When considering something as significant and seemingly omnipresent as a subculture, it’s hard to think in terms of beginnings, and yet it is true that everything has one. Interestingly enough, skateboarding’s beginning came in the form of another sport — surfing — and the cultural outcasts that enjoyed it.
Although it has never been proven exactly who invented the first skateboard, it is commonly known that the sport was started in 1950s and ’60s California as a way for the angst-driven teen surfers to pass the time whenever the ocean was flat. Quickly dubbed "sidewalk surfing," this simple recreation began to grow in popularity throughout the late ’60s.
The improvement in the assembly of skateboards during the mid-1970s was so immense that the popularity of skateboarding started to rise rapidly again, and companies wanted to invest more in product development. It was around this time that the "surf skating" style of the ‘60s took the backseat to the modern skateboarding style that our generation is familiar with. The culprits responsible for taking a back-alley "outcast" recreation and turning it mainstream with X Games style skating were The Z-Boys, a skate team assembled by surf-shop owners Jeff Ho and Skip Engblom.
Considered to be some of the most influential skateboarders of all time, these teens redefined the surf-style skating of the 1960s and began to create new, more aggressive styles with their invention of vertical and airborne skating moves. This style of skating more closely resembles the aerial acrobatics of today’s X Games competition and quickly grew in worldwide popularity amongst the skateboarding subculture due, in part, to the drought that plagued Los Angeles at the time.
Because of the oppressive heat and low rainfall, many backyard pools were left empty. The Z-Boys took advantage of the opportunity and began trespassing on private property to skate the walls of empty pools. One day during a normal pool skating session, Z-Boy team member Tony Alva took his board airborne, sailing above the coping of the pool, and then twisted around to land back inside. Aerial skateboarding had been invented.
Though skateboarding had already been around for 15 years, until this time, a skateboard was nothing more than a glorified scooter: a piece of plywood for bored surfers to push around on while the waves were weak.
After the Z-Boys hit the scene, the skateboard was turned into a generation’s vehicle to history, a tool used to perform lightning fast acrobatics while soaring through the air and being cheered on by an entire subculture. The Z-Boys’ innovations are immortalized in the documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys" and the full-length feature film "Lords of Dogtown," starring the late Heath Ledger.
Fast forward about two decades and this aerial style of skateboarding still reigns supreme at such competitions as the X Games, started in the summer of 1995. The ever-growing popularity of skateboarding, due in part to the Z-Boys themselves, was extremely evident at this first X Games event, mainly because of the 198,000 fans that were in attendance.
It is true that the world of skating as we know it is vastly different than the one created by innovators such as the Z-Boys in the mid-1970s. With sponsors, conglomerates and major corporate companies backing such skaters as Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist or Bam Margera, we now have skateboarding TV shows, documentaries, posters, music and competitions.
Although some may criticize the skateboarding subculture for becoming commercially mainstream, and keeping in mind that some aspects of skateboarding has been hurt because of this, I believe that the majority of the mainstream commercialism has only helped to expand skateboarding and to make it more available to the American public, mainly because of one thing: attitude.
We still see skaters enjoying the spot on the outside of society reserved especially for them. Skaters are still rebels, looked down upon by conservative America, only now they are able to make a living doing what they love.
Criticize whatever you’d like, but if something can help spread a great recreation such as skateboarding without completely changing the ideas that it was founded on, then I am all for it.
