A History of Skateboarding
Uploaded by sls465 on Apr 18, 2007
A History of Skateboarding
Skateboarding is a very popular recreational sport. There are twenty million people who skateboard around the world. Skateboarding was invented by Alan “Ollie” Gelfand. They got the name “Ollie” from his middle name. The “Ollie” was a fundamental basis for harder tricks. To put it in more simple terms, it means whenever you jump with the skateboard. You do this so that you can jump over things, jump in the air to do tricks, and so that you can jump on grind rails.
There are over three-hundred manufacturers of skateboards and equipment for professional levels. Some of these companies are alien workshop, antihero, birdhouse, blind, and zero. Those are the most popular skateboard companies. Each of these companies makes about 1.4 billion dollars in annual retail sales. There are about 100,000 pro skateboard decks and 500,000 manufactured each month.
The cost of skateboards can vary. It all depends on what you get, if you get a skateboard that is complete, that it costs a little more that $100.00. If you just by the deck it is about $50.00 or more, just for the deck. Than you have to buy the accessories, which will most likely cost you more than buying the complete.
There are alot of different ways to skate. For instance, you can free skating, street skating, vert skating, and many more. A lot of people skate at skate parks; there are 800 private and public skate parks in the US.
In the sixty’s people used to do something similar to skating, it was called “sidewalk surfing.” They would take some kind of board and they would slide down the sidewalks with them. This was a national fad, they had pictures of it on the cover of Life magazine, the issue was called “yet another California Craze.”
People always think that they are going to get injured or hurt when they are skateboarding. That is not true, studies show that skateboarders are less likely to get hurt playing traditional sports like baseball, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and football.
This recreational sport was created so that it can provide teens all over, so that it can provide teens with some fun and a challenge. The challenges of skateboarding is that you need to learn to ride, then you need to learn how to do an Ollie, then learn how to do all of the...