by Luke Tagg

Emerging less than 50 years ago, skateboards spawned an entire sub-culture of long-fringed, baggy-trousered, anti-social youths, whose career paths seemed to inevitably converge in designer beachwear shops and other contemporary rad places. Invented by surfers to counteract the forces of nature that produce waveless seas, the skateboard must go down as yet another pop icon from those halcyon days of summer sun, California dreaming and the finest marijuana known to humankind.

The skateboard made its first appearance in 1958, in a surfing shop in California. Shop owner Bill Richards and his son Mark had had enough of flat surf conditions, and obeying the dictum that "a surfer shall surf", they approached the Chicago Roller Skate Company in...uh...Chicago, to produce wheels which they fixed to the underside of square wooden boards. Before long the idea had caught on, and a new fad called "sidewalk surfing" began threatening the safety of not only its participants, but any average Joe who happened to be crossing the street at the bottom of any given hill in California.

News of the fad soon began spreading to other major American cities, and spurred on by a hit single from Jan and Dean called "Sidewalk Surfing", the first National Skateboard Championships were held in 1965. The competition made a spot on ABC's "Wide World of Sports", and in the same year the skateboard was splashed across the cover of Life magazine. The Life article described the skateboard as "the most exhilarating and dangerous joy-riding device this side of the hot rod", which strangely did not help the cause of the skateboard as much as one would think. The Mother Grundies decided that any dangerous joy-riding device was a menace to society, and the American Medical Association declared skateboards "a new medical menace", which slowed down the Board's progress.

In the seventies skateboarding got a huge boost with the addition of two new modifications to the existing design. In 1971 Richard Stevenson designed an upward-curving tail for the back of the skateboard, giving the rider more control and the ability to do better tricks. In 1973 Frank Nasworthy redesigned the wheels by making them out of polyurethane, which provided greater speed and maneuverability.

Skateboarding parks began to go up all over America, and skateboarders began to be featured in television shows. The real boost to the product came at the end of the seventies, when a skateboarder from Florida called Alan "Ollie" Gelfand invented a new move which came to be known as the "Ollie". The move worked by kicking the tail of the skateboard downwards and jumping into the air while sliding the front foot forwards, allowing the board to be jumped over stationary obstacles. This meant street kerbs were no longer a problem, and a host of new tricks could be performed.

Skateboarding took a dive when concerns over injuries meant that insurers couldn't cover the administrators of skateboard parks, and many city councils banned skating in public places and on the streets. The craze faded out, although the true hardcore could still be found in old sewer pipes and just about anywhere that would allow them to "grab some air".

Skateboarding was reinvented in the nineties with a whole new look and feel, incorporating first the hip-hop era and then rap music as its flagship soundtrack. Baggies were in, and skateboarding magazines began springing up, touting the fashion. For the first time professional skateboarders emerged, touring the world and making a living off their prize money and endorsements. The advent of snowboarding added a bunch of cool new moves to the skateboarding repertoire, making it an even more extreme sport than ever.

At last count there were six million skateboarders in the United States alone - and more than half of them reside in California. Like - shah, dude.....