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Colleen Kelly
Mr. Merati
Microsoft Office
7 October 2011
A Skater Performs A Kickflip
With the evolution of skate parks and ramp riding, the
skateboard began to change.
Early skate tricks consisted mainly
of two-dimensional maneuvers (i.e., riding on only
the front
wheels (nose manuals), spinning like an ice skater on the back
wheels (a 360 pivot), high jumping over a bar (sometimes called
a “Hippie Jump”), long jumping from one boar to another (often
over fearless teenagers lying on their backs), and slalom.
In 1947, skateboarding was transformed by the invention of
the first modern skateboarding trick by Alan “Ollie” Gelfand.
It remained largely a unique Florida trick from 1976 until the
summer of 1978, when Gelfand made his first visit to California.
Gelfand and his revolutionary maneuver caught the attention of
the West Coast skaters and the media where it bega to spread
worldwide. An Ollie is performed by popping the tail of the
skateboard, sliding the front foot towards the nose and liftin
up the back foot to level out the board.
This results in the
skateboarder, along with the board, lifting into the air without
the aid of foot starps or the skateboarder’s hands.
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The Ollie wasreinvented by Rodney Mullen in 1981, who
adapted it to freestyle skating by ollieing on flat ground
rather than out of a vertical ramp.
Mullen also invented the
Ollie kick flip, whick, at the time of its invention, was dubbed
the “magic flip.” The flat ground Ollie allowed skateboarders to
perform tricks in mid-air without any more equipment than the
skateboard itself.
The developmentof these complex tricks by
Rodney Mullen and others tramsformed skateboarding.
Skateboarders began performing their tricks down stair sets
and on other urban obstacles – they were no longer confined to
empty pools and expensive wooden ramps.
The act of “ollieing”
onto an obstacle and sliding along it on the trucks of the board
is known as grinding, and has become a mainstay of modern
skateboarding.
Types of grinds include the “50-50 grind”
(balancing on the front and backtrucks while grinding a rail),
the “5-0 grind” (balancing on only the back truck while grinding
a rail), and the ‘crooked grind”.
There are various other grinds that involve touching both
the trucks and the deck to the rail, ledge , or lip.
Poppingand
landing on the back truck and touching the inner edge of the
board is known as feeble grind.
Board slides. Lip slides , nose
slides, and tail slides are other variations of grinding that
are charachterized by sliding on an obstacle while balancing on
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the usually wooden deck of the skateboard, rather than on the
trucks.
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Works Cited
Howell, Ocean. “Extreme Market Research.” Topic Magazine 13
December 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skateboarding>