Skateboarding

Skateboarding is more than just an action sport—it's a way to get around, a creative outlet, a career in entertainment, and a recreational pastime. It involves riding a skateboard and pulling off tricks. The sport was born in the United States and has evolved thanks to countless skaters over the decades. According to a 2009 report, the global skateboarding market brought in about $4.8 billion annually, with 11.08 million active participants. In 2016, officials announced that skateboarding would join the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, with both men’s and women’s events. It debuted at those Games and returned for the 2024 Olympics. Since the 1970s, dedicated skateparks have been built for skateboarders, freestyle BMX riders, aggressive inline skaters, and, more recently, scooter users. Still, skateboarding has sparked controversy in places where it’s legal but has caused damage to curbs, stonework, steps, benches, plazas, and parks. The earliest skateboards were simple wooden boxes or boards with roller skate wheels bolted to the bottom. Before that, crate scooters—wooden crates attached to the front of a board to act as handlebars—came first. Over time, the boxes became flat planks, much like today’s decks. Modern skateboarding likely emerged in the late 1940s or early 1950s, when California surfers wanted something to do when the waves were flat. They called it “sidewalk surfing,” and it caught on as surfing itself boomed. Nobody knows exactly who made the first board; several people seem to have hit on the same idea around the same time. The first manufactured boards were ordered by a Los Angeles surf shop for surfers to use during downtime. The shop’s owner, Bill Richard, struck a deal with the Chicago Roller Skate Company to produce sets of wheels, which were attached to square wooden boards. Early skaters rode barefoot and copied surfing moves and styles. By the 1960s, a handful of Southern California surfboard makers—Jack’s, Kips’, Hobie, Bing’s, and Makaha—began building skateboards that looked like tiny surfboards. They formed teams to promote their products. One of the earliest skateboarding exhibitions was put on by Makaha founder Larry Stevenson in 1963 at Pier Avenue Junior High School in Hermosa Beach, California. Some of those same teams appeared on the 1964 TV show Surf’s Up, hosted by Stan Richards, which helped present skateboarding as a fun new activity. As interest grew, the first skateboarding magazine, The Quarterly Skateboarder, debuted in 1964. In its first editorial, publisher John Severson wrote about the sport’s promise. The magazine lasted only four issues but returned as Skateboarder in 1975. The first televised skateboarding competition was the 1965 National Skateboarding Championships in Anaheim, California, broadcast on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. At that time, the sport had just two original disciplines: flatland freestyle and slalom downhill racing. Animated cartoons of the era occasionally featured skateboard gags—two 1965 Road Runner cartoons, Shot and Bothered and Out and Out Rout, show Wile E. Coyote on a skateboard. One of the earliest sponsored skaters, Patti McGee, was paid by Hobie and Vita Pak to travel the country doing exhibitions and teaching safety tips. She appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1965 and on shows like The Mike Douglas Show, What’s My Line?, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, boosting skateboarding’s popularity. Other well-known surfer-style skaters of the era included Danny Bearer, Torger Johnson, Bruce Logan, Bill and Mark Richards, Woody Woodward, and Jim Fitzpatrick. Sales figures show the sport’s growth: Makaha reported $4 million in board sales from 1963 to 1965. But by 1966, various sources were calling skateboarding dangerous, making shops reluctant to sell boards and parents hesitant to buy them. Sales plummeted that year, and Skateboarder Magazine stopped publishing. Skateboarding’s popularity stayed low until the early 1970s. In the early 1970s, Frank Nasworthy began developing a polyurethane skateboard wheel under the brand Cadillac Wheels. Before that, wheels were made of metal or clay. The new material offered far better traction and performance, and after the wheels hit the market in 1972, skateboarding’s popularity surged again, prompting companies to invest more in product development. Nasworthy hired artist Jim Evans to create a series of paintings promoting Cadillac Wheels; these appeared as ads and posters in the revived Skateboarder Magazine and helped drive the new style of skateboarding. The precursors to modern skateparks in the early 1970s were repurposed urban water infrastructure, like the Escondido reservoir in San Diego, California. Skateboarding magazines published the locations, and skaters gave them nicknames such as the Tea Bowl, the Fruit Bowl, Bellagio, the Rabbit Hole, Bird Bath, the Egg Bowl, Upland Pool, and the Sewer Slide. Some design ideas for skatepark terrain actually came from these spots.