Out for Air is the exhilarating first collection by former professional skateboarder Olly Todd. Infused with movement, surprise and play, Out for Air presents a unique vision of the built environment, celebrating places where 'the bridges are endless / beyond the cantilever / of reality'. Each poem is its own event: expansive in scope but intricate in form, a masterclass in precision engineering. Todd rewires T. S. Eliot's Waste Land in his strange, compelling descriptions of the modern city: melting asphalt; a U-turning taxi; a diner swallowed by a sinkhole. In this disorientating landscape the skateboarder-poet is genius loci, the spirit of the place. From Manhattan's 'silky streets' and the Pacific Coast Highway to inner-city London and his native Cumbria, together these poems record a life lived on the move, in motion, on the cusp of things. 'I'm dazzled by this wonderful debut. Todd writes with a tangible physicality, solid as a curb, so that the language itself crunches, glides, grinds. A radically different way of experiencing the built and natural environment and an endlessly engaging, witty, serious and astute new voice.' LUKE KENNARD

Skateboarders are an increasingly common feature of the urban environment - recent estimates total 40 million world-wide. We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets. This book is the first detailed study of the urban phenomenon of skateboarding. It looks at skateboarding history from the surf-beaches of California in the 1950s, through the purpose-built skateparks of the 1970s, to the street-skating of the present day and shows how skateboarders experience and understand the city through their sport. Dismissive of authority and convention, skateboarders suggest that the city is not just a place for working and shopping but a true pleasure-ground, a place where the human body, emotions and energy can be expressed to the full.
The huge skateboarding subculture that revolves around graphically-designed clothes and boards, music, slang and moves provides a rich resource for exploring issues of gender, race, class, sexuality and the family. As the author demonstrates, street-style skateboarding, especially characteristic of recent decades, conducts a performative critique of architecture, the city and capitalism. Anyone interested in the history and sociology of sport, urban geography or architecture will find this book riveting.

This book explores seriousness in practice in the unique sports context of contemporary women's flat track roller derby. The author presents a stimulating argument for a sociology of seriousness as a productive contribution to understandings of gender, organization and the mid-ranges of agency between dichotomies of voluntarism and determinism.

Serious skaters looking for unusual and innovative tricks will find them in this skateboarding instructional guide. The tricks run the gamut from classic old school to modern with an emphasis on diversification, creativity, and originality. Included are riding basics and tips for controlling fear, visualizing, and focusing. Sequential shots detail every move needed to successfully re-create the various skateboarding tricks. The mechanics of the sport are also covered, including types of boards available, and the various wheels, bearings, and skateboarding surfaces.

From skateboarding's distant origins in the 1940s to the heyday of the Z-Boys to Tony Hawk's lifelong and lucrative career as a professional skateboarding icon, this book showcases what skateboarding was in the past and what it's now evolved into. In the last half century, skateboarding has evolved from a simple, idyllic child's pastime that originated in southern California to becoming a worldwide youth culture phenomenon. This now-mainstream action sport has spawned a multi-billion-dollar commercial market for skateboarding equipment, skateboard-related media and entertainment, as well as skate-inspired softgoods like clothing, shoes, and accessories; and it is likely to soon become an Olympic sport. Skateboarding: The Ultimate Guide is brimming with fascinating history and engaging stories from skateboarding's 60-odd year existence and evolution. Covering the action sport's origins, myriad breakthrough developments, pioneering heroes, both "street style" and "vert" or ramp skating, unique popular culture, and likely future, this book will delight anyone with an interest in this individualistic and compelling athletic pursuit. Bibliography includes primary and secondary sources and current websites Glossary provides a comprehensive list of skating "lingo" Index contains a comprehensive listing of names, companies, places, and terms

One afternoon in 1975, a young photographer named Hugh Holland drove up Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles and encountered skateboarders carving up the drainage ditches along the side of the canyon. Immediately transfixed by their grace and athleticism, he knew he had found an amazing subject. Although not a skateboarder himself, for the next three years Holland never tired of documenting skateboarders surfing the streets of Los Angeles, parts of the San Fernando Valley, Venice Beach, and as far away as San Francisco and Baja California, Mexico. During the mid-1970s, Southern California was experiencing a serious drought, leaving an abundance of empty swimming pools available for trespassing skateboarders to practice their tricks. From these suburban backyard haunts to the asphalt streets that connected them, this was the place that created the legendary Dogtown and Z-Boys skateboarders. With their requisite bleached blonde hair, tanned bodies, tube socks and Vans, these young outsiders are masterfully captured against a sometimes harsh but always sunny Southern California landscape in LOCALS ONLY. LOCALS ONLY features more than 120 beautiful color images plus a Q+A format interview with the artist.

Desktop Skatepark has everything you need to assemble a miniature skatepark and do some fingerboarding right at your desk! Kit includes: * 1 mini skateboard * 2 sheets of full-color stickers to customize your board * quarterpipe * mini funbox (includes a bank ramp, stair set, grind rail, and wave ramp) * Instructional mini book

The world-champion freestyle skateboarder and the man who brought the ollie - the trick that revolutionised the sport by taking it from the ground to the air - to street skating shares the history of skateboarding, as he tells the dramatic story of his life.

At the age of 13, Rodney took the freestyle skating world by storm. He won 35 world titles in less than five years. But through it all, his father looked down on his son's love for skating and pressured him to walk away from the sport and leave behind his fans and status as the most famous skateboarder of his era. After years of stress and conflict, Rodney gave in and promised his father he'd quit for good. But by the time he finally broke free from his suffocating and abusive home life, the popularity of freestyle had waned and given way to vert and street styles. So Rodney picked up his board and started from scratch. With the help of mentor Mike Ternansky, Rodney used his freestyle background to usher in a whole new era of street skating.

Today Rodney is more popular than ever. The videos in his series Rodney Versus Daewon are among the most popular skateboard videos ever produced. He won the 2002 Transworld Skateboarding readers' choice award for favourite street skater and is the most popular character on the top-selling Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video games.

Skateboarding and Femininity explores and highlights the value of femininity both within skateboarding and wider culture. This book examines skateboarding's relationship to gender politics through a consideration of the personal politics connected to individual skateboarders, the social-spatial arenas in which skateboarding takes place, and by understanding the performance of tricks and symbolic movements as part of gender-based power dynamics. Dani Abulhawa anaylses the discursive frameworks connected to skateboarding philanthropic projects and how these operate through gendered tropes. Through the author's work with skateboarding charity SkatePal, this book offers an alternative way of recognising the value of skateboarding philanthropy projects, proposing a move toward a more open and explorative somatic practice perspective.

Skateboarding and Femininity explores and highlights the value of femininity both within skateboarding and wider culture. This book examines skateboarding's relationship to gender politics through a consideration of the personal politics connected to individual skateboarders, the social-spatial arenas in which skateboarding takes place, and by understanding the performance of tricks and symbolic movements as part of gender-based power dynamics. Dani Abulhawa anaylses the discursive frameworks connected to skateboarding philanthropic projects and how these operate through gendered tropes. Through the author's work with skateboarding charity SkatePal, this book offers an alternative way of recognising the value of skateboarding philanthropy projects, proposing a move toward a more open and explorative somatic practice perspective.

Modern roller derby has been theorised as a gendered leisure context, offering women opportunities for empowerment and growth, and enabling them to carve a space for themselves in sport. No longer a women-only sport, roller derby is now played by all genders and has been heralded as a model of inclusivity within sport. Identity, Belonging, and Community in Men's Roller Derby offers an insight into how men's roller derby culture is created and maintained, how members forge an identity for themselves and their team, and how they create feelings of belonging and inclusivity. Through in-depth ethnographic study of a specific, localised roller derby community, this book examines how practices of skills capital intersect with different configurations of masculinity in a continual struggle between traditional and inclusive models of sport. An interrogation of the ways a DIY sport can be seen to be achieved, experienced, and understood in everyday practice, this book will appeal to scholars of men, masculinities, and sport. Additionally, the methodological discussions will be of value to ethnographers and researchers who have had to deal with a disruptive presence.

Inside the complex and misunderstood world of professional street skateboarding On a sunny Sunday in Los Angeles, a crew of skaters and videographers watch as one of them attempts to land a "heel flip" over a fire hydrant on a sidewalk in front of the Biltmore Hotel. A staff member of the hotel demands they leave and picks up his phone to call the police.Not only does the skater land the trick, but he does so quickly, and spares everyone the unwanted stress of having to deal with the cops. This is not an uncommon occurrence in skateboarding, which is illegal in most American cities and this interaction is just part of the process of being a professional street skater. This is just one of Gregory Snyder's experiences from eight years inside the world of professional street skateboarding: a highly refined, athletic and aesthetic pursuit, from which a large number of people profit. Skateboarding LA details the history of skateboarding, describes basic and complex tricks, tours some of LA's most famous spots, and provides an enthusiastic appreciation of this dangerous and creative practice. Particularly concerned with public spaces, Snyder shows that skateboarding offers cities much more than petty vandalism and exaggerated claims of destruction. Rather, skateboarding draws highly talented young people from around the globe to skateboarding cities, building a diverse and wide-reaching community of skateboarders, filmmakers, photographers, writers, and entrepreneurs. Snyder also argues that as stewards of public plazas and parks, skateboarders deter homeless encampments and drug dealers. In one stunning case, skateboarders transformed the West LA Courthouse, with Nike's assistance, into a skateable public space. Through interviews with current and former professional skateboarders, Snyder vividly expresses their passion, dedication and creativity. Especially in relation to the city's architectural features-ledges, banks, gaps, stairs and handrails-they are constantly re-imagining and repurposing these urban spaces in order to perform their ever-increasingly difficult tricks. For anyone interested in this dynamic and daunting activity, Skateboarding LA is an amazing ride.

Skateboarding: the background, technicality, culture, rebellion, marketing, conflict, and future of the global sport as seen through two of its most influential geniuses Since it all began half a century ago, skateboarding has come to mystify some and to mesmerize many, including its tens of millions of adherents throughout America and the world. And yet, as ubiquitous as it is today, its origins, manners, and methods are little understood. "The Impossible" aims to get skateboarding right. Journalist Cole Louison gets inside the history, culture, and major personalities of skating. He does so largely by recounting the careers of the sport's Yoda--Rodney Mullen, who, in his mid-forties, remains the greatest skateboarder in the world, the godfather of all modern skateboarding tricks--and its Luke Skywalker--Ryan Sheckler, who became its youngest pro athlete and a celebrity at thirteen. The story begins in the 1960s, when the first boards made their way to land in the form of off-season surfing in southern California. It then follows the sport's spikes, plateaus, and drops--including its billion-dollar apparel industry and its connection with art, fashion, and music. In "The Impossible, " we come to know intimately not only skateboarding, but also two very different, equally fascinating geniuses who have shaped the sport more than anyone else.

FDR Skatepark began its life in 1996 with a few small obstacles built by the City of Philadelphia in an attempt to meet the needs of a growing community. In true D-I-Y fashion, local skaters soon gathered their resources and began the ongoing construction of a space of their own design. As the world's largest D-I-Y skateboard park, today FDR is recognized throughout the world as a landmark in the skateboarding community. A photographic history of FDR, this book contains work from more than 25 contributors, from amateurs with disposable cameras to professional photographers. Side by side with the actual skateboarding are photos of wildfires, box cutter wounds, riot police, and drunks shooting sewer rats. Complete with oral histories gathered from park locals, this one-of-a-kind record documents the legend and landscape of the past fifteen years under the bridge.

Today's roller derby is a wildly popular woman's contact sport, international in scope. This grass roots sport is built on fun, for the spirited rollerskaters and the fans alike. From Reno to Toronto, roller derby is everywhere. See 250 color images of promotional material, including fliers, handbills, logos, and posters promoting bouts for more than 50 leagues around the world, tht convey the thrill of roller derby's glamour, grit, and glory. See the ladies themselves, as they travel the globe on eight wheels. Collect the artwork and be inspired to join the fun, on either side of the railing.

The world's leading professional skateboarder and a hero to thousands of Generation Xers, Tony Hawk relives a lifetime of incredible highs and lows in the sport. Tony Hawk, aka The Birdman, has won more than 60 contests, invented close to 50 new manoeuvres and made skateboarding history at the 1999 international championships by landing the first ever 900 degree turn. A veteran of some 20 TV commercials for clients such as Gap and Disney, he is one of the leading heroes of modern-day youth culture. Growing up in Serra Mesa, California, Tony was a hyperactive, tantrum-throwing child, whose only outlet was through boarding. Initially mocked for being an unorthodox 'circus skater', before long the doubters were learning the tricks he had pioneered. Tony had invented a new style of skateboarding. His life has been a rollercoaster of incredible highs and spectacular crashes. Tony's quest to land the fabled 900 resulted in broken bones and spells of unconsciousness too numerous to mention. A millionaire at the age of 18 in the 1980s on the back of the boom in skateboarding, Tony fell into near destitution almost overnight when the fad died away. However he successfully reinvented himself as an extreme boarder in the 1990s and now owns two multi-million dollar companies, Birdhouse Projects and Hawk Clothing, has just produced the bestselling cult skateboarding movie 'The End' and released his own PlayStation game. In Hawk Tony goes behind the scenes of competitions, demos and movies and shares the less glamorous demands of being a skateboarder. With brutal honesty he recalls the stories of love, loss, embarrassing 80s clothes and determination that have shaped his life. Depsite the many ups and downs of his career, Tony Hawk's dedication has made him a god to generations of skateboarders and countless other Generation Xers. His story is a touching tale of perseverance and determination.