I have been using this balance board to build core strength and awareness.

I used to jump the hell out of my skin when my neighbor hollers over the fence and thru a window to get my attention as I work at my desk, in my home office. Now, when Alan gives a yell, I freak out and fall right down.

That's cause I am standing on a balance board! Soon I will either be hurt badly or learn to steady my reactions enough so as not to fly across the god damn room when startled.

I have the board set to the shortest possible range of travel. There are 3 levels of travel, short is for beginners.

As a regular skateboarder, I was able to balance on the board within a few tries. My daughter, an avid gymnast who trains hours and hours each week, found it slightly more challenging.

The board is a good size for skateboarding and snowboarding. Better surfers than I will eventually want a longer board. I'll never outgrow this one but I might want a ball as opposed to the roller. A ball seems really scary right now, however.

JUST4U Balance Board Trainer with 3 Levels of Adjustable Distance,Professional Wooden Roller Board via Amazon Read the rest

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Some pools have a small round plate beneath the diving board where the electrical wiring for the pool light is attached. We call them badges. These are highly coveted by pool skaters everywhere. Salba always had a rule that you had to help drain the pool and frontside grind first wall... Then you could take the badge. I've also seen Salba apply that rule to the deathbox and witnessed the ensuing battle between Salba, Reuler, Toby and whoever else was chomping that day. We always thought that taking a badge just to take it wasn't so cool. You had to earn it. Whatever the case may be, they are amazing things to see and collect. Just do it right. 🐠 Find it, drain it, grind it, claim it. @markonivision @salba69 #poolbadges #bluehavenpools #imperialpools #catalinapools #californiapools #anthonypools #bakerpools

A post shared by Back in the Day Book (@ozzie_ausband) on Jul 21, 2020 at 3:27pm PDT

Ozzie Ausband, co-author of the skateboarding photography book, Back in the Day, shared a bit of history of swimming pool "badges" on his Instagram feed:

Some pools have a small round plate beneath the diving board where the electrical wiring for the pool light is attached. We call them badges. These are highly coveted by pool skaters everywhere. Salba always had a rule that you had to help drain the pool and frontside grind first wall... Then you could take the badge. I've also seen Salba apply that rule to the deathbox and witnessed the ensuing battle between Salba, Reuler, Toby and whoever else was chomping that day.

Tony Hawk first learned to ride a skateboard in 1979 when he was 11 years old. The board was the 1975 Bahne pictured above. Now, that board is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. (Below, video of Hawk's last ride on the Bahne.) From Cole Louison's new interview with Hawk in Smithsonian magazine:

The first wave of skateboarding—when decks were wood, wheels were steel and “sidewalk surfing” was banned in 20 U.S. cities by August 1965—had ended by the time Hawk stepped on the board. Yet the sport enjoyed a major resurgence in the 1970s, thanks in part to new technology. The blue Bahne evokes an era when public outcry had driven skaters off sidewalks and into the first skateparks, where they rode plastic boards with polyurethane wheels higher and higher up the walls of in-ground pools that were capped at the top or extended with plywood[...]

“In its early days, skateboarding was considered a sport for misfits and outsiders,” Hawk tells me. “We didn’t mind the label, since we weren’t trying to fit in with mainstream culture anyway.” And even as mainstream culture prepares to embrace skateboarding more enthusiastically than ever before, Hawk says, “I believe our sense of counterculture and individualism will shine through.”

image: RIDE Channel/YouTube Read the rest

Dalton and Kanaan Dern turned their Apopka, Florida abode into a skatepark. Watch them shred the house. Don't tell mom.

The brothers won the "Murder Your House" contest sponsored by Liquid Death and The Berrics. The prizes included six months of mortgage payments (up to $10,000) but not the new roof that they'll likely need sooner rather than later. Read the rest

Twenty years after Tony Hawk set a skateboarding world record by landing a 900 degree aerial spin on a vertical ramp, the record has been broken. Over the weekend, Gui Khury, age 11, landed a 1080 using only a vert ramp. So fucking rad. From The Guardian:

“The isolation for the coronavirus helped because he had a life that was about school and he didn’t have a lot of time to train, when he got home from school he was tired,” the skater’s father Ricardo Khury Filho told Reuters.

“So now he is at home more, he eats better and he has more time to train and can focus more on the training so that has helped. He has an opportunity to train here, if he didn’t have [the skate facilities] ... he would be stuck at home like everyone else and unable to do sport. So the isolation helped him focus.“

During lockdown, Khury’s family make the 20-minute journey to his grandmother’s house on most days to deliver food and drop him off so that he can train on the vertical ramp, bowl and street course they had built in her back garden. It was on that ramp that he completed the historic feat.

In 1976, esteemed SoCal punk filmmaker David Markey, around 13-years-old at the time, captured this rad 8mm film footage of the skateboard, surf, and dirt bike scene in Santa Monica. Markey writes:

The dawning of the Dogtown era; Road Rider 4's, Bennett Trucks, Logan Earth Ski's, 2 colored Vans. Shot at Bay Street, Kenter Elementary, McKinley Elementary, Harvard Street, and the former vacant lots of Santa Monica. Skaters include Paul Hoffman and Paul Cullen.

In 1981, Tony Hawk, age 13, appeared on the Captain Kangaroo TV program shredding at the legendary Del Mar Skate Ranch in Southern California.

(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest

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A post shared by Sour Solution (@soursolution) on Feb 17, 2019 at 10:27am PST

Simon Isaksson of Sour Solution nails a 360 degree loop-de-loop. It looks effortless now but watch the video below.

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Brazilian skateboarder Felipe Nunes, 20, is on the cover of this month's Thrasher magazine. He just joined Tony Hawk's elite Birdhouse squad. He also has no legs. Nunes lost them in an accident when he was six years old. From Thrasher:

What did it take to get back to where you were mobile again? Were you in a wheelchair at first? What were the biggest challenges to regaining your movement and independence?

I was six when it happened but the doctors said it was super fast. I didn’t really hesitate because I was so young. I used a wheelchair until about the age of 11. I was a kid who wanted to do everything. Regardless of not having two legs I wanted to do it all. I rode my bike, played soccer, pretty much everything out in front of my house. I was a normal kid. It didn’t even look like I was missing part of my legs. My parents were essential in my recovery because they never stopped me from doing anything. They were afraid of me getting hurt like any parents, but they never held me back. When I wanted to give up the wheelchair and ride the skateboard full time, they let me go.

These days, my 13-year-old son and his friends are all about playing with their Tech Deck fingerboards during lunch at school. This 1999 video "Fingers of Fury!" is from 1999 yet two decades later, kids (and adults) are still fanatic about fingerboarding. From Consumer Time Capsule:

Famous fingerboarders Darin Langhorst, Damien Bernadet and Tony Pauthex showcase their skills on a variety of obstacles, such as a mini railing, a wooden box and, well, more railings and boxes.

After a two minute and thirty second compilation including all three athletes' arsenal, we're treated to a feature dubbed, "learning how to do what you want your fingers to do," featuring Darin Langhorst. In this section, Darin explains the succession of tricks that you should learn, each supported with slow motion illustrations. After covering the basics, Langhorst describes the importance of ollies: a lifting of the board, using the "g-forces" exerted by your fingers.

On Saturday at the X Games Minneapolis, Mitchie Brusco landed the first 1260 in the history of professional skateboarding. And yep, he acts like it was nothing.

This was exactly twenty years since Tony Hawk famously landed the first 900 at the X-Games in 1999 (video below).

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Some of SoCal's finest skaters jumped the fence of Palm Springs' Wet ‘n’ Wild water amusement park when it was closed for winter. On their way out after a short session, they ran into the proprietor on their way out. Uh-oh? Turns out, the fellow was a new owner and planned to tear out the existing attractions. So he invited the skaters to come back for a week and shred the park to their hearts' content. Even Tony Hawk showed up. Tim Aguilar writes in Thrasher:

We were given free reign [sic] to skate anything we wanted—and you better believe we did! The street dogs sniffed out the ledges and rails and the tranny lords terrorized the tunnels. Conquering the main attraction was on everyone’s bucket list, but few overcame the mental barrier to do so. The entire week was epic but the days Tony Hawk showed up were a true spectacle. Entire families watched as a 50-year-old man took the slams and eventually conquered a loop in the wild. Thought he wouldn’t?! Our time in Palm Springs was made possible by taking a chance and luckily finding generosity on the other side of a No Trespassing sign. You never know ’til you barge.

Launched as a NYC skateshop in 1994, streetwear brand Supreme has become a religion for hypbeasts (and the flippers who serve them). Now, a private collector is auctioning off their collection of every single Supreme skate deck ever made, many of which are emblazoned with graphics from esteemed contemporary artists. The lot of 248 skateboard decks along with the Louis Vuitton Boite skateboard trunk with tool kit, trucks, wheels and shoulder strap is expected to bring around $1 million but I bet it goes for much more. From Sotheby's:

Supreme started producing their own skateboards in 1998 and have collaborated with many well-known brands over the last 20 years - most famously with Louis Vuitton. Supreme is also known for their artist collaborations, featuring the likes of George Condo, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, KAWS, Marilyn Minter, Nate Lowman, and Takashi Murakami, among others.

"Own the Entire Supreme Skateboard Collection, Now Open for Bidding" (Sotheby's, thanks Lux Sparks-Pescovitz!)

Decks by Marilyn Minter and Jeff Koons and Louis Vuitton Boite skateboard trunk with accessories:

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To make it clear that it's run by skateboarders for skateboarders, East Vancouver's Drive Skate Shop put a skateable sign in front of its store.

The two-sided wood veneer "sandwich board" is not only skateable but looks great too.

(Web Urbanist) Read the rest

As skate culture has become woven into the fabric of society, exhibitions like Against the Grain: Skate Culture and the Camera (coming to America next year) strive to contextualize its impact on aesthetics. Read the rest

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Not Possible @jacksonpilz 🤯👏🏽 Filmed by @chiggysskateboarding

A post shared by THRASHER MAGAZINE (@thrashermag) on Jul 6, 2018 at 6:48am PDT

Australian skater Jackson Pilz is making the internet go wild with his latest skateboard trick. Watch it first in slo-mo, then at regular speed. Either way, prepare to be impressed. Read the rest

Dan Mancina of Livonia, Michigan began to lose his sight as a teenager due to two disorders of the eye. Now he's 95 percent blind. And he's a killer skateboarder. From a Red Bull interview with Mancina:

Can you speak a bit about your goal of helping people build more parks for visually-impaired people? My new kind of goal I'm working towards is having a skatepark built entirely for the blind, using techniques I use, like tactile things on the ground, audio speakers within objects to help orientate yourself and things hanging from the ceiling that can help let you know where you are.

I would love to have it fully equipped with skateboards and pads to help bring blind people in and introduce them to skateboarding.

One of the biggest allures of skating is the ability to have your own freedom, choose your tricks and your style. I'd love to try to spread that to other blind people, to give them a chance to try that out.