Skateboarding

Skateboarding is the act of rolling on or interacting with a skateboard. Someone who skateboards is a skater (or skateboarder or most fully skateboard rider), though the shortest term may also refer to someone ice skating or roller skating.

Trick skating

see: Skateboarding trick for detailed description of trick skating maneuvers

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With the evolution of skateboard parks (or skateparks) and ramp riding, the skateboard began to change. Skating was originally basically two-dimensional tricks (e.g. riding on only the front wheels (nose manual), spinning like an ice skater on the back wheels (a 360), high jumping over a bar, long jumping from one board to another (often over fearless teenagers lying on their backs), slalom, etc.)

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Around 1978 or so, street riding became transformed by the invention of the ollie, the first modern skateboarding trick, by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand. At first, none of his companions believed it was possible to perform a feat like this, and they thought he was attaching his feet to the board somehow. To ollie is to fly off the ground (flat or a wall) with the board without holding onto the board and land back on the board safely. It requires using your feet to press against the board in various complicated combinations, depending on the trick to be performed. The trick was reinvented by Rodney Mullen in the 80's, being transferred to the horizontal plane and used as a trick for freestyle skating (a style of skating popular in the 70's and 80's based on stationary maneuvers). No longer is the trick to fly from one place to another. On the way the board can twist and flip, as can the rider, then to be united before hitting ground. The development of these complex tricks went from the street to the vertical tops of the half pipes (and other terrains).

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Very skillful skateboarders often become famous through sponsorship and endorsements.

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Tony Hawk has recently appeared in the MTV music video awards. Danny Way is considered by some to be one of the most innovative and daring skaters, flying across the "DC Megaramps" and The Great Wall of China, and reportedly planning on jumping the Grand Canyon. Many styles today are mimics of Tom Penny a pioneer of street skateboarding and in the early 1990s were the first skaters to catch their flip tricks in mid-air.

Related Topics:
Tony Hawk - Danny Way - Tom Penny

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All this from an object that was never designed to lock into grinds, flip in the air or do the tricks performed by today's skateboarders. Throwing themselves down large stairs and handrails only ups the ante in the modern skateboarding world. Today's skateboarders not only differ greatly from those only 10 years ago in terms of tricks and consistency, but also style, which is a very important aspect in the way skateboarders are marketed by skateboarding companies.

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