10 No-Go´s in Skateboarding

In the late 80’s, skateboarding was pretty much a free-for-all. If you look at contest videos from this era, “Savannah Slamma” for example, the runs and trick selection may seem laughable by today’s skate standards. The difficulty of the tricks was considerably lower, with the exception of a few star skaters like Natas and Mark Gonzalez. However, there was one skater in particular whose style set him apart from the crowd, Bill Danforth. The bald-headed Alva Skateboards pro often pushed with his leading foot, a trend that skaters today would call “mongo pushing”. Bill was actually so known for this that skaters began referring to it as “pushing Dan”, among the many other terms such as “stupid footed”, “piss pedaler” or “rear wheel drive”. If there’s anything skaters are picky about, it’s the style and aesthetics that go with skateboarding – let’s be honest, pushing mongo just doesn’t look good. 

Fun facts:

- There’s a major caveat when it comes to pushing mongo, the switch mongo push. Legends like Eric Koston and Gino Ianucci are perfect examples of skaters who push mongo when skating switch, and it has become an integral part of their super steezy skate style.

- If you’re already guilty of pushing mongo, no worries, some of your favorite pro skaters began skating that way! There’s video proof of pros like Jason Dill, Tom Penny, and others in their early years pushing mongo. Actually, if you’ve ever noticed that Andrew Reynolds sometimes throws his board down to set up for a trick with the opposite hand as usual, this is a habit from the early days of being a mongo pusher!

- As a skateboard trainer in Sudan, Samuel Beyer made it a point to teach his students not to push mongo from their very first push. Even in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, kids must learn this important style-element of skateboarding!

For whatever reason, many tricks have earned a reputation that deems them “ugly” or “uncool” in the skate world. Of course, it’s up to you to decide what you think looks good and what doesn’t, but there are some tricks that most skaters would generally agree on as looking pretty silly. Dolphin/forward flips, front foot impossibles, and willy grinds are all tricks with an ugly reputation, depending on how they’re performed, but one trick takes the cake when it comes to weird: the benihana. This trick has earned celebrity status for its negative image. It was first invented by Lester Kasai, who named the trick after the Asian restaurant chain, Benihana! The trick is done in the air and it involves removing your back foot from the tail while simultaneously doing a tailgrab, sometimes even touching your crotch, causing you to spread your legs all the way apart into a pretty ridiculous form. Christian Hosoi was known for doing benihanas while doing a frontside air on vert, coining his own term for the trick, the benibonga! One of the first “known” street benihanas was done by John Cardiel in 1991, where he did it down the EMB “big 3” in his Dogtown video part. Shortly after, the trick began being known as a “circus trick”, as skaters like Josh Kasper started popping them off curb-cuts and jump ramps. Nowadays, it is a typical quarterpipe-to-platform trick performed by the local skatepark hero. As Clyde Singleton said in a Transworld interview 10 years ago, “what the hell'd make anyone take their back foot off their skateboard midair and grab the tail?”

Fun facts:

- Jamie Thomas does a benihana in his Toy Machine “Welcome to Hell“ video part (1996), which was sort of the last benihana to be found in a “serious” video part.

- Sometimes in skate contests (at least in Germany), a skater doing a benihana in their run can actually lead to a point reduction. This is because style is calculated into the point evaluation and this trick is not usually associated with style.

- The reputation that certain tricks have certainly changes over the years. Some great examples are varial flips, late shuv-its, and pressure flips, which have all gone through periods of being “uncool” but have since returned to become respected tricks done by many pros.

Around 10 years ago, a trend emerged that actually threatened the livelihood of the skate industry as we know it – blank decks. These decks shook up the industry so badly mainly because of their impact on pro model deck sales by established board companies. It’s difficult to say exactly when and where blank decks first started arriving, but the trend was blowing up around the turn of the millennium. As the name suggests, the decks have no graphic printed on the bottom and the only company involved in production is a woodshop, most likely based in China. Of course, the decks could be sold significantly cheaper than a pro model deck from a recognized brand at the time like Real Skateboards. Blank decks had no skate team, no magazine ads, no skate tours, and no promo videos. Even though it sounds pretty lame, it was actually a very profitable business at the time. Unfortunately, the deck manufacturers had absolutely nothing to do with skating and were just cashing in on it. However, these blank companies soon pushed it too far by reducing the quality of the decks to cut costs. Skaters realized that there was a significant quality difference between blanks and pro boards shortly after, and the issue sort of leveled itself out as skaters gained preference again for pro decks (with the exception of really broke skaters who just needed something to ride). Today, even the well-known brands now do their best to cater to price sensitive groups by offering “price-point” decks at a slightly reduced rate. Which is good for everyone as even budget skaters can help support the skate industry.

It goes without saying that being an asshole usually never gets you far in life, so why would it be any different in skateboarding?! Still, when told to leave a spot or skate someplace else by security or passers-by, some skaters resort to treating them with sheer disrespect. Take this example, you’re skating a set of stairs and the building security guard walks up and politely (or rudely) asks you to leave. No matter what he did, if you respond by telling him to f**k off and trying to keep skating, he’s almost certainly going to get pissed and call the police. Now, let’s say you respond by politely explaining that you’re trying to film a trick, you don’t want to destroy or harm anything, and then you will leave. In the second case, the security guard is exponentially more likely to say “okay, but just one or two more tries!” Also, if you are confrontational, it’s very likely that the guard will report the case and you will soon find that the spot has been skate-stopped with knobs on the rails or ledges, effectively ruining the spot for every other skater. More so, when you are skating in public, if you get pissed and start freaking out, throwing your board, screaming, etc., you are portraying a super shitty image of skateboarders as a whole to everyone in the area. The same goes with leaving garbage at the skate spot, it’s all common sense, and you always owe it to every other skater to portray a positive image of the sport that you love so that the skate scene continues to thrive.

As we grow older, our bodies naturally get more fragile and susceptible to injury. There are only a few superhuman skaters to this day who are over the age of 35 but still jump down huge sets of stairs. At some point when you get older, you’ll probably discover the love of mini-ramp skating. Beware; when you step onto the mini-ramp, you are sometimes also stepping into a snake pit! Often times, little kids just don’t know how it works, but when you’re on the mini ramp, ready to drop in with your board on the coping, and suddenly another skater flies into the ramp infront of you, it sucks! It’s especially bad when that skater then begins a seemingly endless line of axle stalls on the ramp before sliding to a stop on the flat bottom on his oversized pair of kneepads. Have courtesy for other skaters, especially in a skatepark or mini ramp! Luckily, this instance is usually less common at skate spots, where skaters generally understand that the session is somewhat turn-based.

Fun facts:

- At mini ramp contests, such as those presented by Vans or Volcom, it’s possible that the whole event can only be skaters snaking one another. However, this is usually also a party with beers and music, and snaking is totally acceptable. In this case, it can heat the session up even more and make it that much more wild.

- In the 90’s, there were several popular skate crews around Germany. One of them was known as “Die Macht” from the Ruhr region. Their crew included legends like Mussa, Fadi Najras, Mehmet Aydin, Flo Marfaing, and a few others. When this crew skated contests, they had a reputation of being a dangerous crew if you got in their way. A great example is Mussa during a contest at the Keuninghaus in Dortmund. Another skater blatantly got in his way during the contest, so he smashed the skater’s deck on the spot!