OLD SCHOOL
Skateboard Pioneer
In the Beginning, there were metal shoe skates.
Skateboards
I was ten years old in 1962. I grew up in Southern California. Every kid I knew wanted to surf but for a ten-year-old 25 miles from the beach, surfing was beyond my reach.
Lucky for me, some surfers decided that they also wanted to surf the land, especially on days when the ocean swells were flat. They were called “asphalt surfers.”
I was certainly not the first to tear apart a pair of metal clamp-on skates and fasten them to a length of old plywood but I clearly remember making my first board and learning to ride it on our driveway. I’m not sure what prompted me to build my first skateboard because this was many years before the internet and YouTube how-to videos. I probably saw some older kids skating down the street and I just had to give it a try.
As you can see in the illustration the skate wheel’s track is very narrow. The track is the distance between two wheels on the same axle. The narrow track and the metal wheels were very unforgiving — a dangerous combination.
The “Roller Derby” skateboard was the first commercial skateboard. It was first released in 1959, but I never saw one and my parents never had the extra money for that type of…