Skateboarding Roots of Freestyle Riding Seen in New Film

A few days ago I noticed a blip on the TV about The Lords of Dogtown, a new movie about skateboarding in Southern California during the mid-1970s. (IMDB gives the basics on the movie; the Pittsburgh Press-Gazette offers a brief review.)

The invention of the urethane skateboard wheel lead to better performance and control, while a regional drought lead to many swimming pools, which offered new, exciting (if often forbidden) terrain for skateboarding tricks.

One doesn’t have to appreciate the drug consumption of some of the characters of the time to see in them the origins of today’s move in the snowboarding halfpipe.