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Skateboards & Stuff
SKATEBOARD HISTORY
The first type of skateboards were actually roller skate wheels attached to a two by four. Often the wood had a crate nailed to it with handles sticking out for control. Over the next few decades kids changed the look of the scooter and took off the crate and started riding on two by fours with steel wheels.In the 1950's changes were made to the trucks (the device that holds the wheels) and kids started to maneuver more easily. In the late 50's, surfing became more popular and people began to see surfing together with cruising on a board. By 1959, the first Roller Derby Skateboard was for sale. They had clay wheels and sidewalk surfing began to take root.
By the 1960's skateboarding gained fans amongst the surf crowd. However, when Larry Stevenson, publisher of Surf Guide started promoting skateboarding, things started to take off. Larry's company, Makaha designed the first professional boards in 1963. Skateboard history lesson #1 The first contest in skateboard history was held in Hermosa California in 1963. In 1964, surf legend Hobie Alter teamed up with the Vita-Pakt juice company to create Hobie Skateboards. Some brave souls decide to ride empty swimming pools.
In 1965, international contests, movies Skater Dater, a magazine and cross country trips by teams of skateboarders brought the sport to enormous heights. Over fifty million boards were sold within a three year period and then all of a sudden skateboarding died in the fall of 1965.
The crash in skateboard history came about due to inferior product, too much inventory and a public upset by reckless riding. Although some companies developed better quality wheels, clay wheels were the cheapest to manufacture.
But, clay wheels did not grip the road and skaters fell everywhere. Cities started to ban skateboards in response to health and safety concerns and after a few fatal accidents, skateboarding was drummed out of existence. Manufacturers like Vita-Pakt and Makaha lost enormous amounts of money.
BMX HISTORY It all started with a group of B.M.X. "thugs" in the summer of 1980: John Zalewski, Ryan Bailey, Ronnie Reels, Tim Stump, and a few others decided to give up the homemade backyard tracks after seeing the "REAL" thing . We set out to build our own track for all to race on. With the help of some volunteering parents and the influence of Mr. Robert Gunnels of Gunnels Florist, the land was donated and we went to work. We worked hard and raced harder till we grew older and discovered other things...like cars and girls!!!. Now 22 years later a savior has come back from the past. Thanks to John Zalewski (and the tolerance of his wife Charla), the old track has been resurrected. It is in the same location and basically the same layout, only bigger and better. Now we can relive our past through the eyes of our children doing what they love to do so much. I suppose some may say it is an old track, when in reality the track has risen from its ashes like a firey Phoenix ,to become an awesome track. It is our track and we love it. We want to share it with all! It is a trip down memory lane for us older guys and we love to see the children and parents pull together as a B.M.X. family. Mr. Gunnels has since passed on and he is missed by all, but his legacy lives on at The Jere Whitson Bike Park. I bet Mr. Gunnels looks down from the heavens above at us and grins at all the fun everyone is having.
SNOWBOARD HISTORY
It is hard to say who actually "invented" the first snowboard. People would have always figured out how to slide down a hill on some sled, thus it would be unfair to point out one specific person, who came up with "the first" snowboard.
There were some people, though, who built snowboard like sleds before. One of them was M.J. "Jack" Burchett. He cut out a plank of plywood in 1929 and tried to secure his feet with some clothesline and horse reins. Burchett came up with on of the first "snowboards". Before the next step for the snowboard was taken, it had to wait over 30 years until 1965. In this year Sherman Poppen, a chemical gases engineer in Muskegon, invented "The Snurfer" (his wife came up with the name) as a toy for his daughter. He made the Snurfer by bounding two skis together and putting a rope at the nose, so the rider could hold it and keep it more stable. Many of his daughters friends wanted one of those new Snurfers, and soon Poppen lincensed his new idea to a manufacturer. The Snurfer was sold over half a million times in 1966, but was only seen as a toy for kids, even though Poppen organized competitions with this new board. Jake Burton took part in those competitions and became really interested in the snurfer. For him it was a cool thing to do, not having the oppurtunity to go surfing (his parents would not buy him a board). But Burton was really seriuos about skiing. After breaking his collarbone in a car accident, he was not able to take part in skiing competitoins anymore. While Burton was into riding the Snurfer, Dimitrije Milovich started making snowboards in 1969. After sliding down some hills on a cafeteria plate in College, he comes up with the idea. His boards were based on surfboards combined with the way skiis work. In 1972 Milovich started a new company called "Winterstick". He produced several boards, and even got articles in the "Newsweek", "Playboy" and "Powder" which helped to make snowboarding better known. Even though Milovich left the snowboarding business in 1980, he is still recognized as a very important pioneer of the sport. In 1977 Jake Burton, who now finished NYU, moved to Londonderry, Vermont to make some money by building different versions of the Snurfer, which he still remembered. His first boards were made of laminated hardwood. Burton shocked all the Snurfer riders by winning a Snurfer competition with his own board, which had the first binding. This first binding made a big difference fro handling the board, and thus made it easier for him to beat the other riders. After that, in 1979, Poppen stopped producing the Snurfer and went back to his old profession. He was out of the business, and never came back. Parallel to Burton, Tom Sims produced his first snowboards in 1977. Beeing obsessed with skateboarding, Sims tried to go out in the snow and slide down the hill with a "snowboard" he built in a junior high shop-class. He just glued some carpet to the top of a piece of wood, and put an aluminium sheeting on the bottom. After he focussed on producing skateboards in his garage, with the help of his friend and employee Chuck Barfoot, he started making snowboards in 1977. Barfoot, who actaully made the snowboards, came up with the "Flying Yellow Bannana". It was just a skateboard deck on top of a plastic shell with skegs.Oficially the first real ski technology for snowboards was introduced by Burton 1980 (it is said Winterstick already used a P-Tex base in 1974). The new prototype had a P-tex base and combined more of the ski technology into snowboards with that. In the same year Sims signed a skate- and snowboarding deal with a big mainstream company (Vision Sports), which helped him solving his financial problems. Barfoot was left out, and tried to built his own firm. He did not succeed agianst the big competitors Sims and Burton. In 1982 the first National Snowboard race was held in Suicide Six, outside Woodstock, Vermont. The goal of the race apeared mostly to be "survival" because the race consists of a steep icy kamiaze downhill run, called "The Face". In 1985 still only 39, of the approximatly 600 snowboard areas allow snowboards. The same year one of the first (there was another one in 1981, called "Snowboarder") Snowboarding magazin comes out. It's name is "Absolutely Radical". Later on the name is changed into "International Snowboarding Magazine". In 1986 Regis Rolland, a French snowboarder, stars in "Apocalypse Snow". His staring launches a new European Snowboarding generation of fans who organize their own regional events, such as the Swiss championship in St. Moritz. Snowboarding is becoming a more and more popular sport.
SURFBOARD HISTORY
Surfboard designs were, and still are, a combination of shaper skills and surfer inputs. The continuing evolution of both templates and boards goes hand in hand. Templates are made from good boards, and good boards are made from good templates with inputs from good surfers. The shaper is really the artist and engineer who can translate thoughts into reality.
Boards are normally designed and built using a number of different templates, with a new template taken from a design that proves to work very well. This new template can then be used to shape other boards with similar characteristics and virtually any size.
Prior to the foam board, templates were built rugged, often made of heavy 1/4" plywood. Shaping a balsa or redwood board took long hours, with the template sometimes used over and over to check on uniformity of the shape. These older balsa and redwood longboard templates (very rare now) show their wear with many nicks and pencil marks that have been added over time. However, while the board design may change, some angles on a good template are usually used over and over again.
Foam boards require a lighter, more flexible template that can fit closer to the blank, and also to prevent scratching the blank. Using the lighter and thinner fiberboard material available beginning in the mid-sixties for the template's construction also enabled them to be made much easier. The shaper can simply rough cut the design with a jigsaw and then smooth the outline down using a surform and sandpaper.
Early day board (longboard) templates were used primarily to check nose and tail design. Since rails (except for guns) were usually parallel, the middle part of the template wasn't a factor in its use. Therefore, some early day templates looked similar to modern designs, but weren't used the same way. Also, some template designs looked very strange, simply because the shaper put a nose and tail shape at each end of the template, and didn't worry about what the middle of the template looked like. One early day template owned by this author (given to me by Dale Velzy) is only 4 feet long and looks like a template used for a dovetail shortboard design. It was used as primarily as a nose template in the early days. I should also point out that some early redwood board templates were complete nose templates, not half templates as they are now.
The plywood template I donated to Huntington Beach's International Surfing Museum in 1992 is one of three original balsa board templates made and used by Dale in the 50s-60's. It is believed Dale actually used these templates to shape his first foam surfboard. The picture is of other two templates that I still have.
The story of how I got these templates is similar to other contributions Dale has made to influence surfing over the years. Dale's last full time shaping job about 1969 was at Soul Surfboards in Huntington Beach. I was a competition team surfer for Soul at that time, and Dale and I became good friends. After spending many hours in the Soul shaping stall going over designs and shapes, Dale finally got tired of explaining and took me under his wing to teach me how to "do it right". Then when Dale first retired from shaping about 1971 to sell blanks for Bob Rogers at Roger's Foam, he gave me all his shaping equipment, including these templates. I subsequently went on to shape boards for many years at my own company, Wave Trek, using both the tools and the techniques he taught me. I should note that Dale also taught me much of the early day surfing philosophy, something that has all but disappeared in modern day surfing.
Another template I have donated to the International Surfing Museum, marked with a VO bottle drawing, was taken from the first board designed by John Van Ornum at Wave Trek and shaped by me. New templates are seldom made prior to a board proving exceptional in the water. John's board was exceptional, and became the first signature model produced at Wave Trek. The donated template is made from fiberboard, a more flexible and much thinner material than plywood. Most new templates are made this way with a notch in their tail section (see picture). Additionally, special models usually had distinctive inscriptions designating the original developer. Although I haven't seen this "signature" marking practice carried on in recent years, special models nearly always are shaped with a single unique template made from the original board.
In finalizing a template, it is very difficult because of kick and rail design to draw a pattern with the board laying upside down on the fiberboard. Especially for low rail designs, a much closer pattern can be taken from the bottom of a board. The notch must be cut to keep the skag (or skags) from preventing a smooth fit of the new template against the board. When fin boxes eliminated many glassed on fins, template notches were also eliminated. Then the tri-fin and wood fin designs came back, and notches again became commonplace.
Remember, templates only outline 1/2 of the board. Therefore, when drawing the template, place the straight edge of the fiberboard along the center stringer. Also, if the template is made from a board over 8 feet, then the nose and tail must be drawn at each end of the template, with the midpoint smoothed and approximated at the midpoint of the template. This is where other templates are often used on longer (longboard) designs. I recently used this approach with a template I made from a 9'4" longboard. The fiberboard sheet is 4' by 8', so adjustments were made at the midpoint of the template to compensate for the longer board design.
ROLLERLADE HISTORY
In 1980, two hockey-playing Minnesota brothers discovered an in-line skate while rummaging through a sporting goods store and decided that this design would make an ideal off-season hockey-training tool. They refined the skate and began assembling the first Rollerblade skates in the basement of their parents' home. Hockey players, who loved the product, were soon turning heads as they glided down Minnesota roads in the summer. Nordic and alpine skiers were also quick to adapt Rollerblade skates to their training regimens.
Business grew during the early '80s, but the market was undeveloped and limited geographically. It was only after the company was sold in 1984 that strategic marketing efforts were introduced to position in-line skating as a new sport, and tactics were employed such as giving skates to rental shops along trendy Venice Beach in California.
Leading the Way Through the years, Rollerblade has achieved several industry "firsts," such as the use of polyurethane boots and wheels, metal frames, dual bearings and heel brakes. Later, Rollerblade developed the first wheel with a cor
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