I Can’t Sleep - Skateboarding | Peaceful Bedtime Reading for Sleep

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Relax with this calm bedtime reading about skateboarding, a sport and culture that grew from simple wooden boards into a worldwide phenomenon. Benjamin’s soothing narration explores the history, styles, and influence of skateboarding, all delivered in a steady and peaceful cadence. With fact-filled storytelling—no whispers, no hypnosis—this episode is designed to ease insomnia, quiet restless thoughts, and help you unwind while gently learning. Perfect for sleepless nights or moments of stress. Press play, breathe deeply, and drift into restful sleep as you roll through the story of skateboarding. Want More? Request a Topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Ad-Free Episodes: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop Sleep-Friendly Products: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors Join the Discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/myhGhVUhn7 This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Skateboarding, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Skateboarding. Happy sleeping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to a Glassbox media podcast. What if I told you that most of the modern day self-help advice you've been hearing could actually make you worse? The key to a better life isn't about feel-good gimmicks that sound catchy. The Mentally Stronger Podcast gives you access to a licensed therapist who shares science-backed tools that will actually change your life. Hi, I'm Amy Morin, psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international best-selling author. In each episode, we cover research-back strategies, like how to stop relying on willpower and start creating habits for lasting change. And the five mental strength-building exercises you can do from your couch.

I also speak to world-class experts like Dr. Nicole Kane, who shares how to permanently heal anxiety by addressing the root cause. With over 200 episodes in our catalog, this podcast is for you if you're ready to crush self-doubt, conquer challenges, and become stronger than ever with therapist-approved strategies that can change your life. Listen to Mentally Stronger with Therapist Amy Morin, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast, where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. I'm your host, Benjamin Boster. Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled, Skateboarding. Skateboarding is an action sport that involves

riding and performing tricks using a skateboard, as well as recreational activity, an art form, an entertainment industry job, and a method of transportation. Originating in the United States, skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2009 report found that the skateboarding market is worth an estimated $4.8 billion in annual revenue. It was 11.08 million active skateboarders in the world. In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding would be represented at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo for both male and female teams. Skateboarding made its Olympic debut in 2020 and was included in the 2024 games. Since the 1970s, skate parks have been constructed specifically for use by skateboarders,

freestyle BMXers, aggressive skaters, and more recently scooters. However, skateboarding has become controversial in areas in which the activity, although legal, has damaged curbs, stoneworks, steps, benches, plazas, and parks. The first skateboards started with wooden boxes or boards with roller skate wheels attached to the bottom. Crate scooters preceded skateboards, having a wooden crate attached to the nose, front of the board, which formed rudimentary handlebars. The boxes turned into planks, similar to the skateboard decks of today. Skateboarding as it exists today was probably born. sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s,

when surfers in California wanted something to do when the waves were flat. This was called sidewalk surfing. A new wave of surfing on the sidewalk as the sport of surfing became highly popular. No one knows who made the first board. It seems that several people came up with similar ideas at around the same time. The first manufactured skateboards were ordered by a Los Angeles California surf shop, meant to be used by surfers in their downtime. The shop owner, Bill Richard, made a deal with a Chicago roller skate company to produce sets of skate wheels, which they attached to square wooden boards. Accordingly, skateboarding was originally denoted sidewalk surfing, and early skaters emulated surfing style and maneuver.

maneuvers and performed barefoot. By the 1960s, a small number of surfing manufacturers in Southern California, such as Jacks, Kibs, Hobie, Bing's, and Makaha started building skateboards that resembled small surfboards, and assembled teams to promote their products. One of the earliest skateboard exhibitions was sponsored by Makaha's founder, Larry Stevenson, 1963, and it was held at the Pier Avenue Junior High School in Hermosa Beach, California. Some of these same teams of skateboarders were also featured on a television show called Surf's Up in 1964, hosted by Stan Richards, that helped promote skateboarding as something new and fun to do.

As the popularity of skateboarding began expanding, the first skateboarding magazine, the quarterly skateboarder was published in 1964. John Severson, who published the magazine, wrote in his first editorial. Today's skateboarders are founders in this sport. They're pioneers. They are the first. There is no history in skateboarding. It's being made now by you. The sport is being molded and we believe that doing the right thing now will lead to a bright future for the sport. Already there are storm clouds on the horizon with opponents of the sport talking about ban and restriction. The magazine only lasted four issues, but resumed publication

as skateboarder in 1975. The first broadcast of an actual skateboarding competition was the 1965 National Skateboarding Championships, which were held in Anaheim, California, and aired on ABC. WC.'s wide world of sports. Because skateboarding was a new sport during this time, there were only two original disciplines during competitions, flat-hand freestyle, and slalom downhill racing. Animated cartoons of the time occasionally featured skateboard gags. Two Roadrunner cartoons made in 1965, shot and bothered, and Out and Out Rout, feature Wiley Coyote riding a skateboard. One of the earliest sponsored skateboarders,

Patty McGee, was paid by Hobie and Vita Pack to travel around the country to do skateboarding exhibitions and to demonstrate skateboarding safety tips. McGee made the cover of Life magazine in 1965 and was featured on several popular television programs, the Mike Douglas Show, What's My Line, and The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, which helped make skateboarding even more popular at the time.

Some other well-known surfer-style skateboarders of the time were Danny Berger Johnson, Bruce Logan, Bill and Mark Richards, Woody Woodward, and Jim Fitzpatrick. The growth of the sport during this period can also be seen in sales figures for Makaha, which quoted $4 million worth of board sales between 1963 and 1965. By 1966, a variety of sources began to claim that skateboarding was dangerous,

resulting in shops being reluctant to sell them, and parents being reluctant to buy them. In 1966, sales had dropped significantly, and Skateboarder magazine had stopped publication. The popularity of skateboarding dropped and remained low until the early 1970s. In the early 1970s, Frank Nessworthy started to develop a skateboard wheel made of polyurethane, calling his company Cadillac Wheels. Prior to this new material, skateboard wheels were metal or clay wheels.

The improvement in traction and performance was so immense that from the wheels release, in 1972, the popularity of skateboarding started to rise rapidly again, causing companies to invest more in product development. That's where they commissioned artist Jim Evans to do a series of paintings promoting Cadillac Wheels, who were featured as ads and posters in the resurrected skateboarder magazine, and proved immensely popular in promoting the new style of skateboarding. In the early In 1970s, the precursors to the modern skate parks for skateboarding would be the repurposing of urban hydro and storm water infrastructure, such as the Escondita Reservoir in San Diego, California. Skateboarding magazine would publish the location and skateboarders made up nicknames for each location, such as the tea bowl, the fruit bowl, belagio, the rabbit hole, bird bath, the egg bowl. upland pool, and the sewer slide.

Some of the development concepts in the terrain of skate parks were actually taken from the Escondita Reservoir. Many companies started to manufacture trucks, axles, specially designed for skateboarding, reached in 1976 by tracker trucks. As the equipment became more maneuverable, the decks started to get wider, reaching widths of 10 inches and over.

thus giving the skateboarder even more control. A banana board is a skinny, flexible skateboard made of polypropylene with ribs on the underside for structural support. These were very popular during the mid-1970s and were available in a myriad of colors, bright yellow probably being the most memorable, hence the name. In 1975, skateboarding had risen back in popularity, enough to be able to be able to be able. enough to have one of the largest skateboarding competitions since the 1960s, the Del Mar National Championships, which is said to have had up to 500 competitors. The competition lasted two days and was sponsored by Bond's skateboards and Cadillac Wheels.

While the main event was won by freestyle spinning skate legend Russ Howell, a local skate team from Santa Monica, California, the Zephyr team, ushered in a new era of surfer-style skateboarding during the competition that would have a lasting impact on skateboarding's history. With a team of 12, including skating legends such as Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Peggy Oki, and Stacey Peralta, they brought a new progressive style of skateboarding to the event. Based on the style of Hawaiian surfers, Larry Bertelman,

Button's Carlo Hio Kalani and Mark Liddell. Craig Stachich, a photojournalist for Skateboarder magazine, wrote about and photographed the team, along with Glenn E. Friedman, and shortly afterwards ran a series on the team about the Dogtown Articles, which eventually immortalized the Zephyr's skateboard team. The team became known as the Z-Boys

and would go on to become one of the most influential teams in skateboarding's history. Soon, skateboarding contests for cash and prizes using a professional tier system began to be held throughout California, such as the California Free Former World Professional Skateboard Championships, which featured freestyle and slalom competitions. A precursor to the extreme sport of street luge that was sanctioned by the United States Skateboarding Association, USSA, also took place during the 1970s in Signal Hill, California. The competition was called the Signal Hill Speed Run, with several competitors earning entries

into the Guinness Book of World Records, at the time clocking speeds of over 50 miles per hour on a skateboard. Due to technology and safety concerns the time when many competitors crashed during their runs. The sport did not gain popularity or support during this time. In March 1976, Skate Board City's skate park in Port Orange, Florida, and Carlsbad's skate park in San Diego County, California, would be the first two large-sized U.S. skate parks to be open to the public, just a week apart. They were the first of some 200 skate parks that would be built through 1982. This was due in part to articles that were running in the investment journals at the time,

stating that skate parks were a good investment. Notable skateboarders from the 1970s also include Tai Page, Tom Inouway, Laura Thornhill, Helen O'Neill, Kim Cis, Bob Binniak, Chana Payne, Waldo Autry, Robin Logan, Bobby Piercy Russ Howell Ellen Barryman

Shogo Cougou Desiree Von Essen Henry Hester Robin Alloway Paul Hackett Michelle Mada Bruce Logan Steve Kathy

Eddie Robertson Mike Weed David Hackett Greg Aries Darren Ho and Tom Sims. Manufacturers started to experiment with more exotic composites and metals, like fiberglass and aluminum.

But the common skateboards were made of maple plywood. The skateboarders took advantage of the improved handling of their skateboards and started inventing new tricks. Skateboarders, most notably Ty Page, Bruce Logan, Bobby Piercy, Kevin, Kevin Reed, and the Z-Boys started to skate the vertical walls of swimming pools that were left empty in the 1976 California drought. This started the Vert trend in skateboarding. With increased control, Verd skaters could skate faster and perform more dangerous tricks, such as slash grinds and front-side backside errors. This caused liability concerns and increased insurance cost to skate park owners,

in the development, first by Norcon, then more successfully by a rector, of improved knee pads that had a hard sliding cap, and strong strapping proved to be too little too late. During this era, the freestyle movement in skateboarding began to splinter off and develop into a much more specialized discipline, characterized by the development of a wide assortment of flat ground tricks. As a result of the vert skating movement, skate parks had to contend with high liability costs that led to many park closures. In response, vert skaters started making their own ramps, while freestyle skaters continued to evolve their flatland style.

Thus, by the beginning of the 1980s, skateboarding had once again declined in place. popularity. The 1980s was fueled by skateboard companies that were run by skateboarders. The focus was initially on vert ramp skateboarding. The invention of the No Hands aerial, later known as the Ollie, by Alan Gelfand in Florida in 1976, and the almost parallel development of the grabbed aerial by George Orden and Tony Alva in California, made a possible for skaters to perform airs on vertical ramps. While this wave of skateboarding was sparked by commercialized vert-ramp skating,

a majority of people who skateboarded during this period did not ride vert-ramps. As most people could not afford to build vert-ramps or did not have access to nearby ramps, street skating increased in popularity. Freestyle skating remained healthy throughout this period, with pioneers such as Rodney Mullen and Vend. many of the basic tricks that would become the foundation of modern street skating, such as the impossible and the kickflip.

The influence that freestyle exerted upon street skating became apparent during the mid-1980s. However, street skating was still performed on wide vert boards with short noses, slide rails, and large soft wheels. In response to the tensions created by this confluence of skateboarding genres, a rapid evolution occurred in the late 1980s to accommodate the street skater. Since few skate parks were available to skaters at this time, street skating pushed skaters to seek out shopping centers and public and private property as their spot to skate.

Public opposition in which businesses, governments, and property-owned, have banned skateboarding on properties under their jurisdiction or ownership would progressively intensify over the following decades. By 1992, only a small fraction of skateboarders continuing to take part in a highly technical version of street skating, combined with the decline of vert skating, produced a sport that lacked the mainstream appeal to attract new skaters. During this period, numerous skateboarders as well as companies in the industry paid tribute to the scenes of Marty McFly skateboarding in the film back to the future for its influence in this regard. Examples can be seen in promotional material in interviews in which professional skateboarders

cite the film as an initiation into the action sport and in the public's recognition of the film's influence. Tony Hawk has stated that there are plenty of legendary pros that I know of that started skating because they saw that film. Skateboarding during the 1990s became dominated by street skateboarding. Most boards are about 7 and a quarter to 8 inches wide and 30 to 32 inches long. The wheels are made of an extremely hard polyurethane with hardness durometer approximately 99A. The wheel sizes are relatively small so that the boards are lighter and the wheels inertia is overcome quicker, thus making tricks more manageable. Board styles have changed dramatically since the 1970s, but have remained mostly alike since the mid-1990s. The contemporary shape of

the skateboard is derived from the freestyle boards of the 1980s, with a largely symmetrical shape, shape and relatively narrow width. This form had become standard by the mid-1990s. By 2001, skateboarding had gained so much popularity that more American people under the age of 18 rode skateboards than played baseball. Although traditional organized team sports still dominated youth programs overall, skateboarding and skate parks began to be viewed and used in a variety of new ways, to complement academic lessons in schools, including new non-traditional physical education skateboarding programs, like Skate Pass and Skatistan,

to encourage youth to have better attendance, self-discipline, and confidence. This was also based on the healthy physical opportunities skateboarding was understood to bring participants for muscle and bone strengthening and balance, as well as the positive impacts it can have on youth and teaching them mutual respect, social networking, artistic expression, and an appreciation of the environment. In 2003, Go Skateboarding Day was founded in Southern California by the International Association of Skateboard Companies, IASC, to promote skateboarding throughout the world. It is celebrated annually on June 21st to define skateboarding as the rebellious creative celebration of

independence it continues to be. According to market research firm American sports data, the number of skateboarders worldwide increased by more than 60% between 1999 and 2002, from 7.8 million to 12.5 million. Many cities also began implementing recreation plans and statutes during this time period as part of their vision for local parks and communities to make public lands. more available, in particular for skateboarding, inviting skateboarders to come in off the city streets and into organized skateboarding activity areas. By 2006, there were over 2,400 skate parks worldwide, and the design of skate parks themselves had made a transition as skaters turned designers. Many new places to skateboard designed specifically for street skaters, such as the Bussy and Milton Canes, UK, and the Safe Spot Skate Spot Program, first initiated by professional skateboarder Rob Deardick throughout many cities, allowed for the creation of smaller alternative safe skate plazas to be built at a lower cost.

One of the largest locations ever built to skateboard in the world, SMP's skate park in China at 12,000 square meters in size, was built complete with a 5,000 seed stadium. In 2009, Skate Lab opened the Skateboarding Hall of Fame and Skateboard Museum. Nominees are chosen by the IASC. Efforts have been taken to improve recognition of a cultural heritage, as well as the positive effects of encouraging skateboarding within designated spaces. In 2015, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.,

hosted an event at which skateboarders, accompanied by music, did tricks on a ramp, constructed for a festival of American culture. The event was the climax of a 10-day project that transformed a federal institution, formerly off-limits to the skateboarding community, and to a platform for that community to show its relevance through shared cultural action in a cultural common space. By raising 790,000 pounds, the Long Live South Bank Initiative, managed in 2017,

to curb the destruction of a 40-year-old spot in London, a South Bank undercroft, a popular skate park due to urban planning, a salvaging operation whose effects extends, beyond skateboarding. The presence of a designated skating area within this public space keeps the space under a nearly constant watch and drives homeless people away, increasing the feeling of safety in and near the space. The activity attracts artists such as photographers and filmmakers, as well as a significant number of tourists, which in turn drives economic activity in the neighborhood.

Recently, barefoot skating has been experiencing a revival. Many skaters ride barefoot, particularly in summer and in warmer countries, such as South Africa, Australia, Spain, and South America. The plastic pennyboard is intended to be ridden barefoot, as is the surfboard-inspired handboard. Electric skateboards became popular during the 2010s, as did self-balancing unilterns. unicycles in a board format. The sport of skateboarding made its Olympics debut at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, with both men's and women's events. Competitions took place during July and August 2021 in two disciplines, street and park. With the evolution of skate parks and ramp skating, the skateboard began to change.

Early skate tricks had consisted mainly of two-dimensional freestyle maneuvers, like riding only two wheels, wheelie or manual, spinning only on the back wheels, a pivot, high jumping over a bar and landing on the board again, also known as a hippie jump, long jumping from one board to another, often over small barrels or fearless teenagers, or slalom,

Another popular trick was the Bertelman slide, named after Larry Bertelman's surfing maneuvers. In 1976, skateboarding was transformed by the invention of the Ollie, by Alan Olly Gelfand. It remained largely a unique Florida trick until the summer of 1978, when Gelfin made his first visit California. Gelfand and his revolutionary maneuvers caught the attention of the West Coast skaters in the media, where it began to spread worldwide. The Ollie was adopted to flat ground by Rodney Mullen in 1982. Mullen also invented the magic flip, which was later renamed the kickflip, as well as many other tricks including the 360 kickflip, which is a 360 pop shove it and a kickflip in the same motion. The flat ground Ollie forms the basis of many street skating tricks,

allowing skateboarders to perform tricks in mid-air without any more equipment than the skateboard itself. A recent development in the world of trick skating is the 1080, which was first ever landed by Tom Schar in 2012.