SKATEBOARDS
I have always been a skateboarder! Sometimes more often than others, and a lot less than when I was a teenager. Occasionally when I am in my office I hear a roar of a skateboarder coming down the high street, it’s great to see the next generation of skateboarders progress the cause. What skateboarding did for me was to give me something impossible to complete that I could work at and focus on during those years that you have a lot of time and energy on your hands. It also gave me a good set of friends to skate with.
One thing I have noticed is that skateboards haven’t changed in design for around 25 years. They got to their current form quite quickly, since then the only thing to change of any significance is the graphic on the bottom face.
BMXING
BMXing was also a passion of mine and has developed in a relatively similar way. The difference is that the BMX came from the bicycle and bikes have always had brakes. When the BMX came about (early 80’s) it always had brakes, and my generation always had at least one brake that was heavily relied upon. The current generation has evolved BMXing by pairing it down to its essential elements and removing the brakes. This has been progressed further by the tricks that involve a lot of manual rolls and nose wheelies. My particular favourite is the pedal grind which uses the pedal as a point of contact to grind down a handrail, which is shown on the picture below.
People will always try and come up with new ideas for both the BMX and the Skateboard when it comes to the design of the things, but the kids have spoken and it is truly a case of less is more….