Skateboarding Gear

directed by: Evan Romoff

videographers: Grady Powell & Travis Murray

2005

Skateboarding originated sometime in the 1950s and coincided with the initial popularization of surfing in California. The earliest skateboards were homemade and constructed of flat wooden planks attached to roller-skate trucks and wheels. Skateboarding was originally called “sidewalk surfing” and early skaters emulated surfing style and moves. Skateboards may or may not have evolved from “crate scooters.” Crate scooters preceded skateboards, and were essentially similar except for having a wooden crate attached to the front, which formed rudimentary handlebars. In the film Back to the Future, Marty McFly is seen commandeering such a scooter from an unsuspecting ’50s youth, and ripping the crate off to fashion an improvised skateboard.

With the evolution of skateparks and ramp riding, the skateboard began to change. Early skate tricks had consisted mainly of two-dimensional maneuvers (e.g. riding on only two wheels (wheelie,a.k.a. manual), spinning like an ice skater on the back wheels (a 360 pivot), high jumping over a bar (nowadays called a “Hippie Jump”), long jumping from one board to another (often over a line of small barrels or fearless teenagers lying on their backs), and slalom.
In 1976, skateboarding was transformed by the invention of the first modern skateboarding trick by Alan “Ollie” Gelfand. It remained largely a unique Florida trick from 1976 until the summer of 1978, when Gelfand made his first visit to California. Gelfand and his revolutionary manoeuver caught the attention of the West Coast skaters and the media where it began to spread worldwide. An ollie is performed by popping the tail of the skateboard, sliding the front foot towards the nose and lifting up the back foot to level the skateboard out. This results in the skateboarder, along with his or her skateboard, lifting into the air without the aid of foot straps or the skateboarder’s hands.
The ollie was reinvented by Rodney Mullen in 1981, who adapted it to freestyle skating by ollieing on flat ground rather than out of a vert ramp. Mullen also invented the ollie kickflip, which, at the time of its invention, was dubbed the “magic flip.” The flat ground ollie allowed skateboarders to perform tricks in mid-air without any more equipment than the skateboard itself. The development of these complex tricks by Rodney Mullen and others transformed skateboarding. Skateboarders began performing their tricks down stair sets and on other urban obstacles - they were no longer confined to empty pools and expensive wooden ramps.
The act of “ollieing” onto an obstacle and sliding along it on the trucks of the board is known as grinding, and has become a mainstay of modern skateboarding. Types of grinds include the 50-50 grind (balancing on the front and back trucks while grinding a rail), the 5-0 grind (balancing on only the back truck while grinding a rail) the nose grind (balancing on only the front truck while grinding a rail), and the crooked grind (balancing on the front truck at an angle while grinding) among many others. There are various other grinds that involve touching both the trucks and the deck to the rail, ledge, or lip. The most common of these is the smith grind, in which the rider balances over the back truck while touching the outer middle of the board to the grinding surface in the direction from which he or she ollied. Popping and landing on the back truck and touching the inner edge of the board, i.e. popping “over”, is known as a feeble grind. Boardslides, lipslides, noseslides, and tailslides are on the wooden deck of the skateboard, rather than on the trucks.

The image of the skateboarder as a rebellious, non-conforming youth has faded in recent years. The rift between the old image of skateboarding and a newer one is quite visible: magazines such as Thrasher portray skateboarding as dirty, rebellious, and still firmly tied to punk, while other publications, Transworld Skateboarding as an example, paint a more modern, diverse, and controlled picture of skateboarding stars. Furthermore, as more professional skaters use hip hop music accompaniment in their videos, many urban youths and hip-hop fans are drawn to skateboarding, further diluting the sport’s punk image.

Duration : 0:1:10

Technorati Tags: all, Angeles, City, high, hollywood, Los, Powell, rjd2, skate, skateboard

Tags: all, Angeles, City, high, hollywood, Los, Powell, rjd2, skate, skateboard

25 Responses to “artist profile: skateboarder Adam Bertolet”

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website