A backyard session at the 99 pool in Sacramento with Christian Hosoi, Randy Katen, Dave Duncan and Royce Nelson. This is classic pool skateboarding from back in the day. Dave Duncan goes for a rollin and slams hard and then comes back with a few good looking shots over the death box.

Jesse Martinez vividly remembers the first time he saw a jump ramp. “[It] was somewhere around ’82 or ’83. I went out to my grandma’s house out in Simi Valley to visit her. I just skated around town and I came across these guys skating a ramp. I said ‘Whoa! These guys are jumping off a ramp over there.” Turns out one of the skaters’ fathers had built it for him. Martinez spent the day trying it out, then returned two days later and offered to buy the ramp. The owner refused. So: “I wasn’t the straightest person back then, so I went back to the dude’s house later that night, and there it was on the side of the house. I flipped it over, put it on my skateboard, and rolled it back to my grandma’s pad.”

Luckily for all concerned, Martinez brought it back the very next day.

At the time, skateboarding was considered a dying art; the boarders were just emulating their surfin’ compadres. But Martinez kept at it, practicing both ramps jumps and wall kickturns. One day, he had his eureka moment: “Why don’t I put this ramp against the wall and try it?” He tried it, did it, and liked it. Pretty soon, his SMA partner Natas Kaupas and an assortment of Dogtowners were rehearsing their wall moves.

The next step was to unveil their new trick in public. Martinez, Kaupas, and the Dogtowners hit up an Arizona skateboarding contest, shortly after jump ramps had been added to the competition. Martinez recalls what happened when he grabbed a ramp and slid it up against a wall: “[All] these local guys were like ‘Hey, what are you doing!?’ I told them, ‘Wait a minute…watch.’ I went and I hit it, bam! When I turned to look back, all 30 of them were just standing there in amazement…wondering ‘What the hell did this guy just do?’ It was a barrage of guys crashing into the wall for the rest of the day.”

That original ramp would serve Martinez well one last time, in 1985, when he was photographed using it for a wall kickturn. The picture would wind up in a Powell ad that appeared in TWS magazine in ‘86. Unfortunately, Martinez left the ramp there to go on a six-month tour, and when he got back, someone else had taken it – ironically enough. “It was a sad day, but it served its purpose. After the photos, it was labeled as one of the first actual jump ramps that started everything off there…Whoever stole it, bring it back – I’m still here at the beach.”

This would be an advanced skateboard trick. You will have to know how to ride vert pretty good or probably be an am or pro. What you do here is drop in and launch off the side of the vert ramp and go up and over the spine and land on the side of the spine in the transition.

Carpet Boarding is typically used for practicing ollie tricks without having to worry about your skateboard shooting out from underneath you. . Most people think that busting ollies while standing still is a lot harder than while rolling, but practicing like this can help your body learn how to do it. Pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you is you land on the edge of the board and roll and ankle so you can still slam but it minimizes the chances of that happening.

This Is Carpet Boarding

We went ahead and found a few clips on youtube so you can see what we are talking about.

According to a post by made by espn it looks like X Games park builder Nate Wessel is talking to California Skateparks with regard to building a concrete bowl in the parking lot of the Home Depot Center. Hmm this is right down the street from my house I am going to have to get in and verify this with my skateboard. For now here is a picture courtesy espn

A Concrete Bowl At the X Games