No Smoking Skateboards

Anyone who was into skateboarding in the 1980s remembers the unintentionally funny Skatevisions video for Vision and Sims skateboards. Agent Orange was omnipresent back then. They were the soundtrack for this video as well as for a generation of skate punks. The Orange County power-trio gave birth to a sound that blended Surf with Heavy Metal and Power Pop. The guitar lead for their Skate Punk anthem “Blood Stains” was even ripped off by The Offspring on the chart-topping “Come out and Play.” Although they haven’t released anything since 1996’s Virtually Indestructible, Agent Orange continue to play the club circuit.

In a world where most skateboard photographers are looking for the action shot to sell to their magazine of choice, we thought some different images of just the skateboard itself or an image with part of the skaters body would be a different approach. This post is simply called “Images Of Skateboards“.

Imagine what an image of skateboarding would be in your mind, does it consist of boys that are clad in helmets and weird looking knee pads performing very impressive moves that are similar to acrobatics, only with a skateboard? Even though skateboarding may appear as a boys sport, according to the “Skateboarding Mom” author Barb Odanaka, during the nineteen seventies both boys and girls participated in skateboarding and it wasn’t a big deal either.

During the nineteen eighties when skateboarding went “hard-core” or “urban”, she later states that all of the girls just stop riding skateboards, but with a vengeance, girls have begun getting back into skateboarding. The truth of the matter is that girls can have just as much fun, if not more, than guys can while skateboarding and girls can also be just as technically skilled as guys are when it comes to skateboarding.

For example, take into consideration Elissa Steamer, she began skateboarding at the young age of twelve and in nineteen ninety eight, she turned professional and now she is a star among skateboarding. A very quick search on the internet for “women” and “girls” as well as “skateboarding” will bring up a lot of different information that is specifically targeted toward all of the girls that are interested in skateboarding.

Believe it or not, there are several different competitions that will challenge girls. Bizarrely, skateboarding has placed its roots within surfboarding. Back during the nineteen fifties, the Californian surfers were able to come up with a very quirky idea that they would go surfing on the streets, so they begin taking their boards with them to the streets within California and as a result, skateboarding was born.

Skateboards, at leas the very first ones, were very curious inventions. The albeit primitive, very first skateboards were comprised of a wooden box or board that had roller skates attached to it with straps. During nineteen seventy five in Del Mar, California, the very first contest for skateboarding was held during the Ocean Festival. In nineteen seventy eight, Alan Gelfand was able to invent a maneuver known as the “Ollie Pop”. In order to pull of this maneuver you would have to slam the foot of the skateboard’s tail end so that you can lift the board and yourself into the air. Most skateboarding tricks today have been based on this particular maneuver. One of the other famous names within the sport of skateboarding is Tony Hawk: at the very young age of sixteen be was able to become the best skateboarder in the world.

However, the sport of skateboarding is still evolving and there are several companies that are now manufacturing some skateboards that possess high technology. Overall, skateboarding is a wonderful sport and an excellent way to stay fit. Skateboarding is also technically challenging and it involves all sort of different tricks like jumps, varials, slides, grabs, degrees and grinds. There are even some tricks that may require a ramp, whereas others can be performed off of curbs or on flat ground.

As the world continues to come up with several new ways of enjoyment and entertainment, the skateboard has become one of the most recent additions to the youth’s fascination of the twenty first century. After having watched the professional skateboarders in action, most adolescents will normally fall madly in love with a skateboard. Indeed, skateboarding is extremely attractive to all of the young people because skateboarding is daring, full of action and creative.

At the very moment that you find yourself completely in love with skateboarding, you should definitely go out and look into purchasing a skateboard that you can consider your own. When you decide to make this trip, make sure that you let a couple of your friends tag along to share their opinion how you should purchase a skateboard.

In the event that you don’t have any friends that you are able to carry along with you, there are a couple of things that may be helpful:

1) Make sure that you are ready to accept the cost. When you purchase a quality skateboard it isn’t going to be cheap. However, you should remember that a cheap skateboard doesn’t have any quality. So, if you want to be granted a head start within the sport of skateboarding, you should be ready to loosen the strings on your purse and pay whatever it is going to take to purchase a skateboard that is made of a good quality. In order to purchase a descent board, you should look at spending around a hundred dollars.

2) When you are selecting your deck, your best choice is probably going to be one without graphics or logos, because these normally come with designer labels and the cost will be multiplied because of that.

3) Pay very close attention to the trucks- For beginners, the trucks are a very special trait. Make sure that you pay very close attention to the trucks, if they are not of a good quality, the very first time that you tried something serious, your skateboard would travel for a toss.

4) New skateboards versus the used skateboards- even though a new skateboard would actually be the absolute best choice for each and every skateboarder out there, sometimes it would be nice if you were to purchase one from a pro. The broken in and used skateboards not only would be available at a bargain price but they would also be excellent for you to practice on as well.

Now that you know a couple of things about purchasing a skateboard, you shouldn’t have any problems with making the purchase. If you are still a little hesitate, make sure that you carry your friends along so that they are able to voice their opinions and then if you have any questions you can ask the customer service representative at that store. They will be able to address any questions and concerns that you may have at that current time about the skateboard that you are interested in.

As a skateboarder, you may already know that the sport of skateboarding is extremely popular and there are dozens of different skateboards out there that are cheaper. There are some skateboards out there that just appear to be cheap, but most of them have brand names that can be trusted and occasionally, there are some that have endorsements by pro-skateboarders.

So, how will you be able to tell if the skateboard that is relatively cheaper that you have found at your local sports shop or local store is going to be a good skateboard?

Normally, from experience, it is going to depend on how seriously you take your skateboarding. In a situation, where you only want to skate casually every once in a blue moon, there are some cheaper skateboards that may work out just fine. However, you should take into consideration that this may be a false economy in the event that you end up eventually taking skateboarding more seriously, because you would definitely have to purchase a pro-grade, second skateboard.

In addition to all of this, you aren’t going to be able to blame all of your lack of progress on the skateboard. However, you should know that quality really does make a really big difference. Below are a couple of the things that you are going to need to watch out for:

1) Wheels- As a skater, you need to make sure that you examine the wheels that are attached to the skateboard. In the event that the wheels are made of plastic, you minds well go ahead and throw the board away and just keep on walking, plastic wheels are only going to give you a terrible experience while skateboarding. The wheels on the skateboard should be made from urethane. When the wheels are made out of plastic, they won’t grip the ground, and you are going to slide completely out of control, rubber wheels will also rip apart.

2) Bearings- As a skater, you need to make sure that the wheels on the skateboard spin freely. In the event that the bearings have been stamped with any type of information, you need to see if there is some type of ABEC rating. If there is an ABEC rating listed, they should be okay.

3) Trucks- As a skater you must examine the skateboard’s axles. All of the axles should be created from metal that is fairly sturdy. Within the trucks, there should be some rubber bushes, you need to make sure that they are not made of plastic but instead made of rubber.

4) Deck- In the event that you are inexperienced, the deck may be a rather difficult part of the skateboard to check. Basically, what you are looking for are layers of wood that are pressed together, also check to make sure that the edges are well treated and rounded. If the graphics on the bottom appear to be cheaply painted on the skateboard, it doesn’t matter.

Here is a video clip from the H Street Shackle Me Not Hell Concave Summer Camp. This is skateboarding at its best in 1988. Old School Skateboarding Yo! This H Street Skateboard Video is probably the first one I started to watch and what really got me excited about skateboards.

Click her for the youtube video clip

Here is a video clip I made of a bootlegger at the swapmeet getting busted. He was selling bootleg skateboard branded shirts like zero, element, spitfire, World Industries and many more top skateboarding brands. I told security I wanted to film it so I could show these companies what was happening at the swapmeet. Security made the vendor box up all the bootleg stuff and they hauled it away and I sat there and filmed it all. I guess he should have taken my suggestion the day before of not selling bootleg stuff and go direct with the manufacturers.