Skateboarding and Unicorns

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I started skateboarding in 1969

A brief history of Skateboarding

Skateboarding has evolved and changed a lot over the years. It first started when surfers in California got the idea of trying to surf the streets, the boards were basic, they were flat as they were mainly used to just cruise around rather than doing tricks. At this time they were just used as somthing for people to do when they weren’t surfing.

In the early sixties and companies like Jack’s, Hobie and Makaha started holding skateboarding competitions. At this time, skateboarding was mostly either downhill slalom or freestyle. Torger Johnson, Woody Woodward and Danny Berer were some well known skateboarders at this time, but what they did looked almost completely different from what skateboarding looks like today! Their style of skateboarding, called “freestyle”, is more like dancing. Boards where like miniature surf boards with wheels and very different from what we have today.

By the late 70s the boards had evolved dramtically, they introduce curvature to the tail of the board to allow the rider to do tricks and jumps, this style of board is now called “oldschool”. With the old school shape it made it far easier to do bigger and better tricks. This shape stayed pretty popular until the late 80s when people started to realise you could tricks using the nose of the boards aswell as the tail.

As  the tricks became more technical the board shape and size completely changed along with the wheels and trucks. They became light and the boards had more curviture making it easier to do more elaberate tricks

Dogtown and the Z boys

Dogtown and Z-Boys is a 2001 documentary film directed by Stacy Peralta. Using a mix of film the Zephyr skateboard team shot in the 1970s by Craig Stecyk and more recent interviews, the documentary tells the story of a group of teenage surfer/skateboarders and their influence on the history of skateboarding (and to a lesser extent surfing) culture.

Having been a skater myself only a few years ago i have a fair upstanding of the styles and attitudes of some skaters today, but i know very little about the attitudes of skaters in the past. Watching this movies has given a much better understanding of the lifestyle of the these skaters.

More Vintage Inspiration

Its always good to have lots of visual research, so i have been looking at alot of vintage skateboards as well as contemporary to give me ideas of the kinds of things i need to think about when design my own boards. These vintage roller derby boards are just the kind of style i wish to recreate, i love the distressed paint and coloured wood along with simple graphics and limited colour palette. This is something i need to consider not only in my boards design but also the actual website for my vintage boards and other merchandise.

Source

Also:
http://jackgillilandfmp.wordpress.com/

http://boardbrain.blogspot.com/


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