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THE HISTORY OF LONG BOARDING

Long boarding as a sport hasn’t actually changed all that much from its beginnings unlike skateboarding. It did how ever have a very similar beginning to skate boarding at around the same time but there were subtle differences. Unlike skate boarding the first long boarders were from Hawaii not California. They were like there Californian doubles board surfers with nothing to do when the surf was flat and no waves.  There idea did come from California but instead of sticking with a small square board they would shape a much longer piece into a smaller version of their board. Then instead of using the streets and sidewalks these skaters decided to use hills as there play ground as they could use the speed to better replicate there surfing moves.

During the 1970’s however unlike skateboarding the sport of long boarding was still very much underground and didn’t get the boom in popularity brought on by the new plastic wheels that skateboarding got. But as an underground sport there were still people loyal to the hobby and made custom boards in there sheds using old snow boards.

But with the introduction of the reverse kingpin trucks the popularity of long boarding stated to grow because of the stability they offered. This was hugely necessary because down hilling on long boards generates a lot of speed and by using regular king pin trucks a lot of riders would experience “speed wobble” this is when your board starts to jolt because your trucks are not stable enough, and due to the king pin being set into the truck more in the reveres truck these wobbles were diminished. This in turn allowed a much smoother ride at much faster speeds.

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THE HISTORY OF SKATEBOARDING

Skateboarding as the culture we know it as today started around the late 1940’s in California and it actually started as an in-between sport for surfers. This is mainly due to because surfing is only a good sport when there are waves, so because of this skateboarding wasn't actually always called the name we know, it actually started off as “sidewalk surfing”. This term was coined when an L.A based surf shop started to make skateboard out of square boards and roller-skate trucks and by calling it street surfing they opened up there market to the local surfs board from the lack of surf this actually made the original skateboards more of a cruiser board that the surfers would use to emulate the moves and feeling of surfing. And due to its popularity growing and spreading across the nation between 1963 and 1965 it’s estimated that Makaha skateboards made around $10 million in board sales.

The next big development for skateboarding came in the 1970s when Frank Nasworthy stared to develop wheels for skateboards made of polyurethane; this led to him starting a company called Cadillac wheels. Because of their release in 1972 the popularity of skateboarding popularity grew hugely again, this is mainly due to that fact that before this wheels were made of clay or metal, these old school wheels gave a really uncomfortable ride and little to none traction. And then because of this development in 1976 Tracker trucks made the first trucks specifically for skateboarding, this now led to skateboards being their own entity without the need of boarding from other companies. To go along with all this in the mid 1970’s the popularity of plastic boards started to grow with these “banana boards” being available in a huge variety of colours and allowing for much more freedom in skating style.

Skating as we know to today only really started to develop in the 1980’s when things like the vert ramp were invented which led to the invention of a move so ground breaking that it changed everything that happened in skateboarding from then on out. Because in the mid 80’s Alan Gelfand did the first no hands aerial. This in turn was made in to the Ollie. This is the first trick and skater now learns and everything that happened in skateboarding happened because of the invention of that trick.

 refrence- http://skatehistory.weebly.com/1960s.html

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The problem with branding the dead

I’ve always had an interest in tattooing, I think it’s because of the “grownups” that I’ve had around me whilst I was growing up. To start with there’s my mum and dad; my mum up until around 25 had back combed bleach white hair leather jacket, and my dad who until around the same time had even longer, back combed, crimped hair that was more bleached white then my mums. They grew up as second wave punks “rebelling”. And then there is my uncle who is this massive beer bellied first generation punk who up until he physically couldn’t due to hair loss had what little hair he had shaped in to devil horns. Then there were various family friends that were constantly out of there face around me. So it’s safe to say I haven’t had a “sheltered” life so far. And because of these people that I grew up around I have this natural ability to want to do things that other people say will make me not want a job and make me look stupid, so naturally I stretched my ears and got tattoos.

Don’t get me wrong I didn’t jump into these things I did a ton of research especially into tattooing. Back in year 7 I was planning my tattoos and what sleeves I wanted. But the problem is what the media has done to tattooing. If you say to any tattooist the name sailor jerry you will see instant respect. He is considered a god among tattooists; he was one of the originals that really made tattooing a thing. But if you say to most people the name sailor jerry they will think “oh like the rum!” and this really grinds my gears. Just because sailor jerry’s was “traditional sailor” style tattooist branding companies think that they can use him to market rum. This would be an amazing move from a company if sailor jerry was alive and agreed to it, but the problem is that he died in 1973 and when he was alive there was no way in hell that he would let any company use his brand in this way because he was straight edge, he didn't drink! And I think it is disgusting that a company would so blindly use his brand just to make a profit. And as tattooing legend Freddy Corbin says so perfectly “he would be rolling in his f***ing grave”  

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HYSON GREEN NOTTINGHAM

I found it really weird when my university set my class the task of going to Hyson green Nottingham, this is mainly because where I grew up was incredibly similar to Hyson green if not more working class due to the fact we had a lidl not an asda, this was made quite funny to me because some of my course mates looked like fish out of water walking those streets and for lack of a better word they were terrified. I find this mind boggling because Hyson green has nothing special about it, no gangs walking round the streets, no skin heads walking about shouting racial slurs, but because of how badly it is portrayed by its city people just don’t want to go there. I find this incredibly aggravating because Hyson green is the epitome of what England actually is, England is dirty streets and loud mouthed people, England is hard working and a little bit scummy because we have to be, but then so often is this forgotten by anyone who thinks of them self above the working class, and in England we are actually taught to not want to be working class, but I am very proud of my working class back ground because it’s made me work harder than most people I know. So no I don’t think Hyson green is special in any way apart from the fact it is just another part of England being left behind, there were pot holes everywhere litter all over the streets but if you walk 20 minutes down the hill towards the university its this clean shiny centre with smooth roads and clean streets. So no Hyson green isn’t special apart from the fact that it makes me angry at our upper class, Eton studying government for leaving us behind because they think we don’t matter. When in fact it’s the working class who built this country because were the only ones who will get our hands dirty and can actually walk around somewhere that isn’t prim and proper without our tail between our legs. So actually yes Hyson green is special because even though its being left behind it is still working and still getting things done that the rest of the country that look down on places like Hyson green would cry if they had to do.

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MODERN PROBLEMS ANCIENT SOLUTIONS

A biggest problem that our modern society is facing at the moment is the energy crisis, we have been using an un-renewable energy source for too long and without giving it proper thought, this means that in coming years it is an undeniable inevitability that we will run out of these energy sources, this is a problem because around 90% of everything we do relies on this energy to function. Everything from our transportation, our energy to run our laptops, even something like flushing a toilet is made possible because a plant powered by these out dated and over used energy sources this is obviously a huge problem because once they run out there will be complete bedlam.

The most obvious solution to this that our governments apparently have never heard of is renewable energy like wind power. This is where my resent trip to London come into play, because recently with my university I visited London and went to both the science museum and the design museum they were both interesting but seeing at due to a startling lack of organisation and basic knowledge of time on my universities side I spent approximately 10 hours on a coach so I wasn’t super enthusiastic when it came to actually looking round at everything. But as I have always loved Di Vinci and his inventions and sketches the cynical old man subsided when we went into the Di Vinci exhibition in the science museum because it was actually interesting unlike most of the things in the science museum.

One of the things that first caught my eye was a chariot designed by Roberto Valturio the reason that it caught my eye links very closely to the paragraph of waffle that I started out this post with is because it uses a renewable energy source, it uses wind to propel its wheels with a system of pulleys to help it along, I know that this would never be applicable in our society where cars go 50mph down normal roads, but what this shows us is that the problems that we are facing are not so difficult to overcome if we just looked back and developed this technology further, also something I find really fascinating is the fact that Roberto Valturio is using similar solutions that we are trying to use to solve problems we are having now.    

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THE MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPE

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Why I design.

*Warning this is an extremely long winded and hard to follow essay I was set by my university and might not make sense unless your able to read something like “Alice in wonderland” or “the hobbit”, because it certainly jumps about the lot with far too much back ground about things that wouldn’t normally matter*

I was asked the other day by one of my lecturers to write an essay of 1000 words about “why I design” this I thought was a horrible thing to be asked because it means I actually have to think about where I am in my life and not continue to blunder though life blindly hoping I bang my toe on anything. Also it’s also a really weird thing to be asked, because if you ask someone like a doctor why they became a doctor they can just say “I’ve always wanted to help people” this makes all the people around them think they are the best thing since sliced bread. But unfortunately when i’m asked why I design I can only muster up “I like drawing” which makes everyone view me as a two year old figure painting.

But it’s the deeper thoughts into why I design that makes me thank whatever god/gods put me where I am because even though I do love drawing, which is useful considering I’m a term and a half into my first year at university and its all I’ve really done. But then I also love the whole “here is a problem now go solve it” aspect of deign, and even though this is terrifying to many people when I’m told this I love it because it means I get to go away and work at something how I want to and do it my way. I think this is huge to me because before university I did four years of engineering and that’s a very lateral thinking thing where you always use the same techniques to solve a problem. I know I’ve probably just insulted engineers everywhere but it’s how I view more intellectual things like engineering and maths and I love the free flow and slightly mad way that design works.

I also love that fact that modern design companies work in the opposite way that most other companies work, because there is more of a freedom to think work ethic where unless you work for a huge company it’s all about generating new exciting ideas. And it’s this freedom aspect that has drawn me this far into design. Back when I was 15 starting my first graphic design back in my GCSE’s and I was told to make promotional material for a fictional band and I could do anything I wanted to my head nearly exploded because I’d never been able to just do work in my own way and actually have freedom over what I did, it sounds really stupid now looking back on it but it made me look at what I was doing differently because if I was being forced to do things in one set way I never would hence why I only got a C in maths but an A in graphic design.

I still think It’s really weird being asked why you design because to be fair apart from the freedom and creativity I don’t really know why, I’ve always been a last minute decider, I signed up to sixth form to do product design on the last day humanly possible because I decided collage just wasn’t my kind of place, and I still don’t know if that was the right decision, I mean should I be a engineer? Should I have gone into carpentry? Should I even be on the course that I’m doing if I can only barely scrap a 2:1, because you only hear about the really successful designers and I really don’t want to do three years costing me £9000 if I can’t make it. But then again I’ve made it this far so why can’t I?

Because I’m not cut out for anything else, maybe something like an artist or an engineer, but artists are far too up their own arses and engineers are too smart and lateral thinking, and god knows if I ended upon a desk job like some pencil pusher I would have to just off myself right here, because im not built for that I want to go out explore and have fun doing whatever I do and I know it sounds odd but If I play my cards right then design could let me do that. I could work freelance going where I wanted.

If your anything like me then you’re seeing a super very obvious connection between all of the paragraphs in this very long story, that link is freedom.  Because the idea of being tied down anywhere for too long is terrifying to me and it takes something very special to keep my interested for over six months and seeing as I’m in my fourth year of studying design in many forms I would say that’s pretty special! Also design is pretty much anything I want it to be witch in my head is very promising, and even though my mate in my class like designing printers I can go off and design skateboard or running shoes or boat hulls and that is amazing to me.

I sorry that this has been so long winded and so all over the place but when I’m asked something like “why I design” then it was never destined  to be a straightforward answer and that’s just how it is! That properly is going to help me or just bite me in the arse later on in life when I’m applying for jobs because the place will either love how I’m different or just think I’m mad so it could go either way, but whichever way it takes me ill still be designing and im still going to be a little bit mad.

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The future of Skating?

Any true to form skate boarders that see these trucks may in fact see them as a form of sacrilege, your basic run of the mill truck design has been around since the mid 70’s when marine engineer had had enough of skate boards using roller skate trucks which where barely 2 inches wide, with his team he helped to develop the first actual skate board truck. this renaissance in skateboarding tech brought forth a new wave of skaters and has been used religiously ever since. But now there is a new boy in town and there name is avenue. 

The Avenue trucks have been around for a little under 2 years but are already making huge waves in the skateboarding world and are not stopping any time soon. of course suspension trucks have been attempted before but no one I know or have spoken to have heard of any of them, its only when I look at Google images of “skate board suspension” that I finds out that there are others out there.

what I think this is because of is the fact that Avenue have actually done what all the others have failed in, they have created a truck that looks amazing, all the others a big and clunky and Avenues trucks are streamlined and very minimal, being a skater my self I only thought it was fitting that I tried avenue trucks my self and luckily my friend backed them on kick starter back in 2015 when they first started looking for funding and all I can say on them is that I’m buying a pair as soon as my money comes in, they are every thing I could have hoped for, they made my pops bigger, my cruising softer and my landings so much more forgiving on my feet. I am looking forward to when avenue add to there design because even though its there first one it is amazing and with more improvements to come I am very exited.

sources-

http://avenuetrucks.com/

http://www.grindtv.com/gear/reinventing-skateboard-truck-avenue-trucks/#Z4e1CKw0eKg1cqq1.97

http://www.gizmag.com/gila-board-off-road-skateboard/36319/

http://skateboarding.transworld.net/news/skateboarding-s-first-modern-truck/#eMDcAECZKwYICyZS.97

http://www.phloater.knarleymax.com/

https://seismicskate.com/