Skateboarding is a very popular worldwide action sport that involves riding and performing tricks on a skateboard. Believe it or not the skateboarding industry is a 4.6-billion-dollar industry and there’s believed to be over 11 million active skateboarders. Just recently it was announced that skateboarding will be in the 2020 Olympics.
There are two different types of skateboards. There is a longboard and short board. Longboards are very different then short boards because longboards are like the name very long and also have big wheels which allows for cruising at greater speeds. On the other hand, short boards have more of a concave for pop and are smaller and are more ideal for tricks instead of just riding.
It’s been said that skateboarding was created in California but nobody really knows. Skateboarding was created in the late 40’s early 50’s by surfers that wanted to something to do when the waves were flat. The first manufactured skateboard was ordered by a Los, Angeles surf shop meant to help surfers use their surfing maneuvers on land. They used boards shaped like surfboards and carved around the streets and local pools that were empty. The old school boards were a square wooden board with wheels on it. In the 1970’s skateboarding blew up there were more companies that were manufacturing boards and it was becoming really popular. Skaters were riding empty pools like they were surfing a wave which created a revolution in skateboarding. In this time there were a lot of competitions in the California and Florida regions which most of the time the rewards were cash and sponsorships by companies. I would say in the 2000’s skateboarding really took off and became one of the most popular action sports in the world. Also the technology for making boards was better so instead of wooden shape boards with simple designs the boards were becoming more sophisticated. In the sense of the boards were being made with more concave which helps for jumping and grinding rails.
There are two different kinds of skateboarding, street and vert. Vert is the act of riding a skateboard on a skate ramp or an incline which involves transitioning from horizontal plane to vertical plane. The place that skateboarders usually skate vert is at a skate park which is a park designed for skateboarding that has ramps, rails, and other obstacles that skateboarders will be able to hit on a skateboard. The most famous vert skateboarder which everyone in the world knows about this guy is Tony Hawk. He’s famous for getting massive air on huge vert ramps and also he’s the first skateboarder to successfully land a 900 spin on a vert ramp. On the other hand, street skating is much different then vert whereas instead of skateboarding at a skate park skaters use the street as their park.
For example, skaters would try to ollie (jumping on a skateboard) over stairs and attempt to grind handrails that are going down the stairs. As a skater once you have this mindset of the things you can hit you will never lose that thinking. When street skating one doesn’t have to hit stairs but could hit ledges that are everywhere or wall ride a random wall. There is a lot of controversy over this because a lot of skateboarders get arrested or called the cops on because business or people think skateboarders are destroying their property. Which in most cases is not true but I could see why they don’t want skateboarders doing it because grinding down a handrail does leave scratches on the rail. That’s why skateboarders have such a bad stereotype of being destructive savages.
