✨ Skateboarding 🛹

Now’s the time to learn the activity that has come to re-define urban cool.

The origin story Skateboarding as we know it started in the late 1960s in California where surfers would use schoolyard banks to emulate waves on flat days – hence ‘sidewalk surfing’. Surf companies then started making skateboards. The invention of urethane wheels, which offered more grip and speed, was pivotal. 🚀 In the mid-1970s, California experienced a severe drought. Swimming pools were drained and local skateboarders rode the smooth, empty pools. It was here that vertical transition skateboarding was born. In the '80s, a new breed of skateboarders like Christian Hosoi, Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk pushed the limits of Vert skateboarding. In parallel Florida’s Rodney Mullen was stunning the world with his unbelievable trick repertoire on flat ground. Widely considered the most pivotal innovator in the history of skateboarding, many of the tricks Mullen invented would form the basis of modern street skating. 🛹

As the '80s gave way to the ‘90s, advances in home technology increased skateboarding's allure exponentially, while board shapes stabilised around the ultra-functional, duo-directional ‘popsicle’ shape which dominates today. Nowadays skateboarding is one of the world's most popular action sports. Its heroes are household names with giant followings. The women's skateboarding scene is also ever-growing. Competitive skateboarding has become so advanced in terms of difficulty and consistency, that skateboarding has debuted on the world's biggest sporting stage, the Olympics, where competitors from all over the world skated it out for medals and glory in the disciplines of Street and Park.
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