Matthew_Iverson

The Unexpected Influence

Written, pictured, and desgined by Matt Iverson

To Everyone Who Has Ever Shown Me A Skateboarding Video

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And To My Freestyle Teachers Without My Book Would Not Be Possible

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A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s

To My Partner Taro For Showing Me Many Videos To My Interviewies For Participating

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Of Table Tabl Of eContents Contents 1) The Media’s Unlikely Impact 2) Skateboarding: A History 3) A Phoenix In The Ashes 4) Styles Change Like Seasons 5) Behind The Scene To Upfront 6) From Then, To Now 7) How To Become The Outlier 8) An OG Skateboarder 9) From Hobby To Serious Sport

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Foreword

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I remember the Easter morning I got my first skateboard. I had always watched in envy of some kids at my local park that skated there everyday. The freedom and skill of the skateboard was extremely enticing to an 8 year old kid. In the first week, I road my board everywhere and was always trying to do tricks, but I never landed any. Even though I was athlet ic enough to play a new sport rather successful ly for a beginner, skateboarding just didn't fall into that category.

One day, I got so frustrated I left my board in the drive and my mom ran it over. I didn't care because I hated the board in frustration over not being able to land an ollie, but I still enjoyed skateboarding as a spect ator and watched skateboarding videos on my dad's computer all the time. The experience gave me a true appreciation for how hard sk ateboarders have to work to reach the skill lev el of professional.

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Introduction The Medi a’s Unlikely Impact Ov er time, everything in the universe changes and like everything else, skateboarding has changed. Skateboarding was once very different 60 years ago than it is today, but all it took was time and other influences to create the sport of skateboarding we recognize today.

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Chapter 1

ver t i m e , e v e r y t h i ng in t he uni ver s e c h a n g e s a nd like ev ery th i ng e l s e , s ka t e b oar ding has chan g ed . S ka t e b oa r d i n g was o nce very d i f f er e n t 6 0 y e a r s ago t han it i s tod a y, b u t a l l i t t o o k w as time and oth er i nf l ue n c e s t o c r e a t e the s po r t of skateboarding we recognize today.

to recreate the feel of surfing when the waves weren't surfable. The original skateboards were made of a wooden box and roller derby wheels, but as the sport's popularity increased, so did the design of skateboards. SkateboardChapter 2 ing popularity peaked in 1963 when the riginally skateboarding's popularity was very off and on. Startingfirst skateboarding companies like Jack's, back in the 1950's, skateboarding was a Hobie, and Makaha were mass produc 12 way for surfers ing products and holding the first downhill slalom and freestyle competitions.

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However, skateboarding's popularity wouldn't last long (A Brief History of Skateboarding) .

Just two years after its peak, skateboarding's popularity just crashed in 1965. Almost overnight it seemed, skateboarders just stopped skateboarding, every company closed soon after, and anyone who wanted to continue to skateboard had to make everything on their own.

Skaters sufficed with clay wheels which were extremely dangerous and parts were difChapter 3 ficult to come by, n 1972, a redesign of a but like the phoecrucial aspect of skatenix, skateboarding boarding was reinventbegan to rise from ed. The invention of the the ashes in 1972. urethane wheels which were more durable, spun longer, and were much easier to control allowed skateboarders to try harder and more dangerous tricks.

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Invent ed b y F r a n k N a s w ort hy who went o n t o c r e a t e t h e co mpany C a d i l l a c W h e e l s ; " T h e inv entio n spar k ed new i n t e r e s t i n s k atebo ar di ng a m o ng s u r f e r s a n d ot her y o ung p eop l e (A B r i e f H i s t o r y o f Skat eb oar d i ng ) . T h e p o p u l a r ity o f the sport co nt in u e d t o g r a dually r is e an d t he i n 1 9 7 5 , s ka t e b o ar ding t o o k a bi g l ea p f o r w a r d . A d ownhill s lal om a nd f r e e s t y l e c on t e s t was held i n Del Ma r , C a l i f o r n i a a t an Ocean Fe sti va l . A s ka t e b oa r d i n g t eam that went b y t he n a me of Z e p hy r at tended th e co nt e s t a n d r od e t h eir bo ards l i k e no o ne h a d i n t h e public ey e.

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Taro tring to tre-flip again

Similar to the style of surfing, the team rode their boards low and smooth and took skateboarding from simply being a hobby to a serious and exciting sport. People hopped on the skateboarding bandwagon that was skateboarding and followed the Zephyr team with religious fever. This following made skateboarding an edgy sport in the public eye and helped develop the anti-establishment reputation that was associated with skateboarding (A Brief History of Skateboarding) .

and again

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Th e p o p u l a r i t y o f t h e lo w- to - gr o und s katebo ar ding only lasted unt i l 1 9 7 8 w h e n a s kater named Alan Gelfand (nic knam e d Ol l i e) i nv e n t e d a m aneuv er that gav e skat eboarding anoth er r ev o l u t i o n a r y j u m p. Named af ter Alan, t he ollie is pe rfor m ed b y s l a m m i n g t he tail o f a s katebo ar d o nt o the ground, whi ch t he n p o p s h i m and his bo ard into the air an d landing it.

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The ollie completely changed the types of tricks skaters were performing and today is the basis for almost every skateboarding trick. Alan Gelfand's legendary maneuver earned him a spot in the skateboarding hall of fame in 2002 (A Brief History of Skateboarding) .

This new move gained skateboarding new popularity by attracting people who didn't surf and weren't into the low-to-ground style.

In fact, the popularity was so great that cities built skate parks to hold the thousands of new skateboarders, but again the hype and popularity didn' t last forever.

From the combination of exorbitant insurance prices forcing cities to close parks and the predictable 10 year lull that skateboarding experiences, the sport was no longer on the radar from the late 70' s to mid to late 80' s (A Brief History of Skateboarding) .

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Like the reinvention of wheels and tricks, the invention of the VCR that opened up the world of skateboarding to many more and helped bring it out of its slump. Two talented filmers, Stacey Peralta and George Powell, created a team of young, talented skateboarders and called them the Bones Brigade. This hand-picked group of talent included skateboarding icons such as Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, and Rodney Mullen (A Brief History of Skateboarding) .

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Chapter 5

kateboarding lived on, though, and skaters kept skating. With the parks closed, skaters were forced to build their own ramps and the sport eventually went underground. Small companies were created and actual skateboarders were in charge, which allowed them to be creative and create new styles and shapes of boards (A Brief History of Skateboarding) .

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Together, the group made the first skateboarding montage videos in the world and attracted huge audiences. With mass audiences watching these videos, skateboarding began influencing music, styles, and cultures.

With the massive amount of people watching and admiring skateboarding and other extreme sports videos, it was not a surprise when television stations started broadcasting them. ESPN picked up the X Games in 1995, which gave everyone with a television a chance to watch skateboarding without having to purchase a video tape. In the first year the X Games were televised, nearly 200,000 people were watching from the stands and millions of more people watched from home, which helped skateboarding gain massive exposure and popularity (X Games) . Despite all the new participation and popularity, the sport of skateboarding never changed, but it forever changed when it went viral.

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Chapter 6

Be i ng t ha t I ' m j u s t sev ent een, I was no t aro und t o s e e t h e e a rly impact o f t he Inte r net ha d o n h u ma n i ty o r the ev o lutio n o f ska t eb o a rd i n g , b u t I h av e been a keen o bse r ver s i n c e I w a s s i x a nd hav e been no ticing ho w t he s p o r t of s ka t e bo ar ding has changed wi t h t he ma s s i v e i n f l u ence o f the Internet.

Today, people under thirty are spending more time on the Internet than on watching television, and those over thirty are starting to spend less and less time watching television and more on the Internet (American Internet Use Catches Up With TV Use) . A search of skateboarding on Youtube will get you 10.05 million different skateboarding related videos.

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And with Youtube getting over 2 billion views per day; skateboarding is bound to get more and more exposure.

Everyday, thousands of videos are uploaded to Youtube and other websites by amateur skateboarders. These skateboarders hope to get attention from companies that can sponsor them and be known in the skateboarding community, but what distinguishes one skateboarding video from the millions of others? This is what drives skateboarders22to get HD video cameras, create and do new tricks, and look for new spots. It is what pushes the sport to go above and beyond the norm.

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Chapter 7

To standout among the millions of other skateboard videos on the Internet, skateboarders need everything they can get. Great camerawork can highlight tricks and that is why great filming is so important to skateboarders. Anything to make a video look better can help skaters differ from the everyone else, but what really makes skaters stand out from the pack is new tricks or new spots. Seeing something new draws more attention because it is more interesting, which why skateboarders are being drawn towards street skating rather than skating in a skatepark. There is little variation between skateparks because they are usually designed by the same person, while nothing is similar in the streets. In California, there are over 100 skateparks and over half of them were designed by Wormhoudt Inc. Also, skateparks aren' t respected as much as skateboarding in the street because skateparks are like training grounds.

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Everything is designed for skateboarding, while spots in the streets are not, which makes it more difficult. One skateboarding company made a video that was completely out of the norm. The spots nor the tricks were different, but what made the video unlike any other was that while the skateboarders would perform their tricks on cement blocks, the cement blocks would explode. This was the first video of its kind and was extremely entertaining and unique. Some people may enjoy that thousands of videos that are being uploaded every hour, while others believe it is ruining skateboarding.

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Chapter 8

ason Strubing is a 40 year old owner of the Skateworks Store in downtown Los Altos, California who has been skating his whole life has been around and experienced the changes in skateboarding. He said when skateboarding videos were being released on video tapes and there weren't very many, people appreciated them more. Now, with thousands of videos being released every hour, it's difficult for videos to stand out and since there are so many, it is even more difficult to appreciate them.

Now, when a trailer for a new skateboarding team's montage is released, there is very little hype, whereas when Jason was kid, the whole skateboarding scene would buzz with anticipation.

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Chapter 9

or better or for worse, media and technology have changed skateboarding forever. They have taken it from a small, underground sport and thrust into the mainstream. Currently, the skateboarding market is worth 4.8 billion dollars in the US alone and there are around 11.08 million skateboarders now held in the United States (Skateboarding Statistics) . The sport is growing to global proportions with competitions now held in Asia, Europe, and South America. Even children and teens in poor, developing countries are skateboarding - for more than just the fun; like many other sports, skateboarding is becoming a way for exceptional athletes to secure endorsements and escape from poverty.

Currently, the city of Rio de Janeiro is producing gold medal skateboarders like Kenya produces first place marathon runners. Bob Burnquist is a prime example of a skateboarder who grew up living in poverty in Rio de Janeiro, but went on to earn lots of money, skateboarding fame, and even put his name in the skateboarding record books.. Skateboarding gives a glimmer of hope for those that have very little in their lives. Who could have known back in the 1950' s that skateboarding would transform from a leisurely activity to a serious, competitive sport because of media?

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Bibliography Wormhoudt Inc. - Completed Parks - Skateparks.com. Wormhoudt Inc. Skateparks.com.

SitesToGo.NET. Web. 03 Apr. 2012.

Cave, Steve. A Brief History Of Skateboarding. About.com Skateboarding. About.com.

Web. 03 Apr. 2012.

X Games. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 Feb. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2012.

Brustein, Joshua. American Internet Use Catches Up With TV Use. Bits Blog. New York Times, 13 Dec. 2010. Web. 03 Apr. 2012.

Bob Burnquist. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Mar. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2012 YouTube. YouTube. Web. 03 Apr. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/results?hl=en>.

Statistics. YouTube. YouTube. Web. 03 Apr. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics>.

Dave. Welcome Back,.” Skateboarding Statistics. 13 May 2009. Web. 03 Apr. 2012.

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