Skateboards FAQs
When did skateboarding debut?
This is a complicated question that has stunned many historians and anthropologists interesting the punk/skateboarding culture. Generally speaking, skateboarding has been acknowledged to exist since the mid to late 1940s or 1950s, although the location is still hotly contested. Some people insist that skateboarding came from Hawaii, as is evidenced by the longboarding primacy there. There are numerous companies and inventors that have all claimed the title of first skateboard in southern California where surfers wanted the ability to surf all the time, earning the sport the initial nickname of concrete surfing. Preliminary models of the skateboard were a box with four wheels and handles on the front which made it hard to distinguish who made the first jump to just a board without handles.
What types of wheels are used in skateboarding?
Polyurethane is primarily used because of its longevity and the different potential hardnesses of the material. The material can be customized to fit to either large of small wheels. Typically if you’re going for smaller wheels, you’re trying to get the direct transfer of your energy to the ground so that your Ollie can be higher. The wheels will be graded a high hardness on the A scales that are typically found in the skateboarding community. However, if you’re going for larger wheels for mobility and a larger wheelbase, you’ll probably be trying to outfit your board for longboard cruising or slaloming. Either way the wheels will have a plastic core and the larger wheelbase of wheels up to 100mm will enable you to cruise quite easily.
How is longboarding different from skateboarding?They have grown apart since the linkage of the skateboarding phenomenon to the punk culture of the 1980s and the growth into the early 1990s. Longboarders have generally exuded a more casual persona, like that of the surfer from which they stem as evidenced in the nickname of “concrete surfer.” This is almost diametrically opposed to the chaos and hatred that the punks wish to share with the established governments of their day. The cultures are different, but the boards are also different. The skateboard is generally always shorter than the longboard. The wheels are smaller and the suspension is tighter enabling the skateboard to do more complex trips including flips and spins, although the long-distance feasibility of the regular skateboard is greatly diminished by this rigidity. The wheels and suspension are the primary cause for the cruising sensation that is apparent in the longboarding style. The wheel base provides a better transfer of momentum. In either event, the type of boarding is entirely dependent on your preference for boarding and the culture you would like to defy or embody.
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