What is skateboarding?
A: Skateboarding is an action sport originating in the United States that
involves riding and performing tricks using a skateboard.
Skateboarding is a recreational activity, an art form,
an entertainment industry job, and a method of what?
A: Transportation.
A 2009 report found that the skateboarding market is
worth how much?
A: An estimated $4.8 billion in annual revenue, with 11.08 million active
skateboarders in the world.
In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding would be
represented where?
A: At the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, for both male and female teams.
Since the 1970s, skateparks have been constructed
specifically for use by whom?
A: Skateboarders, freestyle BMXers, aggressive skaters, and more recently,
scooters.
However, skateboarding has become controversial in
areas in which the activity, although illegal, has done what?
A: Damaged curbs, stonework, steps, benches, plazas, and parks.[1][6]
The first skateboards started with what?
A: Wooden boxes, or boards, with roller skate wheels attached to the bottom.
Crate scooters preceded skateboards, having a wooden
crate attached to the nose (front of the board), which formed what?
A: Rudimentary handlebars.
The boxes turned into planks, similar to what?
A: The skateboard decks of today.
Skateboarding, as it exists today, was probably born
when?
A: Sometime in the late 1940s, or early 1950s when surfers in
California
wanted something to do when the waves were flat.
What was this called?
A: "Sidewalk surfing" – a new wave of surfing on the sidewalk as the sport
of surfing became highly popular.
The first manufactured skateboards were ordered by
whom?
A: A Los Angeles, California surf shop, meant to be used by surfers in their
downtime.
The shop owner, Bill Richard, made a deal with the
Chicago Roller Skate Company to produce what?
A: Sets of skate wheels, which they attached to square wooden boards.
By the 1960s a small number of surfing manufacturers in
Southern California such as Jack's, Kips', Hobie, Bing's and Makaha started
building skateboards that resembled what?
A: Small surfboards and assembled teams to promote their products.
One of the earliest Skateboard exhibitions was
sponsored by Makaha's founder, Larry Stevenson, in 1963 and held where?
A: At the Pier Avenue Junior High School in Hermosa Beach, California.
Skateboarders were featured on a television show called
Surf's Up in 1964, hosted by whom?
What was the first broadcast of an actual skateboarding
competition?
A: It was the 1965 National Skateboarding Championships, which were held in
Anaheim, California and aired on ABC's Wide World of
Sports.
Because skateboarding was a new sport during this time,
there were only what two original disciplines during competitions?
A: Flatland freestyle and slalom downhill racing.
One of the earliest sponsored skateboarders, Patti
McGee, was paid by Hobie and Vita Pak to do what?
A: To travel around the country to do skateboarding exhibitions and to
demonstrate skateboarding safety tips.
McGee made the cover of Life magazine in 1965 and was
featured on what popular television programs?
A: The Mike Douglas Show, What's My Line? and The Tonight Show Starring
Johnny Carson.
By 1966 a variety of sources began to claim what?
A: That skateboarding was dangerous, resulting in shops being reluctant to
sell them, and parents being reluctant to buy them.
The popularity of skateboarding dropped and remained
low until when?
A: The early 1970s.
In the early 1970s, Frank Nasworthy started to develop
a skateboard wheel made of what?
A: Polyurethane.
Prior to this new material, skateboards wheels were
made of what?
A: Metal or "clay" wheels.
The improvement in traction and performance was so
immense that from the wheel's release in 1972 the popularity of
skateboarding started to do what?
A: Rise rapidly again.