Skateboarding is one of the most popular pastimes on earth. Almost everyone has tried it at least once, and a small group has gone on to become incredible at it. Here is a brief history of skateboarding and its impact on the world.
Beginnings
Skateboarding, if it wasn’t clear already, originated from surfing. First called “sidewalk surfing,” it emerged in 1958, with surfers wanting to take their talents to the streets. They made their version of “complete decks” by simply attaching rollerblade wheels to a sturdy piece of wood.
These boards allowed skaters to travel smoothly on pavements and roads, and while tricks weren’t a thing yet, the skaters used this chance to practice their surfboarding moves, such as smooth turns, cutbacks, etc.
While skateboards became popular enough to enter mass production, the unsafe wheel choices led to a lot of injuries. However, Frank Nasworthy created the first set of urethane wheels in 1972, which completely revolutionized the skateboard. A few years later, in 1978, the first Ollie was performed,
First Contests
The first skate contests were already taking place in the 60s, but after the sport exploded in popularity again, the biggest competition since the first took place in 1975. The Del Mar National Championship, which had over 500 skaters participating,
While they didn’t win, the stars of the show were the Zephyr Skate Team, who blew crowds away with their unique, Hawaiian-style of skating. This led to a further increase in popularity, and the first cash-prize competitions began to appear in California.
Competition in the 80s was dominated by new skate companies and famous skaters, with vert ramps the ramp of choice. This is also when we began to see more tricks and variations, with vert skaters often seen as the elite, given the difficulty of the style.
Skateparks
Going back to the mid-70s, the increase in popularity due to the new, safer wheels, also saw the creation of the world’s first skatepark. A few years after this, skateparks started to spring up across North and South America, and eventually found their way to Europe and Asia.
While small, the popularity of the sport was spurred on by the movie Lords of Dogtown, allowing people from outside of the States to see what skateboarding was all about, its origins, and showing its anti-establishment values, which took hold of young people across the globe.
Skating Celebrities
While the Zephyr crew made their mark on the sport, skateboarding truly became a worldwide phenomenon thanks to the so-called “Godfathers” of skating. Rodney Mullen, Tony Hawk, and Mark Gonzales are arguably the three greatest pioneers of skateboarding of all time.
Rodney Mullen, in particular, is credited with creating the most tricks, with some saying he invented at least 40. The heelflip, kickflip, and flatground-ollie are all accredited to Mullen, and are three fundamentals to countless other tricks and variations.
Mark Gonzales is widely regarded as the pioneer of street skating. Taking tricks from the vert and ramps of the skateparks, he adapted them to the streets, allowing skaters to see that their talents didn’t just need a skatepark to shine.
Finally, Tony Hawk requires no introduction. He took the world by storm by pulling off the first 900 in 1999, he is the face of the most popular skateboarding games of all time and was the ultimate force on the vert, creating new tricks and pushing the boundaries every time he stepped onto a board.
These three led the way for skateboarding to enter the mainstream, and make it the popular sport it is today. Along with modern-day superstars like Bob Burnquist, Nyjah Huston, and Danny Way, these megastars are the reason skating has spread across the planet.
Mainstream Appeal
Skateboarding became more mainstream with the aforementioned stars, the video games, movies, and magazines. While sounding simple, skating was “cool” the whole time and was associated with a coolness that not everyone could possess. It required time, practice, and a lot of injuries, but once you could pull off a few tricks, you grabbed the attention of everyone.
Skateboarding is also far more accessible than many people may think. Once you have a board, you can skate and do tricks almost anywhere. You can live in the city or in a rural town, you can do it on the street or in a skatepark, and with enough imagination, everything you see can become something to ollie over, grind, or jump. If you really need something you can’t find, it also only takes a few pieces of wood and nails to make your own ramps.
Because of this, skating is something that every and anyone can, at the very least, try, and we see this by the countless videos of people skating in rural African villages, the Amazon, and almost everywhere in between.
In conclusion, this is only a tiny snippet of the history of skateboarding, and even though it is only around 50 years old, the story of skating is absolutely packed with highlights that have changed the course of history.
