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Sidewalk surfing
by Jason Dietrich
Sooner or later, even the most anti-authoritarian of pastimes becomes a part of consumer culture. Take skateboarding for instance.
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An unknown skater with clay wheels skates a pool in Fox Tail Park outside of Santa Monica in March of 1965. Courtesy Classic Stoner Photos |
The sport’s been around in earnest since the ‘60s. In the meantime, skateboarders have grown up, found jobs, earned disposable income and forgotten the scraped knees, jammed wrists and broken elbows that went along with surfing the sidewalk. In the process they’ve turned a collector’s eye to the rides of yesteryear. Today, the right vintage skateboard can fetch $5,000 on the collectors market.
Skateboard Retrospective, a glossy coffee table book detailing the development and history of the sport, is the first definitive guide for the skateboard collector.
Written by Rhyn Noll, former South Bay resident and son of pioneering big wave surfer Greg Noll, Skateboard takes an encyclopedic look at the sport, from the earliest proto-skates through the modern longboard. In the process, the narrative meanders through the golden age of surfing, pausing to show early surfers skating barefoot on that newfangled contraption, the skateboard, and detailing important events in skateboard history with particular emphasis on the boards and riders of the 1960s.
Noll will be signing copies of the book between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 4 at Just Longboards at 914 Aviation Blvd. in Hermosa Beach.
Noll, who moved with his family from Riviera Way in Torrance to Crescent City, Calif. when he was 11, was given his first skateboard at age 5 by his surfer father.
"After about a week he took it away because he thought it was too dangerous. There may have been a fatal accident or something like that. It took us a while, but we cobbled together our own boards by scrounging up old wheels. We cut the decks out of plywood to get that good surfboard shape and covered them with carpet for grip," Noll said.
His homemade boards were part of a trend that had started decades before. In the course of doing research for the 200-page book, Noll traced the birth of the modern skateboard back to 1918. One of the original skaters may have been Doc Ball, a surfing friend of Noll’s father and legendary surfing photographer Leroy Grannis.
In the early part of the century, roller-skates were metal platforms that clamped onto the bottom of stiff shoes with the help of a skatekey and leather straps. If one skate was broken, the other could be nailed onto a piece of two-by-four to create a makeshift skateboard. Kids like Ball and his friends made improvised skateboards and scooters, before the first scooter-like toys hit the market in the 1928.
The oldest surviving skateboard Noll was able to track down resembles a Gatsby-era Razor scooter, minus the handlebar and brake. Produced under the label Busy Kiddie, it was born in 1936 at the height of the depression. It had two five-inch wheels, covered by swooping fenders and looks like it would have been extremely difficult to ride standing up.
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South Bay skater Brad Logan hangs 10 while legend on wheels Tony Alva looks on. Photo by Steve Wilkings |
But the big breakthrough in skate technology would come in the 1950s, when the first commercially produced push scooters became available. Shortly afterwards, a cottage industry of skateboard production sprang up, fueled in part by a growing interest in surfing.
One of the first retailers to pick up on the trend, Greg Noll started selling skateboards built by local woodworker Carl Jensen at his Hermosa Beach surf shop in 1958. Noll slapped his shop’s logo on the hardwood decks and did a brisk business on the "bun boards," so named, because when you fell off, you landed on your "bun." That was about the same time the earliest mass-produced boards like Humco and Rollerderby began to appear on department store shelves.
In 1963 the first recorded skateboard competition was held in Hermosa Beach at the Pier Avenue Junior High School. Brad "Squeak" Blank rolled away with the first place ribbon.
By 1964 the fad had taken off and skaters emulating surf moves took over the International Surf Festival in Hermosa Beach. Skateboarding pioneer Bruce Logan took top place. Between 1964 to 1977 Logan would go on to win 22 more skateboarding contests.
"I remember that when they were building the Shell gas station on Artesia and Aviation, there was a really bitchin paved slope behind it, almost like a concrete wave. Friday nights, the thing to do was go there and skateboard. Surfers like Dewey Weber and Mike Doyle would be up there with a couple six packs of beer practicing their sidewalk surfing. We would go up there just to see them skate," said South Bay surfing fixture Mike Purpus, who lead the Makaha skateboarding team Logan would later skate for.
As the ‘60s progressed, skateboards became larger, resembling the longboard surfboards of the time. The premier skates were made with the same construction, sandwiched mahogany or Koa wood.
At the same time, public concern over the injuries caused by skateboarding threw the sport into a tailspin, just before the appearance of the kicktail would let skaters copy the move.
In 1969, the first kicktails began appearing on boards along with urethane wheels. These advances allowed skaters to dramatically expand their repertoire of tricks and begin to develop a distinct identity from surfing. Skaters were also able to carve up previously unrideable terrain like abandoned swimming pools and Los Angeles’ storm spillways and reservoirs.
By the mid-‘70s, skateboarding was on its way to becoming a mainstream sport with contests and product manufacturers fanning the flames. Boards had becoming smaller and more flexible, before morphing into the wider, fish-shaped boards that dominated the scene in the ‘80s.
By the time the MTV generation got their hands (and feet) on boards in the ‘80s, skateboarding meant Powell Peralta, Day-Glo riser pads and neon-colored skateboards ripping up backyard ramps. The first skateboard videos like the Bones Brigade’s "Search for Animal Chin" kept the skaters stoked when it was too rainy to skate.
In the ‘90s, skateboarding embraced freestyle skating with its emphasis on flip tricks and technical excellence. As the decade went on, longboard skateboarding also swelled in popularity, stressing speed and power with its surf-inspired moves.
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Rhyn Noll, the book's author practices what he preaches skating at up to 60 mph in downhill competitions. Courtesy Rynn Noll |
The 38-year-old Noll, who manufactures and sells his own line of modern and vintage-looking hardwood skateboards, is still involved with the sport, riding a longboard skateboard at over 60 mph in extreme downhill skateboarding competitions. He hopes to be able to compete in NBC’s Gravity Games in the near future.
"Doing the book, I learned that it doesn’t matter whether you longboard, do tricks, skate vert. It all comes under the same roof and is all part of the house of skateboarding. Sometimes I would only be tuned into one facet of it, but its all just one trip," Noll said. ER