first to do a Kickflip into an Indy, he simply called it a Kickflip Indy rather than come up with a completely new name. Most other combinations of tricks follow suit, though occasionally very complicated tricks prove to be too much of a mouthful and are thus given a unique name. For example,Andy MacDonald made up a trick that could be accurately called a Nollie Heelflip Varial Body Varial Slob Air, but he called it a Salad Shooter.

Similarly, when a new trick is invented by changing an element of existing trick rather than adding to it, skaters often simply put the names together. For example,Tony Hawk did the first 720 from fakie grabbing Mute, but he didn't bother to use the terms "fakie" or "Mute". He simply called it a 720. However, when he tried something new by grabbing with the other hand, he called it an Indy 720 because the trick combined the elements of an Indy and a 720 together, changing the original meaning of 720 in the process. This is a source of confusion among skateboarders, as it often becomes difficult to remember which variation of a trick was done first and exactly how it was performed.

Another source of debate is the varying styles of performance of a trick and whether variations of style warrant giving a trick a new name. Skaters can be seen engaging in heated debates on Internet forums over what exactly constitutes giving a certain trick a certain name, or whether it should be called something else entirely. Other skaters simply don't care and ignore such debates.

skateboarding has a large dictionary of terms, and there is no one place to find them all defined accurately. As stated above, the definitions are often subjective. For new skateboarders, the large amount of new words to learn can be daunting, and it can be argued that this is part of a new skateboarder's initiation into skateboarding's unique culture.

 

Stances

In modern skateboarding (and actually in all modern boardsports, including surfing and snowboarding) there are two basic ways to stand on the board, one of which will instinctively be preferred by the rider. This instinctive preference for one stance over the other is called footedness, and the two possibilities are called "regularfoot" and "goofyfoot". Regularfoot (or simply "regular") refers to standing on the board with your left foot forward, while goofyfoot (or simply "goofy") refers to standing on the board with your right foot forward. As with handedness (right-handed versus left-handed), almost all riders will find that they have a natural, instinctive preference for one stance over the other. Across all boardsports, it seems that most riders (65-75%) are regularfooters, and a smaller number (25-35%) are goofyfooters. In this way, being a regularfoot is analagous to being a right-hander, and being a goofyfoot is analagous to being a left-hander... but otherwise "footedness" and "handedness" are not directly related. In other words, a left-hander can find that he or she is a regularfoot, and a right-hander can find that he or she is a goofyfoot. Lastly, just as it is possible but extremely rare for a person to be naturally ambidextrous (equally dominant with both the left hand and the right hand), it is also possible but extremely rare for a boardrider to be naturally "ambi-footed" (equally comfortable in either the regularfoot stance or the goofyfoot stance). This is called being a "switch-foot". Also, just as it is difficult but not impossible to teach oneself to become ambidextrous, it is also difficult but not impossible to teach onself to become a switchfoot.

The regularfoot stance and the goofyfoot stance have an inverse relationship in terms of the direction of both the flip and the spin with which tricks are performed. It is important to note that tricks are named differently depending on the stance of the skater. As mentioned above, an inverse of a trick in "goofy" would be the same as the trick done in the "regular" stance.

When a skater skates in the opposite stance to which they are naturally adapted, this is called "switch stance" or more simply "switch". This should not be confused with "Fakie", which refers to riding the board in the skater's natural stance while rolling backwards, or to a trick done while the skater is rolling backwards.

The term "Nollie" originally referred to an Ollie done by popping off the nose of the board rather than the tail (Nose + Ollie = Nollie). The term is added to a trick name to describe any trick based on the Nollie- such as the Nollie Kickflip, Backside Nollie 180, et cetera.

The term "mongo" refers to a method of pushing in which a skater keeps their back foot on the board while pushing with their front foot. It is considered by some to be bad form, and makes riding harder, but is nevertheless stubbornly and widely practiced.

The terminology of "frontside" or "backside"(also referred to as "blindside") is vitally important when discussing skateboarding maneuvers in direct relation to the position of attack on any given obstacle that a skateboarder is negotiating. Frontside is related to having your front side (i.e. face, chest, etc.) facing towards the lip, rail, or curb that the trick is being performed on. Backside denotes the inverse of frontside, meaning the back of the body is facing the object the trick is being performed on.

There are many other subtleties and nuances within skateboarding trick terminology. Terms may be combined with others (the alley-oop, the shuffle, the revert, etc.) that are performed when either entering or exiting (or both) a skateboard trick.

SKATE PUNK

 

Skate punk (sometimes called skate core or skate rock) is a subgenre of punk rock, originally a derivative of hardcore punk, that has been popular among skateboarders. Skate punk grew from the Nardcore punk scene out of Oxnard,California. It is very similar to Nardcore, as it is fast and aggressive, yet some skate punk focuses more on melodic and harmonious vocals. Skate punk is usually also more technical than Nardcore. Many members of skate punk bands have been skateboarders. Their lyrics occasionally focus on, or at least reference, skateboarding. Because there is a lot of overlap between skate punk and other forms of punk, many skate punk bands also fit into the genres pop punk, hardcore punk, melodic hardcore and thrashcore.

History

Skate punk started in early 1980s California, where skateboarding was popular and was considered a form of rebellion. Bands that influenced the genre include Black Flag, JFA, Agent Orange and Minor Threat. The 1990s saw a rise in its popularity, with skate punk bands experiencing commercial success and events like the Warped Tour and the X-gamesfeaturing skate punk bands. Since the 1990s, skate punk has slowly grown in popularity (with the exception of the United States), especially in Europe, Japan, and South America. Bands such as RKL, Stalag 13, NOFX, and Suicidal Tendencies first started this style.

Article By:-

Saurav Lamsal©