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Evolution Of The Modern Era Of Skateboarding

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Prior to the days of Dogtown, skateboarding was dead. However, as soon as the Dogtown culture came alive, so did the modern era of skateboarding. As a result of surfing, the California drought of the 1970s, and the film work and photography of Craig Stecyk, this once dead sport has risen from the dead for good. It all began in the early 1970s when Dogtown, located in Venice Beach, California was home to a secret surfing cove. This area was constantly populated by pyromaniacs, drug addicts, artists, and of course surfers’, but most importantly the Zephyr surf team. This team was known as “The mafia of the waves” (Peralta, 2002). While surfing on the coast, this team relentlessly practiced new and unique moves on the beachfront. Little did they …show more content…

It led to the creation of vertical air and eventually skate parks. Without the pool-riding era, who knows if the creativity of these skaters would have really taken off, but thanks to this period, it did.
Lastly, the filming and photography of the Z-Boys by Craig Stecyk had a major impact on the revival of skateboarding. In the mid 1970s, Stecyk was living in an area close to Santa Monica where he was one of the part owner’s of the Zephyr surf shop. As soon as the Zephyr skate team came together, Stecyk became one of the documentarians. It was in the so-called “Dogtown articles” where Stecyk wrote about the Z-Boys and included his photographs. These articles were written for the magazine Skateboarder that was revived during the Dogtown era (Johnson, 2009, p.3).
As David Johnson tells us, the articles did have a significant bearing on skateboarding, but it was the photographs that communicated new ideas about the sport. He described them as “Aesthetic experiences, ones that do not just illustrate the article so much as provide imaginative touches for young skaters” (Johnson, 2009, p. 5). These ideas present in the photos of Stecyk did have a major influence of modern skate. The film portrayed his as “The template for the attitude and aesthetic that would come to define the culture of modern-day skateboarding” (Peralta, …show more content…

Each one helped to expand growth for the extreme sport already growing in popularity.
First off, the accident of architecture was inevitable. As years went on, the minds and creativity of skaters was bound to evolve. The boys from ‘Dogtown’ did just that. With reference to my second point, these skaters took advantage of Mother Nature. When the California drought of the 1970s occurred, they made use of the architecture that was not being used. Seaside pools became more than just an empty unusable piece of land built underground, but a bowl for skaters to develop their innovation for the future of the sport (Hayes, 2005).
The availability of television time also had an impact on the rise of skate. While the status of skateboarding was taking off, so was television and sport. The 1980s marked the introduction of innumerable network options (Cable’s Story, 2015). Not long after in the mid 1990s, the X Games kicked off and included skateboarding as one of its activities. From that point on the skateboarding market continued to flourish as more and more television shows came out about skating, along with the creation of video game such as Tony Hawk’s Pro

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