Skateboarding is a very popular action sport around the world that involves riding and performing tricks on a skateboard. Believe it or not, the skateboarding industry is a $4.6 billion industry and there are believed to be over 11 million active skateboarders. It was recently announced that skateboarding will be at the 2020 Olympics.

There are two different types of skateboards. There is longboard and shortboard. Longboards are very different from shortboards because longboards are very long and also have large wheels that allow them to ride faster. On the other hand, short boards have more of a concave for pop and are smaller and are more ideal for doing tricks rather than just riding.

It has been said that skateboarding was created in California but no one really knows. Skateboarding was created in the late 1940s and early 1950s by surfers who wanted to do something when the waves were flat. The first skateboard made was ordered by a Los Angeles surf shop intended to help surfers use their surfing maneuvers on land. They used boards shaped like surfboards and carved around empty local streets and pools. Old school boards were a square wooden board with wheels. In the 1970s, skateboarding exploded, there were more companies making boards, and it was becoming very popular. Skaters were riding empty pools as if they were surfing a wave that created a revolution in skateboarding. At this time there were many competitions in the California and Florida regions where most of the time the rewards were cash and company sponsorships. I would say that in the 2000s, skateboarding really took off and became one of the most popular action sports in the world. Also, the technology for making boards was better, so instead of wooden shaped boards with simple designs, boards were becoming more sophisticated. In the sense that the boards were getting more concave, which helps jump and grind the rails.

There are two different types of skateboarding, street and vert. Vert is the act of riding a skateboard on a skating ramp or slope that involves the transition from the horizontal plane to the vertical plane. The place skaters usually skate is at a skate park, which is a park designed for skateboarding that has ramps, rails, and other obstacles that skaters will be able to hit on a skateboard. The most famous vertical skater that everyone knows of this type is Tony Hawk. He is famous for getting massive air on huge vertical ramps and is also the first skateboarder to successfully land a 900 turn on a vertical ramp. On the other hand, street skating is very different from vert, whereas instead of skateboarding in a skate park, skaters use the street as their park.

For example, skaters would try to ollie (jump on a skateboard) over the stairs and they would try to grind the handrails that go down the stairs. As a skater, once you have this mindset of things you can hit, you’ll never lose that thought. When street skating, one doesn’t have to hit the stairs, but could hit the ledges that are everywhere or ride on a random wall. There is a lot of controversy about this because many skaters are arrested or the police are called because businesses or people think the skaters are destroying their property. Which in most cases isn’t true, but I could see why they don’t want skaters to do it because grinding down a handrail leaves scratches in the rail. This is why skaters have such a bad stereotype of being destructive savages.