The popularity may be due to the fact that many schools, too many, have sharply reduced activity time at schools. So, unless you belong to one of the sport teams, you won't get very much exercise outside of walking from the computer laptop in the bedroom to the computer tablet kept on the kitchen counter top. Another possible reason why so many young people are reluctant to discard their skateboards is personal risk. For many people, the higher the risk of injury, death or social embarrassment, the more exciting or 'fun' the activity will become. Many of today's playgrounds appear to have been designed to with lawyers and psychologists making at least 80% of the decisions on what will be built where. Some don't even have dirt on the ground, instead they will have ground up wood chips or sawdust. All this is presuming little Bobby and little Susie are too stupid to know not to eat Daffodil bulbs or dead sparrows along with their Michelle Obama approved lunches. So that may be it, people invite some measure of risk into their lives to spice up the privilege of living, to accentuate the fact of their glowing health.

The 80s/early 90s style skateboards were the best. I got turned off in the mid 90s when all of the sudden the only board you could get had the tiny wheels that made you feel like you were having a seizure if you tried to use them on the street and were much slower on the half pipe... and I didn't really want to hang out at abandoned gas stations. I did buy a long board about a year ago and used it primarily as a dog sled and would let my dog pull me for a couple of miles every night. Dog passed away in May and I haven’t used it since. I guess I got too old. I did notice when I went to a surf shop a couple of months back that they did in fact carry a few boards of the 80s style. Maybe they will make a comeback.

When Jan & Dean came out in the '60's with Sidewalk Surfing, We had already made our own from 2×4's and roller skate wheels. Much better control than the homemade scooters. We were all over neighborhoods throughout Miami on these things. The only wheels more popular were Schwinn Stingrays. Everyone had Them. Mine was Metal Flake Blue.

Quoth Jimmy Buffet, "Tho my mind is quite flexible, these brittle bones don't bend."

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I skateboarded all the time in the 70s

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The answer is simple. Parents consider them dangerous.

I don't see how they are any more popular today versus what they were when I was a kid... of course, I live about 2 blocks from where Rob Dyrdek grew up (his parents still live there) thus there was always a pretty good sized skateboarding community here.

A couple of years ago I was in Tempe, AZ, on business on Ash Wednesday, and decided to attend services at the closest church, which was the ASU student chapel. My most enduring memory is that it is the first--and so far, only--church service that I have ever attended where the primary means of transportation by which most of the congregation got there was skateboard.

I used to think skate rats were a bunch of punks, but at least they are doing something other than playing video games and getting fat. The drug scene is, or at least was, huge, but it is pretty sad that in this day in age one of the least desirable subcultures of my generation is much more desirable than the average millennial.

I was raised out in the country so owning a skateboard meant tearing the wheels up on the rough country roads. I had one, but rarely ever used it for anything more than moving heavy furniture around the house. My friends and I were always, ALWAYS riding our Huffys through trails in the woods and all around the roads where I lived, to each others houses for soda, then back. Living on the outskirts of a 500 population town was awesome. At night, we'd play on the NES. This was all happening when I wasn't at baseball practice. Then when I was 14 (1993), we all started riding around and listening to music.

Good era.

(08-14-2014 08:07 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  The popularity may be due to the fact that many schools, too many, have sharply reduced activity time at schools. So, unless you belong to one of the sport teams, you won't get very much exercise outside of walking from the computer laptop in the bedroom to the computer tablet kept on the kitchen counter top. Another possible reason why so many young people are reluctant to discard their skateboards is personal risk. For many people, the higher the risk of injury, death or social embarrassment, the more exciting or 'fun' the activity will become. Many of today's playgrounds appear to have been designed to with lawyers and psychologists making at least 80% of the decisions on what will be built where. Some don't even have dirt on the ground, instead they will have ground up wood chips or sawdust. All this is presuming little Bobby and little Susie are too stupid to know not to eat Daffodil bulbs or dead sparrows along with their Michelle Obama approved lunches. So that may be it, people invite some measure of risk into their lives to spice up the privilege of living, to accentuate the fact of their glowing health.

The 80s/early 90s style skateboards were the best. I got turned off in the mid 90s when all of the sudden the only board you could get had the tiny wheels that made you feel like you were having a seizure if you tried to use them on the street and were much slower on the half pipe... and I didn't really want to hang out at abandoned gas stations. I did buy a long board about a year ago and used it primarily as a dog sled and would let my dog pull me for a couple of miles every night. Dog passed away in May and I haven’t used it since. I guess I got too old. I did notice when I went to a surf shop a couple of months back that they did in fact carry a few boards of the 80s style. Maybe they will make a comeback.

You killed your dog?? No, seriously, sorry about your dog.

(08-14-2014 08:16 AM)CardFan1 Wrote:  When Jan & Dean came out in the '60's with Sidewalk Surfing, We had already made our own from 2×4's and roller skate wheels. Much better control than the homemade scooters. We were all over neighborhoods throughout Miami on these things. The only wheels more popular were Schwinn Stingrays. Everyone had Them. Mine was Metal Flake Blue.

I was in Monterey, Ca in those days. My skateboards were a little more sophisticated but just barely. My Stingray was Lime Green. I'm not sure how I survived those days but I could say that about most other periods of my life until my 40's anyway.

Check this out, who knew??



And this:

Schwinn on Ebay

Blue Stingray