Skateboarding
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Skateboarding is the act of riding and performing tricks using a skateboard. A person who skateboards is most often referred to a skateboarder, skater or skate rat.
Skateboarding can be a recreational activity, an artform, a job, or a method of transportation.
Skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2002 report by American Sports Data found that there were 18.5 million skateboarders in the world. 85 percent of skateboarders polled who had used a board in the last year were under the age of 18, and 74 percent were male.
Skateboarding is relatively modern. A key skateboarding maneuver, the ollie, was developed in the late 1970s by Alan "Ollie" Gelfand as a half-pipe maneuver. Freestyle skateboarder Rodney Mullen was the first to take it to flat ground and later invented the kickflip and its variations.
Types of tricks
Skateboarding tricks can be grouped into the following five categories:
Freestyle tricks involve balancing on some other part of the board than all four wheels, such as two wheels or one wheel, the tail of the board, or the edges on either side. Various ways to flip and manipulate the board in and out of these stances were invented in the earliest years of skateboarding and these form the basis of freestyle or flatground skateboarding.
Aerials involve floating in the air while using a hand to hold the board on his or her feet or by keeping constant and careful pressure on the board with the feet to keep it from floating away. This class of tricks was first popularized when Tony Alva became famous for his Frontside Airs in empty swimming pools in the late 1970s and has expanded to include the bulk of skateboarding tricks to this day, including the Ollie and all of its variations.
Flip tricks are a subset of aerials which are all based on the Ollie. The first such trick was the Kickflip. You can spin the board around many different axis, and even combine several rotations in to one trick. These tricks are arguably most popular among street skateboarding purists, although skaters with other styles perform them as well.
Slides and Grinds involve getting the board up on some type of ledge, rail, or coping and sliding or grinding along the board or trucks, respectively. When it is primarily the board which is contacting the edge, it's called a slide; when it's the truck, it is a grind. Grinding and sliding skateboards started with sliding the board on parking blocks and curbs, then extended to using the coping on swimming pools, then stairway handrails, and has now been expanded to include almost every possible type of edge.
Lip tricks are done on the coping of a pool or skateboard ramp. Most grinds can be done on the coping of a ramp or pool as well, but there are some coping tricks which require the momentum and vertical attitude that can only be attained on a transitioned riding surface. These include Inverts and their variations as well as some dedicated air-to-lip combinations.
Many types of tricks can be combined together, and finding new combinations and variations is often stated as the reason that skateboarding keeps its appeal amongst its followers.
Competitive skateboarding is primarily judged on the difficulty and success of such tricks.