As a skater in the mid - late '70s, very few "tricks" had been invented yet.
As the late '70s turned into the early '80s, there was an explosion of new "tricks" being invented - it was an amazing time of massive progression in skateboarding.
Many of today's street tricks were actually invented on vert and in pools and then applied to street.
Layback - a Layback is when you put your trailing hand down.
But the style of the day was "surf style" - the same maneuvers being done in the water by the surf pros were emulated and duplicated on concrete waves.
The legendary Dogtown dudes, (Z-Boys, original members of the Zephyr skate team) were surfers first and skaters second.
So, they'd emulate their favorite pro surfers.
One of the biggest and earliest influences was Larry Bertlemann.
His low-slung, hand-on-wave, roundhouse cutbacks were powerful and graceful at the same time.
Encyclopedia Of Surfing - Larry Bertlemann
So the Dogtowners were big on doing "Berts" - short for Bertlemann.
You can clearly see the resemblance in these two shots.
"Kickturn Bert" - a bert is where you put your leading hand down.
Vertical Bert - This is one of my favorite shots from back in the day - I learned these by starting low and working my way higher and higher until I could do them as a grinding bert.
These pics show a variety of surf-inspired moves from back in the day.
Most of these involve a fast roundhouse turn - kind of like a power slide - that screetches the wheels and makes everyone in a skatepark turn and look.
Grinding Layback
Extended Layback
I still like doing these, even today. (at 57)
The low-slung nature of the move makes them fun to do - when you can pull them off.
Backside Bert
🤟 sk8 forever🤘
YEAH!
57 and still rocking it!
Love these photos and fantastic to see you still enjoying being on the board!
Thanks! Every time I go skate, I am so grateful that I still get to do it. Truly a blessing.
Its so good, that someone had a camera so you have all that history documented
Funny thing - because the only skateboarding we saw was in magazines, (video was still very new and very expensive to do) we wanted our own pictures. We also found out that we skated better and pushed it more "for the camera" than without the camera, so it became a performance thing that helped us do better. I have LOTS of pics I'll be sharing here.
Damn you're probably the coolest guy on the skate park XD
Were a lot of early skateboarders surfers?
Thanks, but nah, I'm just an old skater! LOL!
Well, skateboarding literally came from surfing, (it was called "sidewalk surfing") so most of the earliest skaters were from California and they were surfers before they became skaters.
When skateboarding went to street, it became much more technical and a lot of skaters lost the "surf-style".
When I skate, it's not about tricks, it's more about speed and flow and grinding in the bowl. I love that feeling.
Least not doing the crazier tricks saves your knees so you can still skate now? 😆 my partner and a few of our friends who skate are “retiring” or feeling a bit deprived as their knees are wrecked so they can’t do a lot of the jumps or big landings or even slam down a ramp anymore.
Yeah, that's the thing - when I came up, street skating wasn't invented yet, so I never got into that. This saved my body, big-time. I think of street skating as "stunts". It's great to watch and I can admire their skill level, but I'm more into the speed and flow of skating a pool or bowl / skatepark and maybe once in awhile doing a trick.
You definitely sound like an oldschool surfer 😜
I actually don't really like skate parks (I don't like big ramps, too many memories of tumbling down steep hills where I grew up maybe 😅) but there is something in finding lines through them. I’m too scared to do tricks now though 😵
Cruising is cool - I skate for the flow and rush feeling it gives me, not for the "performance" of it.
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