Evolution of Skating.

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The Beginning.

We were having a conversation about skating, and I was explaining just how crappy and limited the first equipment really was. This was my first board that I received on Christmas in 1974. It was a flat wooden deck with clay wheels. The best trick you could do on this was to jump off a curb. If you had a smooth enough surface you could do a decent 180. The smooth deck and stiff trucks defeated my attempts at any 360s. Anything larger than a grain of sand would bring this bad boy to a screeching halt. It was good for learning to balance and turn. The most fun I had on this was having my dog pull me around on it, or my friend pulling me on his bicycle. The crappy bearings and wheels made this a real chore to kick. Early competitions consisted of racing these down the 50 yard dash track on the school playground. I always seemed to have holes in my jeans and skinned knees from riding this. Skate shoes consisted of Keds or Converse, or in my case the Sears knockoff of Converse. I'd wear the toes out in a pair in about six months.

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Named after the 1976 blockbuster shark movie, this was the "Jaws" board. Note the molded plastic deck, with that sweet sweet kicktail, and the knurled top with awesome JAWS graphic. Those matching wide urethane wheels were attached to some fairly loose trucks with smooth sealed bearings. This board was about $55 in 1976 US dollars, you could get a pretty decent bike for that money back then. That's like $225 in 2016 money. If you had one of these your dad was rich.

I put together a decent Santa Cruz board for about $30. http://imgur.com/cULgcx4 We ordered the parts through a bike shop and my dad and I assembled and adjusted it, then used a propane torch and some vice grips to bend the flat tail up about 20 degrees, less extreme than the 45 on the jaws. I finally managed to pull 360s fairly regularly on this and run switches down the driveway. It went downhill fairly well but the narrow deck was pretty treacherous if you got going too fast and you'd get speed wobbles on those loose trucks. My dog seemed happier pulling me around on it. The urethane wheels were really grippy on the asphalt and you could really cut a turn. Pretty much all tricks at the time were done on the flat. My cousins gave me a pair of these hand sliders http://imgur.com/ec0dSHz for Christmas and I would get down low on the board and cut and turn like a surfer on a wave.

My Grandma lived in Long Beach at the time and there was a Van's shoe store near her house, and she bought us some of the first slip-ons. http://www.vans.com/history.html#1966 They were way grippier than the Converse and had a reinforced toe. They also had the added benefit of not having laces that would come untied and get wrapped in your trucks.

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[youtube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmXeGwbGVCE [/youtube]

This movie really captures the essence of skating in California in the '70s. I lived in the San Francisco Bay area during this time, and my cousins lived in Huntington Beach, and Long Beach. My three cousins in Huntington Beach were older and all surfed and skated. They lived down the block from Burgess Meredith. The original penguin from the Batman series. We'd skate and ride bikes by his house and ask him to "Do the Penguin!" and he'd tell us, "Get off my lawn you little bastards!" in the Penguin voice. My cousins rode these Schwinn Crate Bikes. http://imgur.com/1Pej34Sand I'd grab the sissy bar while on my skateboard, he'd shift it into high gear and we'd be off and running down the sidewalk while weaving through the cracks in the sidewalk.

My cousins also had a pool where they tried in vain to teach me how to swim. I don't recall my uncle ever draining it, and if he did I don't think he'd let any of us skate in it. My oldest cousin claimed to have skated his friend's pool while it was drained but he couldn't confirm it and I didn't see any scraped knees and elbows to support his claim. But we knew about those guys who surfed pools. They were legend.