Gallery
Longboards
History
Building Boards
Companies
Home
Gallery
Longboards
History
Building Boards
Companies
Longboarding is a sport that has been around for a little over 50 years, it emerged soon after the original short skateboards, probably less than ten years after the first skateboards came around in the 1940's. Longboarding as I said before origins of Longboarding came from the emerging surf culture and was used in Hawaii as a cross-trainer when the waves were not good. It rapidly caught on in California with their popular surf culture. Kinda like in the movie Lords of Dogtown, they just used skateboards instead of longboards. Because of the origins and reasons for use, it was commonly called sidewalk surfing before it was called longboarding.
The longboards thet were first used were crude and rather dangerous, they had trucks made from rollerskates, a plank of wood and the wheels were metal. Eventually the wheels were made from clay, for a safer ride. Then urethane wheels came on the scene and people realized that urethane was much grippier, smoother and safer.
Although the sport was consitered too dangerous and it basicly died. It came back (and hasn't left!) in the early 90's along with skateboarding. Today there are numerous companies that have sprung up solely devoted to producing quality longboards while the popularity continues to increase.