Skateboard:Gullwing Skateboard

Skateboarding--travel on a two-by-four mounted on a set of roller-skate wheels--began in the early 1960s as an unassuming activity along the beach walks of Southern California. Chroniclers of the sport claim a connection between skateboarding and the surfing craze of about the same time period. Early skateboards were homemade affairs and lack the range of motion and technology to replicate the surfing moves skateboarders practiced. Injuries and broken bones among early skateboarders were not uncommon. Advances in manufactured skateboards, however, improved as the sport grew. Rubber wheels replaced early metal ones. In the early 1970s, urethane wheels, which gripped the riding surface better than other materials, improved the safety of the sport for skaters, if not the pedestrians sharing the sidewalks. Cities and towns issued laws prohibiting skateboarding on streets and sidewalks, sending the skaters to parks, empty swimming pools, and specially built ramps, pipes, and walls. These special venues spawned skateboarding as a competitive sport, but for most of the 10 million Americans (mostly preteen and teen boys) who embraced the sport by the mid-1970s, sidewalk surfin' or parking lot skating was just fine