I think skateboarding is freedom, when I skateboard my mind is cleared and nothing else matters. It’s the greatest feeling I have ever felt. Most other skateboarders know what I am talking about; It’s more than a toy to me and them. Back in the day there were lots of fight and problems caused by this sport, but that is because there are people saying that we are all on drugs and do bad things. To get to what most people think you have to go back in time and time and see how it got started. We are going back into the early 50s.
In the early 50s it was all about the surfing. Surfing was the coolest thing to do back then. Soon some of the true surfers started to get mad because they were getting run out of their spots by new surfers; the older surfers had no were else to go. So they found the next best thing skateboarding.
Skateboards allowed for the same tight turns and took more or the same balance it took to surf. The main problem with the skate board was it was very poorly put together. The trucks didn’t have dodos, so it was very hard to turn. The tail wasn’t bent to help hop off the ground. The wheels were made of clay and had no bearings; just to let you know clay wheels don’t gripe anything. But in the 1950s the wheel was made with bearings. This made it easier to go faster and have a smoother ride. Soon there would be kids sidewalk surfing (Kathie Fry).
One of the true surfers who changed over to become 100% skater was Jay Adams; he was the kid who gave skateboarding a bad name and was the first of his kind-the first punk skateboarder. As a little kid he was surfing in Venice. Then when he was twelve, he moved to Hawaii with his mom to keep him out of trouble. He was still surfing in Hawaii and found some friends Were skateboarders, so he started to skateboard. As he got older he got better, and then when he was in the 8th grade he moved back to Venice. As the got older he started to move back and forth between Venice and Hawaii. He kept skateboarding and surfing until he was eighteen and he was living in Ocean Park. This is where the Z-Boys start to get in the pitcher. He met Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta. They were members of the Zeffer skate team. Soon he would get on the Zeffer team. This was the first time he was paid to do what he loved to do, skateboard. They went to contests, promoted skateboarding and Zeffer skateboards. They were all pushing each other to be better than each other. Then other sponsors wanted them to skate for them and they did. The main reasons were money and egos which got too big. Tony Alva was the first to leave the team then Stacy second. The others started to fade away. Jay had to find different sponsors because he had to support his mom. He soon quit going to the competitions and his sponsers would drop him. Then the worst that would grab him and hold him back from becoming the best took over his life. Jay didn’t just give skateboarding a bad name. He helped create pool skating and got skating started on the track of becoming a real sport (Hamm, Keith).
After jay was done with skateboarding, another man picked up where he left off. Steve Caballero help change the skateboard as we know it. In the 80s they started to try to make the skateboard better so more people would get into the sport. Bedding the ends of the board helped add pop to the board. Pop is what makes it possible to air out of pools, ramps and other ramps. The next thing was the urethane wheel. It helped grip in the curves of the pools and cement. Thanks to those two things there were all sorts of tricks made up.
the first real trick is the Ollie. It was made by a man named Alan Gelfand in 1977. This opens the door for more common tricks. Like the hand plant and much more. Then there was a combine called Powell skateboards. This combine sold about Fifty million skateboards in a thee year span thanks to Steve Caballero (Brannon, Brian).
When Steve Caballero was a young kid he loved to go fast on any thing. The main thing he loved was going fast and trying to balance on a skate was going fast and trying to balance on a skate board. To him it wasn’t about being famous getting paid to skate board, it was for the love of skateboarding. Once he learned to Ollie he was jumping everything he could jump over. He lived in a town not known for skating, but the town next to his had a skate park. That is where he got started. Once he got good at skating, he started to go to competition. That is where Powell skateboards combine saw him skate. They liked his style, so they let him skate for them as an A.M skater. A.M is a step from being pro. He would win a lot of competitions for Powell; they thought he was ready to go pro, so they got him into Oasis skate contest. He didn’t get first but he didn’t get last (Brannon, Brian).
Powell made it official. He became pro in 1980. As Steve got older, he started to get paid more and more, but he never let the money change him, he still skated for fun, that is why he stayed with Powell skateboards for almost his whole career. They didn’t make him skate, but they didn’t let him quit; they pushed him to his limits and then some. Then when he was 33 he had his first girl, and it would be the last. He decide it would be too hard to keep traveling around and trying to keep a family, so he quit skateboarding and started to help make and sell them with his favorite company Powell. He was the main person who got Powell skateboards put on the map of top 10 skateboards sold in the 1980s. Also kept people interested in the sport. The main thing he did that I like him for is he skateboarded for fun not for money.
The one area of skateboarding that was over looked all of the time and still to this day is vert. Vert skateboarding is done on one big ramp of many big ramps linked together. Now that more and more people were getting into the sport they were able to have vert competitions. Vert was looked at as even more dangerous
Because the skateboarders would launch
Out of the ramps and land back into the ramp. This made for some of the worst falls ever. When you skate in a competition for vert, there is just you and the judges at the end of the ramp. This makes it a very high Pressure sport. The main man who took this form of skateboarding into the next level was Bob Burnquist(Keith Hamm).
Bob was born and grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In Sao Paulo most of his friends were skateboarders so that made him one to. The only thing was, Bob got good very fast. The main reason was he was always skating. He also felt the same way I feel about skating, it’s freedom. When he lived in Sao Paulo he would go to hundreds of contests and win. This would help him later in his career. In 1995 Bob came to the U.S for the Slam jam competition
In Vancouver. No one knew who he was. They soon saw his very technical tricks and lines. The main reason he is so good is that he can skateboard regular and goofy-foot and switch-stance (Keith Hamm). They are all the different ways you can stand on the board. A switch stance is backward. Regular and goofy has to do with what foot is on the front of the board. It didn’t take him long to get to the top of the skateboarding world. After his performance in Vancouver he got sponsored at the age of fourteen. Thru the years as Bob grew up he won Alternative Sports Person of the year, Won the X Games. To most in Brazil he is a Role model and has helped bring skateboarding to his home town. The best thing he did was to push vert skateboarding thru the years(Keith Hamm).
Now we are in the present day where skateboarding is looked at as a bad thing to do unless your famous. They have made the skateboard lighter and smaller. The tail is bent even more bent. They are taking a strip of wood out of the board and replacing it with a piece of fiberglass making a fiber light skateboard. The trick list is still growing as the sport gets more and more media coverage. As for the sport, who knows where it’s going, I hope it stays around and keeps growing.
Brannon, Brian. "STEVE CABALLERO." 18 Dec. 2007 <http://www.skaterock.com/skate/cab.html>.
Burnquist, Bob. "about bob ." 2002 12/17/2007 <http://www.bobburnquist.com/>.
Hamm, Keith. "Caught Clean - Jay Adams." http://www.skateboarding.com. 05 Dec. 2006. 10 Dec. 2007 http://www.skateboarding.com/skate/stories/article/0,23271,1566188,00.htm
The History Of Skateboarding In Less Than 1700 Words." The Concrete Wave 2002 12/17/2007 <http://pages.interlog.com/~mbrooke/history.htm>.
"Jay Adams Interview." Angelfire. June-July 2001. Z-Boys.Com. 18 Dec. 2007 <http://www.angelfire.com/ca2/jayadams/2001.html>.
pimentel, toney. "steve cabllero "the legend"." 2002 12/17/2007 <http://www.caliskatz.com/v4/skate_interviews/steve_caballero.asp >.