Skateboarding,         Space, and The City 

       Skateboarding was invented in Southern California in the 1950's. It was actually invented as a back up for surfing, since there are not always waves, surfers wanted something to do. Surfers were skaters at this point, and they had the same culture. This culture was a bunch of people with long hair, no jobs, and just wanted to chill. Their early skateboards were just wooden planks with metal roller skates attachted to it, hence the name skateboard. Over the next 30 years skateboarding had its ups and downs. It developed its own group and culture, but not very many people were interested until the early 1970's. This is when the first polyurethane wheel was invented. These wheels had maximum grip and were more responsive than any other wheel thusfar. At this point, skating emptied pools became very popular. With pool skating came a whole new skate culture, and this culture was not the nicest. Skate groups became toned down gangs. They would "own" a bowl or spot and have skate battles with other skate gangs to take over that spot. Fortunantly at this time the first skate parks were also made. This lead to a more inclusive culture starting in the 80's. Also starting in the 80's, pools were more often made with square edges and steep transisions, not what a skater wants, coincidence? I think not. The 1980's was when everything changed. Skateboarding blew up, everyone had a skateboard on the west coast, kids were learning to skate, everybody was skating. More and more vert skate parks started popping up everywhere, but then something even crazier happened. Street skating was invented. Rodney Mullen was the main player at this point. He invented tricks like the ollie, the pop shuvit, and the kickflip. Any basic skateboard trick, he invented. Now anyone could skate, you did not need a pool or a skatepark, you just needed the streets. 

       At this point skateboarding was easily accesible to everyone, and therefore the culture of the sport became very open and would take anybody in. In the 90's, the street skating trend continued, and this brought way to a whole different view of skaters. The people skating did not change, but because skaters were out on the streets skating anything possible, security guards at private establishments had to start telling skaters to stop skating. Now, nobody wants to be told they can't do something, and because of this skaters became like a cornerd animal. Skaters started to fight back against this skate oppression. This is why people now know skaters as the scum of society, because they were forced to fight for there sport. Tenis players never had to go out and steel their raquet back from a security guard, but skaters did. All of a sudden, moms were not letting there kids get boards and nobody wanted to be that skater kid. In the early 2000's, skaters started to embrace this "badass" lifestyle. In all the new videos skaters acted tough and hardcore, but really they were still the same social outcast just trying to use a fun creative outlet. Nowadays, the skate culture is huge. By this I mean there are so many different niches. There are still the surfer dude skaters, there are the "badass" skaters, and there are the artistic creative skaters. Even with such a great diverse sport and culture, the general public still hated skaters, and engeneers were put to the task of stopping skaters. Now there are rails, benches, stairs, and curbs that have been designed to be unskatable. This does not stop us though. Our skate culture is growing bigger than ever, street and vert boards have reached their maximum potential, but longboards are still improving and that side of the sport is still growing faster than ever. Who really knows where skating will be in the next 10 years. Engeneers could give up and make more skate parks and longboard parks, or maybe a president will make a speach about the new war, the war on skaters. Point is, the skate community will stay no matter what, we have already fought so much for our sport and will not give up now. Even with cultural and legal changes, we will just look back to our skate ancestors and ride out those waves as they come.