Since the first time someone nailed roller-skate wheels to a plank of wood and decided that it was an acceptable vehicle for transport, skateboards themselves have been innovative works of art. Ever since skateboards began to be mass-produced and sold in stores, creative users have been looking to individualize their planks and wheels to satisfy personal aesthetics as well as make a lasting impression.

             Since Wes Humpston designed the decks for the original Z-Boys of DogTown, setting the standard for keeping your deck as flashy as your moves, many skaters have made a name for themselves, as much with their mind-blowing deck designs as with their ability to carve air with these boards. Wes Humpston recently released Concrete Wave, a book which chronicles the history and evolution of skateboard art.

             Many skaters value skills with graphics on par with vert trick skills, and most skateboard circles count talented artists among their numbers. Skating and art go hand-in-hand, as the same types seem to enjoy both activities.

 In crowds which like to match wits and skills, sketch and cartoon drawing numbers among the favorite topics of competition. Taggers often bring boards along, useful in case of a quick getaway, when venturing out on nighttime excursions to the rail yard or to conquer that overpass bridge, and reuse tagging tools to decorate blank skateboard decks with spray paint and oil-paint markers.

             Most skate companies feature unique proprietary decks and wheels, showcasing their social or political values, sometimes more decorative abstract art, or simply the company logo. Some of these companies have evolved their own fully-functional art departments which branch out into other styles of art as well.

 PUSH Skateboards in Ashville, North Carolina, support their own, in-house, art gallery which goes beyond decorative decks and clothes into all sort of skateboard-inspired designs in various mediums.

 Girl Skateboards supports an entire art department, called the Art Dump, whose members can be spotted driving around Torrance, California, in their mobile design unit, a decorated fork lift equipped with a laptop computer and digital camera which they use to chronicle skateboard art that they can capture flying by, both on skaters’ bodies and beneath their feet, as well as any wall murals or graffiti that they can catch before the city paints over them.

             Some prominent skaters in the industry, including Chris Moore, Steve Caballero, and Alfonzo Rawls, just to name a few, have turned their skills from the launch pad to the sketch pad and have their own series of decks displaying their unique skateboard art.

 If you are particularly passionate about the art that you produce for your decks, there are a number of skateboard artist competitions that you can enter for a chance to see your art featured for a limited edition skateboard deck series, and usually there is some sort of cash prize involved.

 Whether you are a rising talent or just like pretty, shiny things on your skateboard, it is certain that skateboard art takes up a huge part of your viewscreen most of the time.

Popularity: 10% [?]

                The Satori  Movement is more than just a company which manufactures skateboards. The founders, intending that the vehicles they build move not only the body, but the soul, have created a brand which is not only the favorite of astrally-minded skaters, but a force for conscious change in the world as a whole.

 Satori is a Zen Buddhist term meaning realization, enlightenment, sudden awakening, or being at one with something. The word is associated with beat culture and evokes images of swamis achieving Nirvana while contorting their bodies in impossible configurations. The skateboard manufacturer of the same name has made a unique contribution to the culture as well as the hardware of skating.

 Unlike other companies who strive to maintain a clean image and appeal to the straight edge side of skating, Satori openly embraces a psychedelic, herb-friendly approach to the lifestyle. While not endorsing dangerous and destructive habits, the logo has become a symbol of the liberated “neo-hippie” skater, who rides the board though the narrow confines and unexpected bends of the path to enlightenment.

 Satori Movement Skateboards is a grass-roots company based in Arcata, California, a haven for new-age thought and home to a different breed of Humboldt County skateboarder. An integrated state of mind infuses Satori, borrowing from traditions as diverse as India and the Caribbean.

 The company and its icons call heavily to an awakening core of skaters who identify their quest for the perfect ollie with the transcendent journey of the soul, defining skateboarding as a spiritual activity, relating it to Yoga, uniting mind, body and spirit. The famous company logo is written in a font which imitates the look of Sanskrit while reflecting the red, gold and green of the Rastafarian Lion of Judah flag.

 Satori Skateboards lays out their philosophy while showing off their talented skate team in the full-length movie, Satori Movement: In Search of Roots and Culture. Set to a rocking Reggae soundtrack, this high-quality video features Satori team skater Brent Atchley as well as Aaron Suski, Jake Rupp, and Matt Pailes.

 Satori brings their team to show off and be interviewed at local skate parks around the world. After performing on the island of  Jamaica in 2001, Satori Skateboards opened up the Jamaican Skatepark Fund in association with several non-profits, dedicated to building the first free public skateboard park in Jamaica.

 In line with the dreadlocked values of the company’s founders, the Satori Movement now offers clothing made from blends of organic and recycled hemp and bamboo fibers as part of their commitment to conscious living and sustainable, ecological lifestyles. Yoga pants and mats are also featured in the catalogue, expanding the scope of their mission beyond the skateboard itself.

 Satori is the skateboard of choice around the natural food store and for navigating jam-band festivals. Being featured in Heads Magazine Surf and Skate issue brought the label into the limelight for the many counterculturally minded skateboard devotees who share Satori’s enthusiasm for the ineffable glory of skating.

Popularity: 2% [?]

 Beginning skaters are usually content to pick up a complete, pre-assembled, skateboard off the shelf and get practicing. As your skill and style evolves, however, you’ll start to notice that standard boards are missing something. Maybe you need better handling on your slalom curves; maybe you want a little more cushion when you grind the rails, or perhaps you are finding your aluminum trucks have a shorter lifespan than your relationships.

Building a custom board is a task which will demand an intimate knowledge of the design and options available for your deck, truck, and wheels. When planning out how to make a skateboard, you will need to think about not only the type of surfaces you tend to skate on now and your favorite moves, but also the terrain you plan to explore on your journey to the ultimate adrenaline rush.

The skateboard deck you choose will largely depend on whether you spend most of your time practicing tricks, coasting curvy slaloms, racing downhill, or just getting around town. For tricks, you’ll want a deck with a deep concave shaping, with raised kicks for ollies and flips. Downhill skaters prefer a more streamlined longboard that picks up speed as it cuts air. If you’ve seen footage of Jamie Thomas breaking right through his board while attempting his infamous Leap of Faith you’ll understand how the actual strength of your skateboard can save your bones and you might look for a few extra ply in your deck wood.

The trucks you select while planning how to make a skateboard will be a choice among subtle variances, balancing weight against durability. Some skaters are fanatical about reducing the weight of their boards, and look to shave every ounce of mass by ordering cast aluminum. Other skaters, especially those on a budget, go for stronger trucks made of titanium alloys or pewter. Skateboard tricksters might also consider impact dispersion systems with thick rubber shock pads available from such manufacturers as Phantom Trucks. Those with a few bucks to spend might like to bling up their trucks with 24k gold, but don’t expect those to stay pretty for very long if you do a lot of grinding.

Most skateboard wheels are made of rubber, specifically urethane blends of varying hardness. The latest technology offers wheels of dual texture, with soft inners for improved support and tough, rock-hard surfaces. You’ll need to sort out the best wheel profile for your needs, whether flat and fat or tight and hard. And of course design; some of the most dynamic artwork in the skateboard world appears on wheels, which can be neon bright or devil dark, puffed up and phatty like the tires on a low-ride Cadillac, or translucent and tight like a lollipop.

Building your board from the basic components represents a step forward in your evolution as a skater. No longer merely a blind consumer riding someone else’s idea of the perfect vehicle, creating a custom board frees you to be the master of your own destiny. And when inches count, ounces count more and split-seconds mean the difference between a smooth landing and a rough slam, you’ll want as much control over your equipment as humanly possible.

Popularity: 2% [?]

             Of the all the parts of the skateboard, the truck is the most often overlooked. After all, you hardly ever see it for more than a split second during a 360°. For many skaters, having a good deck with solid wheels is all you need. But especially for trick skaters who like to grind rails, having the right gear underneath your board could make the difference between living on the edge and landing on your ass.

             Unlike other components of today’s highly engineered boards, the truck is a part which is not necessarily used as originally intended. Manufacturers tend to think in terms of holding the wheels together with the board. After all, most of the time, the wheels are making contact with the riding surface or failing to. Using standard trucks to scrape along the sides of stairs can be very tough on standard skateboard truck assemblies, so if you spend a lot of time on grinds, you may want to customize the underside of your board as well as the deck.

             The truck can be a wonder of micro engineering. The commonest metal by far is lightweight aluminum, in cast variety or titanium alloy, but everything from pewter to 24k gold is in use. High-performance units tend to be made of light aluminum, whereas models intended for the skate park tend to have a little more metal and dimension to take the hard punishment that constant grinding inflicts on the underbelly of the skateboard.

             Skateboard trucks are the subject of fierce debates, attracting defenders and detractors with ever micrometer of design deviation. And for good cause-subtle, minute adjustments in the arrangement of kingpin, hanger and bushings will make miles of difference during that tight slalom turn or when flying the half-pipe. The truck is an interactive assembly, and the specs will define how the load-bearing part of your board will respond to your cues and shifts.

 The clearance of the truck is a critical issue for many skaters, as is weight. Light, high trucks are associated with sharper turns, slalom skating, whereas a more substantial unit is preferred for downhill and longboard skating. The kingpin can be adjusted to the skater’s preference, a looser pin will make turning easier and smoother. One factor which doesn’t get a lot of attention from skaters is the hardness of the bushings, which can really make a difference in how your board absorbs shock and reacts to your movement.

Choosing the right skateboard truck will be a combination of brand loyalty, consumer research, and following the leader. What works for one skater might not work for another, so match your choice to your style. Check out the bottoms of boards you see pulling off the moves you want to make. Most of the big name skate companies have their own lines of skateboard trucks available, and specialty truck manufacturers have sprouted up to supply the endless demands of skaters for lighter yet stronger trucks that turn on a dime and slide down a curb.           

Popularity: 3% [?]

Apart from the skate park, the hub of local skater communities tend to congregate around the local premium skateboard shops, where every conceivable type of gear for board and body can be compared and purchased at a premium price.

             Many shops practice crossover with other board-oriented extreme sports, stocking equipment for similar forms of recreation like surfing, snowboarding, water sports dirt biking, even rollerblading and skiing. But for the serious skater, none of these variety stores can match the selection and staff of a dedicated skateboard shop.

             For one thing, while general sporting goods might have a rack of boards and a shelf of shoes next to the T-shirts and hoodies, they aren’t likely to be able to help with customization. The boards will be commercial models, sold as completes without options. The staff will as likely as not lack  knowlegability about such subtleties as the different needs of street and vert skaters. And while the prices will be lower, the quality will be too. So unless you’ve already decided on your board and see it on the shelf for a bargain, skip the “all-purpose” store and focus on skateboard shops where they speak your language.

             Plenty of skateboard shops sponsor their own teams that compete in big skate matches. In the tradition of old school skate team Zephyr named after Zephyr Surfboard Productions Shop, the shop which sponsored them out of Dogtown- a section of Santa Monica where skateboarding as we know it was popularized- the first sponsored skate team to achieve widespread fame, and brought quite a bit of recognition to their benefactor.

 Skate shops have a reputation for being active in the general community as well as large skate events, PUSH Skateshop, for example, has become a creative hub in North Carolina. Beyond selling a carefully selected array of the highest quality skateboard parts and supplies, PUSH sponsors their own award-winning skate team as well as up-and-coming artists, providing a venue for the creation and distribution of rising stars in the iconic contemporary art world.

 Because the skateboarding community is still skating by on the fringe of acceptable society, skateboard shops also function as critical countercultural hubs of activity.

 Cal Skate Skateboards, one of the oldest and certainly the largest skate shop on the north coast, establishing themselves in Portland, Oregon in 1976, also runs Zeitgeist Art Gallery and helps to maintain a number of local skate parks. Cal Skate also produces its own line of political as well as more abstract artistic skateboard decks, providing local artists with an opportunity to get their art flying all around town under the feet of countless skaters.

 Skates on Haight, now known as SkateboardSF has been doing a lot for the skater image in the city since they opened their first store, called Skateboard City at the time, on world-famous Haight Street in 1974. They’ve changed their name a few times, but are still located in the heart of skater country, hilly San Francisco, and stick to their same old-school ideals.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For most skaters, any patch of concrete will do. The commons, malls and parks of just about any town are open territory, depending on the level of security and attitudes of the local authorities. If all you want out of your board is reliable, nonpolluting transportation, the sidewalk or street is probably sufficient for your needs.

 But if you really want to push your vert riding to the limits, there really is no substitute for a fully-featured public skateboard park. For those lucky enough to live in a town equipped with one (if there isn’t any kind of skate park where you kick it, move!), skateboard parks are bustling center of  activity, where tricks and tips can be traded and skater communities thrive.

 Fortunately, skaters are an industrious crowd, and unless you’re stuck in Podunk without so much as a pool bottom, those who came before you have probably paved the way to a serviceable park. Pro-skating advocates and DIY organizations, often with support from manufacturers like Element work hard to demand recognition and respect from local park and recreation departments for what is now one of the world’s most popular athletic activities.

 Of course, there is sometimes opposition. Skateboard parks have a reputation in some towns for harboring other activities which are not as healthy as knocking around on a half-pipe. Some town councils, still voting from the Dark Ages, haven’t caught on that skateboard parks actually reduce crime by providing a place for young people to enjoy the sunshine and a sport which exercises body, mind and spirit.

 When skateboarding received its first burst of popularity in the 70s, private skate parks began popping up first in California and quickly spread to the four corners of the globe. Skate parks have historically had a short lifespan, subject to the vacillating public interest, and perhaps the aging and diaspora of core crowds to college or more sedate lifestyles.

 As skateboarding grows to be a more standardized and popular sport, many cities are granting permission for the construction of complicated private and even public city-funded skate parks.

 Most of the original private skate parks have been closed down in the interceding years, but a few of the original public parks remain monuments to the spirit of the original skateboard booms that birthed them. Derby Skate Park in Santa Cruz, California, still attracts daily crowds in one of America’s safest havens for motion sports.  Derby is the oldest continuously open public skateboard parks in the world, featuring some of the most eccentric slopes, sponsoring a structural art project that has resulted in some of the most beautiful and challenging courses in existence.

 Another old-school public skate park that’s been around since the early days is the Livingston Skatepark in Scotland, playfully dubbed the “Rock and Roll.” Livingston offers a multi-sport complex, perpetuating the tradition of the founders, who shared a vision of exhibiting the most revolutionary and cutting-edge vert skating props and  having helped innovate the now-famous use of severed sewer pipes for ramping material.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Skating is your life. You wake up, grab your deck, and grind a few rails on the way to school. You dash off between classes to try out a few tricks and don’t always make it back before the bell rings. And it’s off to your favorite drained pool or ramp park to ride away the hours until dusk.

 Still, something’s missing. Somehow, you manage to waste eight hours a day in bed not skating. Of course, you can dream about skating and probably do. Ollies and Fakie go off much better in your dreams, except those really bad recurring nightmares, where you smash up your face belly-slamming in front of the girl you like. What’s worse, she’s a better skater than you are and she won’t stop laughing, a harsh laugh that stays in your head all day, getting mixed up with your Mom yelling at you that it’s time for school all over again.

Just guessing here.

 Maybe the problem is your home décor. Sure, you have posters of your favorite skaters carving air plastered all over your room. The first deck you ever busted hangs proudly over your desk. No one who visits your bedroom can forget for one moment that you are a hardcore.

 By the time you start entertaining guests up in there, you’ll want to have impressive sheets. Nothing can set the mood for that special moment where you and that laughing girl finally get down to studying like some (freshly washed) skateboard bedding.

 Thanks to the miracle of subsidiary merchandising, you can outfit your bedroom like a true skating fanatic. You’ll want to save your pennies for this project; full themed skating sheet sets go for upwards of three hundred bucks.

 Imagine having Tony Hawk looking up at you from the comforter while you get educated. What’s a few hundred bucks compared with having Tony’s blessing? You’ll probably start to skate better, too-at least in your dreams.

 If you shot your budget on new bearings for your board, you may need to start small with a few pillowcases from a manufacturer like Vision Bedding, which will only set you back fifty bucks or so. For a single pillow. Double up on those if you are planning on entertaining company.

 At some point, however, you need to think beyond the bed itself. After all, you won’t always be looking at your sheets; sometimes you’ll be snug as a bug underneath your cozy skateboard bedding, and surely you’ll want to look at something related to skating. Sure, you can clip articles from your favorite thrasher zine and splatter them around, and with really liberal parents you can tag your walls with your spray-paint rendition of the Element logo.

 How about a nice skateboard throw rug featuring a kickflip in action? Or a giant wall mural of your favorite pro executing the ollie impossible they’ll be talking about for years? Don’t forget your framed “Grind” in classic Old English script, or your funny knock-off traffic signs. And make sure every visitor to your room knows that “Skateboarding is Not a Crime.”

 At least not on your turf.

 Personalizing your room with skateboard bedding and accessories is a great way to represent for your community…making a statement even while you sleep.

Popularity: 4% [?]

            Famous for their full-length movies, skate tour videos, and countless series of celebrity endorsed pro-edition skateboard decks featuring cutting-edge art, Girl Skateboard had a surprising start. Girl is, undeniably, one of the better-known manufacturers of skateboard-related goods.

 The Girl Skateboard Distribution Family, located in Torrance, California, has now grown to encompass seven other well-loved skate parts and accessories companies: Chocolate Skateboards, Skate Mental, CrailTap, Four Star Clothing, Royal Truck Co., Lakai Footwear, and Ruby Republic.

             Founded in August 1993, Girl Skateboards is managed by some of the biggest names in the industry. The outfit has murky origins born of high drama and well-publicized breaks within the skateboard establishment of the time. Friction between key personalities involved with World Industries and Plan B gave birth to Girl Skateboards.

 In 1993, Plan B skateboards suffered an internal accounting dispute; evidently somebody was skimming wheels off the top of the inventory rack. Mike Carroll and Rick Howard, both skaters for Plan B at the time, left as a result of the drama.

 Girl was born when Mike and Rick joined forces with Spike Jonze and Megan Baltimore, who left her position as an administrator for World Industries to join the team. A number of big name skaters, including accomplished pros Sean Sheffey, Guy Mariano, Tim Gavin and Eric Kosten all abandoned their other sponsorships to make up the original Girl Skateboard team, which was, ironically, made up of a team of six guys.

 In the intervening decade Girl has grown to be a force to be reckoned with, both as a skateboard clothing and supplies manufacturer, and for the award-winning skate teams that they sponsor and film.

 Megan Baltimore, known as “the Matriarch”, is the girl in Girl skateboards. Her main role today is archival, filming Girl’s pro team in action while mounted on a skateboard herself. Megan oversees the editing and clip compilation for both Girl and Chocolate Skateboard videos.

 She worked for three years on the most well known Girl Production, “Yeah Right!” with a 74 minute run-time which was finally released in 2003 and has received widespread acclaim, being commonly referred to as the best skateboard video to date. The success that Yeah Right! and other Girl Skateboard videos have found can be credited to the Matriarch’s tireless videography coupled with the acclaimed work of co-owner and cofounder Spike Jonze, who has been nominated for an Oscar for his directorial efforts in the film, “Adaptation” starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep.

             Girl Skateboards has an entire department, lovingly dubbed “The Dump” that works full-time on constantly reinventing the Girl image. Currently run by Tony Larson, Andy Mueller and Andy Jenkins, who can sometimes be spotted riding around in the “Art Dump Mobile Design unit” the Art Dump dabbles in everything from guest magazine Gallery Shows from San Francisco to New York.

             The Dump is the source of Girl’s unique, artistic board decks, which are impressive works of art in their own right, gracing the walls in skaters bedrooms as frequently as the boards under their feet, the Art Dump has become prominent in the general underground art scene.

Popularity: 8% [?]