Noob alert! These are some very basic tips. These pointers are intended for the beginning skater just starting to learn, so some of this might seem obvious to many of you. There is simply no way around this; if you are an expert, by definition, you already know how to skate. In your case, show this article to any starting skaters, young or old, that you may have bugging you for lessons.

 First, you’ll need a board. If you don’t know how to skateboard, getting to know the common specs and parts of the board is a good place to start.

 As you develop a relationship with your board, mounting and balancing on your deck will be second-nature, but many beginning skaters need help orienting their bodies with the board. Keeping track of your foot placement in relationship to the bolts is the bolts is a useful trick.

  The deck of your board is attached to the wheel-bearing truck with four bolts. The top of these bolts can be seen on either side on the deck, two by the nose, and two by the tail. Many skaters use these bolts as a way to orient their feet on the board.

 To mount your skateboard, place it on the ground in front of you and put your back foot on the rear bolts by the rear kick and place your front foot in the middle of the board for balance.

 If you want to use the momentum of your mount to propel you forward in a running jump, take a few quick steps toward the board, in the direction that the board is facing. As you approach, place your back foot in the middle of the board (facing forward) and kick off with your foot, planting it near the front bolts. Keep your back leg loose and your knee slightly bent- never lock your knees! This is a common error among beginners.

 The first thing you need to figure out when learning how to skateboard is whether you’re “regular” or “goofy”. This refers to the way you prefer to position your feet on the board. The preferred stance is to use your right foot as the rear foot and to use your left foot to “pump” the ground when building speed, and as your front foot in tricks. Some skaters prefer to stand the opposite way, with the right foot forward. These skaters are called “goofy-footers”.

 No matter which stance you prefer, many jumps have you landing in a different position from the one you took off in, so the important thing is to maintain your balance, whether you’re standing goofy or regular.

 When learning how to skateboard,  each skater needs to find their own center of balance in association with the board. You will see that everyone develops their own relationship with their moving platform. Just find the stance that feels most comfortable to you, and keeps you vertical.

 To dismount, simply put your back foot on the tail, and transfer your weight back, the nose of your board will rise so you can step off and grab your board in one smooth motion. You’re done! That wasn’t so hard now, was it?

Skateboarders are known for many qualities-bravery, independence, a lack of concern for the laws of society and physics-but literacy is not necessarily one of them. While some skaters doubtless make a trick of speed-reading Moby Dick while grinding the library stair rails, the printed page is not always up to the nuts-and-bolts task of teaching the noob how to rock the next “ollie impossible.”

No mere description of suicidal insanity can make the jaw and stomach drop with amazement at how little some experts value intact bones. For the true visceral experience, skateboard video clips bring every sight and sound of a mind-blowing ordinary afternoon in the white-knuckle life of the celebrity skater.

At 30 frames per second, if a picture is worth a thousand words, each second of video is practically a book. Any expert, no matter how inarticulate in speech, can use a camera and a simple editor to convey at variable speeds exactly how they make the magic happen.

Skateboard video clips are able to show what words all too often fail to describe: the delicate nuances of timing and execution that make the difference between being slick and being slammed.

The first video recordings of skateboard teams appeared with the advent of the VCR in the 1980’s. The new medium revolutionized the sport, and also standardized it to a certain extent. Skate teams emerged to take advantage of the growing star power potential in what had previously been an underground, solo sport. The most important of these was the Bones Brigade, featuring such icons as Stacey Peralta and Mike McGill.

Skateboarding came into the sporting mainstream during the nineties, when cable TV companies began scrambling for content to fill the sudden programming gaps between standbys like auto racing and tennis. ESPN led the way, sponsoring the historic X-games in 1995, followed trendy stations like MTV.

A new phenomenon emerged: spectator-driven skateboarding, exposing the sport to armchair enthusiasts who didn’t know an ollie from a kickflip…but sat on the edge of their seats waiting for a fancy trick to go wrong.

The new celebrity skaters had a rougher road than conventional athletes, battling the volatile ride to stardom while executing never-before imagined flying feats and making tremendous personal sacrifices for the sport.

A generation of soon-to-be hardcore kids took to the streets, empowered with a repertoire of concrete-thumping moves hammered out by old-schoolers, at a high price in broken bones the young neophytes only had to wince at.

The vert skater in particular has been a perpetually endangered species, in a skateboard world increasingly dominated by the urban landscape crowd. Legends like Tony Hawk, who could sail the half-pipe with ease, have struggled personally as well as professionally with the shifting fortunes of a sport which had not yet found its destiny.

Today, video skating is finding a cozy home among some of the most popular titles on sharing sites like YouTube and DailyMotion. Predictably, the amateur wipeout variety consistently outperforms the instructional skateboard video clips. The future of skateboarding as a spectator sport may owe more to the hapless slam victim than the pro making it look all too easy.