Every culture has a creation myth, and skateboarding is no different. The Ollie forged a new identity for skateboarding after its invention in the 1970s, and it lies at the root of nearly every significant move in street skating today. This groundbreaking no-handed aerial has also affected the evolution of surfing and snowboarding, and has left a permanent impression upon popular culture and language. This, then, is the story of the Ollie, the history and technology that set the stage for its creation, the pioneers who made it happen, and the skaters who used it to start a revolution.

At age six, Rodney Mullen was the family misfit who had to wear braces to straighten out his pigeon-toed feet. But by age fourteen, he was a world-champion skateboarder -- and for the next decade lost only one contest. Now, for the first time, Rodney tells the incredible story of his ascent to fame as the number one nerd in a sport where anarchy is often encouraged. Rodney learned to skate by himself on the family farm, his only company the wandering cows. As a teenager he traveled the world for demonstrations, invented the flatground ollie -- a trick that laid the foundation for modern street skating -- and in ten years garnered thirty-five world skating titles. While acing skateboard contests Rodney also earned straight A's in school, but his father forced him to abandon his fame and the fortune he could make from the sport he loved. Rodney was unable to stop for very long though, even after freestyle skating went out of fashion and the skateboarding world abandoned him. He adapted to street skating and eventually became one of the most innovative and influential skaters of all time. It's all here: everything from his eating and sleeping disorders to his comical experiences with loan sharks, occult-obsessed relatives, and the FBI. The Mutt is a look at Rodney's strange journey from penniless skateboarder to millionaire.

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR • Southwest Review • Electric Literature Perfect for fans of Barbarian Days, this memoir in essays follows one man's decade-long quest to uncover the hidden meaning of skateboarding, and explores how this search led unexpectedly to insights on marriage, love, loss, American invention, and growing old. In January 2012, creative writing professor and novelist Kyle Beachy published one of his first essays on skate culture, an exploration of how Nike’s corporate strategy successfully gutted the once-mighty independent skate shoe market. Beachy has since established himself as skate culture's freshest, most illuminating, at times most controversial voice, writing candidly about the increasingly popular and fast-changing pastime he first picked up as a young boy and has continued to practice well into adulthood. What is skateboarding? What does it mean to continue skateboarding after the age of forty, four decades after the kickflip was invented? How does one live authentically as an adult while staying true to a passion cemented in childhood? How does skateboarding shape one's understanding of contemporary American life? Of growing old and getting married? Contemplating these questions and more, Beachy offers a deep exploration of a pastime—often overlooked, regularly maligned—whose seeming simplicity conceals universal truths. THE MOST FUN THING is both a rich account of a hobby and a collection of the lessons skateboarding has taught Beachy—and what it continues to teach him as he strugglesto find space for it as an adult, a professor, and a husband.

This book explores the ways in which religion is observed, performed, and organised in skateboard culture. Drawing on scholarship from the sociology of religion and the cultural politics of lifestyle sports, this work combines ethnographic research with media analysis to argue that the rituals of skateboarding provide participants with a rich cultural canvas for emotional and spiritual engagement. Paul O’Connor contends that religious identification in skateboarding is set to increase as participants pursue ways to both control and engage meaningfully with an activity that has become an increasingly mainstream and institutionalised sport. Religion is explored through the themes of myth, celebrity, iconography, pilgrimage, evangelism, cults, and self-help.

"To be a skateboarder today is a much different experience than it was for much of the 1990s. The photographs, quotes, and anecdotal text in ''93 til' captures a time in skateboarding when making a livable income as a professional skater was a luxury and public understanding of skateboarding was at an all-time low. It was a time when skateboarding was searching for an identity, a time before Instagram and big corporate influences. Street skating was coming of age, testing its limitations and aligning itself with a new and innovate style of hip-hop culture that was emerging. Looking back, many skaters today feel as though the '90s were the golden years of skateboarding. ''93 til' is a captivating portal into a decade and a culture that is remembered with warmth and nostalgia. Much of the photography that Pete has unearthed for '93 til was buried in boxes for close to two decades and hasn't never been seen or published before. The 250-page book also contains several timeless images from his years shooting for SLAP and Transworld Skateboarding Magazine that will be familiar to the initiated. In addition to his stunning action shots are plenty of portraits and unguarded, candid moments that span from the late '80s up through 2004. The book reveals a raw, unapologetic perspective of a world that no longer exists."--Provided by publisher.

For more than twenty years, Tony Hawks has been mistaken for Tony Hawk, the American skateboarder. Even though it is abundantly clear on his website that he is an English comedian and author, people still write to him asking the best way to do a kickflip or land a melon. One mischievous day he started writing back in a pompous tone, goading his correspondents for their spelling mistakes and poor grammar, while offering bogus or downright silly advice on how to improve their skateboarding. Featuring entries on parents' pain, disappointment, underachievers, Quorn and the Vatican, this is his A to Z guide to the world of skateboarding, as seen through the eyes of someone who knows absolutely nothing about it.

Sequenced photographs and step-by-step instructions explain how to perform thirty skateboarding flip tricks.