Skateboarding—a summer Olympic sport since Tokyo hosted the Games in 2021—traces its origins in mid-20th century California. Originally called “sidewalk surfing,” the activity was developed by California surfers who were searching for a similar challenge on dry ground.
“In the beginning, we were taking our rink skate wheels off and nailing them to a board to go out and ‘surf the streets,’” says Patti McGee, the first professional female skateboarder, winner of the women’s division in the first annual National Skateboard Championships in 1964 and the first woman inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2010.
“This was great for us surfers because now we had something to do when the waves were flat.”
Surfers in California initially cobbled together skateboards from planks of wood or crates attached to dissected roller skate wheels in order to skate the “concrete seas.” As the boards became more advanced in design and commercially produced, skateboarding reached beyond the surfing community. Despite its acceptance into mainstream sports, skateboarding maintains its roots of counterculture, innovation and creativity.
“Skateboarding has been a DIY activity from its earliest beginnings in California,” says George Powell, the co-founder of skateboard company Powell-Peralta, which formed the Bones Brigade skateboarding team founded in 1979.
“Imagine it yourself, build it yourself, play on it yourself, create your own style and tricks yourself, without controls, coaches, or rules, and happily it still is. That’s why it is still fun,” he says.
The Skateboard Through the Decades
Early prototypes of skateboards were cobbled together by hand with scrap wood, recycled crates and metal wheels and trucks from deconstructed roller skates.
As designs were refined, the boards began to be produced and sold in local stores. Alf Jensen created and sold a skateboard with steel wheels called the Bun Board in Hermosa Beach, California starting in 1957. The company Roller Derby mass-produced the first skateboard in 1959. These early versions of skateboards did not have the features of most modern boards, including the kicktail.
In 1963, Venice Beach lifeguard Larry Stevenson founded Makaha, a skateboard company that featured boards with clay wheels. Branding these boards as “surf-skates,” Stevenson made them by hand in his garage. In the same year, Mahaka sponsored a "Skateboard Contest” in Hermosa Beach, California. The company also founded the first professional skateboarding team.
By the mid-1960s, skateboarding had forged a unique identity apart from surfing with attention in the press and popular culture.
The first publication dedicated entirely to skateboarding, The Quarterly Skateboarder, later rebranded as Skateboarder, was founded in 1964. The first International Skateboard Championships was hosted at La Palma Stadium in Anaheim, California and broadcast on ABC’s Wide World of Sports in 1965. Skaterdater, the first film on skateboarding written and directed by UCLA student Noel Black in 1965, was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.
In May 14, 1965, McGee was featured on the cover of Life Magazine with the headline “The craze and menace of skateboards. San Diego’s Patti McGee, national girls’ champion, does a handstand on wheels.”
McGee says, “Back then and to this day, the culture of skateboarding remains a rebellious and wild culture that has a very special vibe that we hold dearly.”
Skateboarding also drew the attention of local city officials because of reports of falls and injuries and concern from drivers. “We’ve chased them off the streets,” police in Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., told the New York Times in a March 3, 1965 article, which detailed how police in Mahwah, N.J., had seized a half dozen boards from youth in the streets. “They scare the wits out of drivers and pedestrians,” Chief Edmund Wickham told the Times.
The Skateboard Gets a Kicktail—And New Wheels
In 1969, Larry Stevenson patented the kicktail, which is an upward curve at the end of a skateboard. The kicktail allowed skaters to have more control of their boards because they could pop their boards off the ground using their feet. This development in skateboard design revolutionized skating technique and style because skaters could perform many more tricks.
When the kicktail was combined with a revolution in wheel design, skating experienced a renaissance. In 1972, surfer Frank Nasworthy developed polyurethane skateboard wheels. These wheels were made of a soft material, which made it easier for them to grip the ground and improved the traction, speed and maneuverability of boards. The wheels had initially been used for indoor roller skating and when they were revamped for skateboards, they were named “Cadillac Wheels.” Combined with the use of helmets, knee and elbow pads, skateboarding became a safer and more accessible sport.
With the improvements in board design, skating technique became more refined. In 1978, Alan “Ollie” Gelfand developed a now-fundamental trick called “the Ollie,” which is when riders jump into the air with their board without using their hands. The move became the basis for most skateboarding tricks today, particularly those used in the Olympics.
Skateparks and Competitions
As the interest in skateboarding rose, local municipalities across the nation funded dedicated skate parks where anyone could practice skateboarding. The first skatepark in the U.S. was Surf City in Tucson, Arizona, which opened in September 1965. Carlsbad Skatepark in San Diego was the first park built in California. The first privately owned skatepark in the world was Kona Skatepark, which opened its doors in 1977. These venues were designed with slopes, banks and surfaces that created opportunities for tricks, stunts and turns.
In skateparks, skaters could practice both the street and park style skating seen in the Olympics today. The Zephyr Competition Team started out as surfers who rode in Dogtown, the Santa Monica and Venice Beach area in California. When California experienced a drought in 1976, the Zephyr Competition team started skating in drained swimming pools, which allowed skaters to do tricks like aerial flips and led to vertical skateboarding, or “vert skateboarding,” a style of skating performed in bowls that resemble drained swimming pools.
Youth Culture and Punk
As skating increased in popularity, it became associated with youth counterculture and amassed an underground following during the 1980s. The subculture was associated with punk rock, baggy clothing and an attitude that embraced anti-authority. Often chased by police or security, skaters started skating the urban environment, jumping stairs, rails, curbs and other obstacles on pedestrian areas, paving the way for street style skateboarding.
The 1983 song “Skate and Destroy” by The Faction exemplifies the rebellious culture of skateboarding culture with the lyrics, “Forget the light, skate and destroy. Pass the jogger, skate and destroy. Snap it back, skate and destroy. Kick that bike, skate and destroy. The cops are coming after me…They always try to stop me but urethane is faster than boots.”
Skateboarding also developed a distinct film and video aesthetic. The skateboarding company Powell-Peralta produced the Bones Brigade Video Show in 1983. Sold as VHS tapes, these skating documentary videos were directed, filmed and edited by skater Stacy Peralta, the co-founder of Powell-Peralta along with George Powell. The videos were made to showcase the skills of the skaters of the Bones Brigade skating team, including Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen.
Skating Competitions
While skateboarding had found its footing among young skaters by the 1980s, the sport made its first step towards mainstream acceptance and commercial success in the 1990s with large skating competitions that had corporate and broadcast sponsors.
World Cup Skateboarding held its first event in 1994 and the X Games, which hosted competitions for skateboarding alongside other alternative sports such as bungee jumping, skysurfing and street luge, was sponsored by ESPN and debuted in 1995.
Skateboarding’s inclusion in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo represented another significant step towards the legitimization and mainstream acceptance. Despite the immense growth and professionalization of skateboarding, skaters today still feel a connection to the sport’s surfing origins.
Tom Schaar, a member of the U.S.A. Skateboarding National Team who qualified for the Men’s Park Skateboard Team says, “It is crazy to think that skateboarding started from surfers doing something other than surfing when the waves were flat, to a piece of wood with wheels, to skateboarding in the Olympics in a span of 60 years. And today, it can work the other way where I skate as a pro and an Olympian, and use those skills to surf for fun.”
