March 11, 2014 • 44 mins
Skateboarding started out as something bored surfers did when the waves weren't breaking, but after a few improvements to the design, it took off like a rocket to become its own cultural phenomenon. Come gleam the cube with Josh and Chuck.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant's with me, so
stuff you should know. And Jerry of course is here,
who just celebrated a birthday. Yeah, happy birthday, Jerry in
(00:22):
Valentine's Day. Run our Indian sweat lodge that we call
a recording booth. Yeah, man, that's hot. Yeah. Part of
it's this thing. You want to turn this off, just
this It really does put out a tremendous amount of heat. Yeah,
Josh's we have a lamp on our table that we
used to see. Well we can't see any longer. Oh
well blin'd blind. Yeah, that did make it like three
(00:44):
cooler immediately. Yeah, it's that lamp. It's the lamp. And
then like you know, just people generating heating here. Yeah,
podcasters were a ball me bunch, the blusters, a herd
of oxen in the corner. And it doesn't help. It's
been the best intro ever I think. Do you think that?
I think so you're not being facetious. No, you know
(01:06):
the word facetious. What do you got for me? Well,
when I was younger, I knew the word facetious. It
was a word that my dad used a lot, so
I used it in like regular conversation correct yeah, okay,
but I've never seen it written out, or so I thought.
And then finally one day I ran across in a
book again this word I kept coming up on, and
(01:27):
I was like, what is that word fastidious? Facidious, facious?
And I was like, that's facetious. I don't know that
I've seen it spelled either. Yeah, it looks like factious,
you know, it looks like facet like a facet of
a jewel or something. And then E s I O
U S. Yeah, there's no I would have so bombed
(01:48):
the spelling of that, right. But the thing is, it's
like I was using it correctly in conversation, and I
had seen it in books. I just never put the
two together until finally one day it clicked and you
had to get your tattoo changed. Facetious across the back
of your neck in the heart, all right. So um skateboarding. Yeah,
(02:09):
about the same time that I realized the word facetious
when it was correctly spelled, as I was skateboarding at
the time. So that's how it ties in that was
a little skateboarder for a long time. Yeah, I was too.
I Um, I did not. I'm not old enough to
where I saw all the different waves of skateboarding. Of
the four, but the first two I saw, I didn't
(02:32):
see the first one. That's pretty funny. That would mean
I'm dead now. There's plenty of old boarders out there, sure, yeah,
but I was of the age where I definitely had
the um small sort of plastic board with the single
little tail on the back only and clay wheels. No, no, yeah,
(02:56):
clay wheels. It seems to me like that the skateboards
from from biblical times. Clay wheels. That's what I think
of when I see clay wheels. What do they even
look like? Uh? Just brown? Were they super dangerous? Well? Yeah,
And if you've seen the great documentary um Dogtown and
z Boys they go over. It's a really good doc
(03:19):
by the way, like amazing footage that they have and
good music and highly recommended over the movie version. The
Lords of Dogtown was Val Kilmer in that, No, Heath
Ledger was. He played the the mentor. I can't remember
his name. Skip the Zephyr Crew, yes, skip skip Skip
went on to found Santa Monic Airline Skateboards. Yeah, yeah,
(03:43):
he was. He stayed on. It's like a big influence
in skateboarding's good. So anyway, I just wanted to point
out that I have branched a few different Like I
started with a little clay one, and then in high
school is when I got the big, huge fat skateboard
when they were super obnoxious. Yeah, let's see, that's when
I came into skating. Four had like a nice Lance Mountain. Um,
(04:05):
it was my first board. My first board, remember the
Nash tough tops there was it was blank on the bottom,
there were no graphics, but on the top cut out
in the grip tape was like a star that looked
kind of like a saw blade circular saw blade. And
then the big difference was the different colors of the
board underneath blue or pink or yellow or what it
(04:27):
was like neon green. Yeah, you're a big fat one.
Yeah and looking back like kind of corny. And I
think after that is when like true skater started being like,
you know, we don't really care that much about like
awesome graphics, Like we just want a good board, good board.
You wanted some rib bones, on the side. You remember
those underneath. Yeah, yeah, but I don't think people like
(04:48):
those now either. Oh no, not anymore skaters. No, that
that the whole point of those. I think it was,
you know, to let you rail slide or whatever easier.
But I think it was also to protect those graphics too.
They told he was because I had a little big
plastic bumper under the tailpiece too, which is counterintuitive to
the tricks. Yeah, but I mean, like, who cares about
(05:09):
protecting the tail It's weird. Yeah. I was also a
nosebone too. That was not never very good. Oh I
wasn't either. I don't mean to give that. I mean
I spent a lot of our skating and I never
got very good. I think I pulled off one kick
flip once, really once. That's good. I thought it was
pretty good too. That is the trick that you most
(05:29):
often see kids not landing driving down the street. If
you ever see a kid like I, rarely see a
successful kickflip just on the sidewalk. Oh yeah. If you
see somebody who pulls off a kick flip, the chances
are there somebody filming them because they know that they're
going to be able to pull off the kickflip in
l A. Actually I would see more, you know, obviously
(05:49):
better skaters out there in New York. Yeah, all right, skateboarding.
Should we get going with a little history. Yeah, let's
talk about the history of this. This this is so
close to my heart. Man, I fell down the rabbit
hole to day watching like old skate videos and like
checking out old Powell Peralta boards. That was my dam
was Powell. Well, we mentioned that there have been four
(06:12):
distinct waves of skateboarding starting in UH ninety nine, and
each new wave like it's it's just waned in popularity
here and there and then come back strong or in
stronger due to either UH advances mainly in like skateboard
technology right and trickery, yes, and um parental acceptance. Because
(06:37):
it never really goes away. Skateboarding is either ever since
its inception, it's either been mainstream or else forced underground
and like practiced by juvenile delinquents who kind of kept
it going and advanced it quietly until it came back
into the mainstream and parents were like, Okay, you guys
can skate again. But the true origin of the skateboard,
(06:57):
the first one that came out, the first commercial produced
when it was in nineteen fifty nine. It's called the
roller derbry skate. Yeah. And before that, you know, if
you've seen the movie Back to the Future when Martin
might Fly rips the little milk crate off the front
of the homemade wooden scooter, that was where skateboards really
came from. You just you know, it was a sort
of a homemade deal with like a peach crate as
(07:19):
the front of your scooter, a couple of handles. Yes,
steal wheels from roller skates, yeah, and that was super dangerous, right,
But like you say, if you take the peach crate
off and take the handles off, you have that two
by four with the roller skate wheels. And they don't
know exactly who did it. They think actually several people
probably did it simultaneously Marty right in the forties. They
think surfers in California did it. There are kids in
(07:41):
France that were seen doing it in the forties, so
it kind of spread. It happened, it arose independently around
the world at about the same time. That's called the zeitgeist.
That is my friend. So now we're in the nineties,
early nineteen sixties and it was I mean it really
took off like a rocket in the first few years
of the nineteen sixties. Like fifty million skateboards were sold
(08:03):
in those first three years and it was everywhere. Yeah,
it was like the hot new craze. Well it was
like also like hula hoops and things like that, Like
it was America was in a crazy mood, a craze mood,
like whatever the big thing was, Yeah, and skateboard fell
into that big time. The problem is, uh, they were
pretty dangerous. There wasn't a lot you could do with
(08:27):
them now they because again there's steel wheels there. It's
basically two by four on steel wheels, ride down the
street and you could fall off of it exactly. That
was so and I think because of the safety concerns
overnight skateboarding just went away in like nineteen sixty five.
It was over, but it's still kind of stayed somewhat
(08:50):
popular as a thing to do among surfers. When the
waves weren't breaking, Um, they would just kind of sidewalk
surface what they called it, And they never really saw
it as anything bigger than a supplement to surfing. It
was just kind of like it wasn't its own thing
until uh the sixties, the late sixties or the early seventies,
(09:15):
when clay wheels came about. You could do a little
more stuff. I think, Well, clay was better than the
steel wheels, but still bad. And that's hit a rock
in the road your toast, and like that's when people
started dying from skateboards, which kind of led to its
decline again. Sure, and then some surfers, the Zephyr Crew
(09:36):
are the ones who like broke skateboarding out once and
for all. Well, yeah, thanks to uh Frank Nasworthy's invention
of the Eurothane wheel in nineteen seventy two. Uh he
founded Cadillac Wheels, and all of a sudden, it was
like a smooth, like steady, silent experience on a skateboard
for the first time. And then you changed everything it
(09:57):
did because it could grip. Um, it wasn't just that
it was it rumbly any longer like that. You're a
thing could grip like concrete or pavement. Yeah, instead of
just stopping and um, yeah, all of a sudden, there
were way more surfaces that could be skated. And that
plus the invention of the truck, yeah, which is basically
(10:20):
an axle for your wheels that not only allows the
wheels to revolve more smoothly, especially when you add a
set of bearings, but it also allows you to maneuver
to the left or the right, which is a big deal.
Kind of opens things up there, twisty. And then the
kicktail also changed everything. All these kind of came together
(10:41):
at about the same time. Yeah, and you mentioned the
Zephyr Crew in ve that held the first um uh
basically competition in Delmark, California, and that's when and if
you've seen the documentary, it's pretty great. I mean they
had sort of the holdovers from the sixties doing like
handstands and all these sort of square, antiquated moves, and
(11:02):
then these little punks came in there and just like
toward the place up and like the judges didn't know
how to judge them at the time because they've never
seen anything like it. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It was
a pool. They were skating in pools right well at least, Yeah,
the pool thing came a little later because they um
there was a big drought in the mid seventies in
southern California and water was actually in short supply. So
(11:25):
people would drain their pools or not refill them or
whatever for the new summer. And so they started busting
in the backyards and skating in pools. Yeah, and they
would bring their own pumps and hoses to drain like
all the muck out entirely and then just like skate
that pool. And there was um at one of those pools,
a kid named Tony Alva who was in that Zephyr crew.
(11:46):
It was Tony Alva, j Adams, and Stacy Perelta, yeah,
among others. Right, but those are like the big three.
Tony I was your guy, right, Stacy Perelta, Oh, I
thought you were like a huge Tony Alba dude. Okay, No,
I respect for Tony album, but no, I was always
pal par Alta. Um. But Tony Alva at one of
(12:06):
those pools kept going and going and pushing himself harder
and harder, and then one day he cleared the coping
of the pool and like caught air, yeah with his
hand at first, Oh, he did like a hand plant. Yeah,
that was how that originally came about. But he did
leave contact with the pool, and no one had ever
done that, and everyone's like, and that was like the
(12:29):
creation of vertue style skateboarding. UM and Alva went on
at like age nineteen and found his own skateboarding company.
He was the first one to use some Canadian maple Veneers,
which we'll talk about UM. And it was like really innovative,
especially for a nineteen year old skate punk from southern California. Yeah,
(12:49):
they all were. Yeah, it's pretty amazing, like this collection
of kids were. And it most of them ended up
being like very savvy, like wealthy businessmen like yeah. And
and right after the del Mar competition, the Zephyr crew
kind of scattered to the wind and went in and
found purchase and and expanded skateboarding as a sport and
(13:10):
as a theme. And one of the things that they
brought with them from having been part of a crew
is to form their own crews um of people that
they sponsored, which made those people pros. And those pros
would go on tour. And when those pros went on tour,
they were skating say palm Pearl to skateboards and showing
local kids what could be done with the skateboard. And
(13:32):
those kids would go buy pal Pearl to skateboards and
go out and skate. And it that whole idea of
doing demos on tour with pros who are sponsored by
skateboarding companies really helped expand skateboarding in the eighties and
and created that third wave where skateboarding just became it. Yeah,
I mean it was big in California and Florida. Like
(13:55):
my cousins were way into it in Florida early on.
But it really took off when kids like me and
Georgia and you and Ohio we're skiing, you know, skiing
skating up my like steep driveway and trying to do
a little one eight turns going back down like it
was a wave, and I was, you know, it was
one of those silly little kids, like was so caught
(14:15):
up in it at first. Well, I had a kid
who lived across the tracks from me who had a
half pipe, like a good half pipe that his dad
built him UM, and that was part of that rise
in nineteen three. I think that third wave where UM
because I should say we didn't really mention UM in
the late seventies, after Alva Skateboards was founded and and
(14:38):
pau Perelta was founded and all that, UM, skateboarding took
a hit mainstream wise, and it became associated with punks
and like just like like just punk kids, bad kid
yeah yeah, the bad kids and who literally gave skateboarding
a bad name. Um. And so it was kind of
driven underground again. And then in the early eighties that
(14:59):
experienced their rise and its image kind of changed a
little bit thanks to the pal Peralta team, the Bones Brigade,
who were actually like they were all young kids and
they were skateboarders and all they cared about was skating.
But they were also like kind of clean cut as
far as um as far as skateboarders went, and like
they didn't do drugs, at least they didn't publicly do drugs.
(15:22):
Stay was a good kid, yeah um. And so the
kids that he sponsored, like Tony Hawk, Mike McGill, Steve Caballero,
Christian Hassoi, all those kids were good kids too, and
they had a tremendous amount of influence on the the
skaters who were into them, and so it kind of
changed skating's image a little bit too. It went from
like being something that like punk kids were into to
(15:45):
something all kids were into. Yeah it um. It did
go into another four year lull towards the end of
the seventies before it started coming back in the mid
eighties and BMX had a lot to do with it.
That became more popular and um, you know some skateboarder
magazine shut down or change names to a different you
know title, and it just like you said, it never
(16:08):
went away to the adherents of like like the true
underground skateboarders, right, it's always there's always somebody who's been
skating at some point ever since the ninety nine. But
in the mid eighties is when it definitely came back
to the big time mainstream. Yeah. And I can't tell
if it's just nostalgia on my part or else if
that was when it like really exploded, but like that
(16:30):
was when that was my wheelhouse. Remember the videos man,
Bones Brigade videos. Yeah, and that was another thing too.
One of the reasons why UM skateboarding was able to
spread as a sport or recreation or whatever UM was
in part the access to cheap VHS players because the
Bones Brigade made videos and people bought them, Like you
(16:50):
could go to your local skate shop and buy like
a Bones Brigade VHS tape for like twenty five or
thirty bucks. You kind of had to if you wanted
to learn the cool tricks. Right, It's like the only
place you could see him at the time. Yeah, and
then they were produced in a way like you'd want
to watch him again and again, like they think the
fourth one, the Search for Animal Chin, actually had like
a plot and everything. Yeah, so you would watch these
(17:11):
things again and again. These guys became like your heroes.
And not only were you watching them do their tricks
and and you know, watching their videos, but like you
also wore their t shirts, like you got their deck
and it said a lot Like I had a Mike
McGill deck. I really was into Mike McGill. I had
a Lance Mountain deck. Was really into Lance Mountain, and
I like Tony Hawk and everything, but I never had
(17:31):
a Tony Hawk deck like that. You identify with the
skater based on your personality type of yeah, and your style. Yeah,
style had a lot to do with it for sure. Uh.
Then there was another law in the early nineties because
um of the recession is what everyone seems to blame
it on. And I don't know, I thought it was weird.
I don't remember that happening, But now that I think back,
(17:53):
late high school early college that there wasn't a lot
of like skate stuff going on in the world, and
I wasn't skating in the time, but I was still
just young enough to pick up on that fourth wave
in the early mid nineties. Well, thanks to the X games,
that's what really brought it back big time. Antony Hawk too, Yeah,
he kept it going. His video games definitely helped spread
(18:16):
that fourth waves too. Um, and I guess it's never
really gone away. He's bigger than ever skating. Yeah. Well,
another thing I think that helped is that eighties nostalgic craze. Yeah,
you know that how the eighties inform everything today. Part
of that was that the I guess re exploring that
(18:41):
third wave of um skateboarding. So like if you're go
into a band store, they're all like old Powell decks
are old like UM Vision Vision street wear decks. Yeah,
and slimeballs. Yeah. I have and I still have a
pair of Vans Old Schools the black and white checker No, no, no,
those were this, I can't remember the name of those.
(19:02):
The slip ons. Yeah, the Old Schools are the black.
They have the low top in the high top that
has the little sort of white wave on the side.
But um, yeah, I still wear those shoes. Ye. So uh,
I think we should talk about the skateboard itself. Um,
right after this message break, So CHUCKO, we're going to
talk about the skateboard itself. You promised. Yes. Um. There
(19:26):
are three main parts. You have the deck, you have
the trucks, and you have the wheels. And like we said,
the trucks connect the wheels to the deck and they
service the the axles on the front and the back
a little T shaped thing. Um. And I remember definitely
like taking a lot of time to get your trucks
the way you wanted. Some people like them really loose
(19:49):
and some people like them a little tighter. If they're looser,
you can turn more aggressively. Yeah, but you also get
wobble wheel and you get wheel. But um, yeah, I
like my little tighter too, Like you want to be
able to turn, but you also I like the stability
of a tighter truck. Um. You've also got your wheels,
which have a set of bearings. Yeah. And the wheels
(20:10):
haven't changed too much. They're still polyurethane. They've changed in
size a little bit, but it's the same basic concept
and again, it still depends on your preference. Like you
can buy a pre made skateboard that's all put together.
But as you know, any skate worth its salt buys,
the deck buys the trucks, buys the wheels that they want,
puts it all together. You might as well just go
(20:30):
to like a department store and by your skateboard, if
you're just gonna buy it all together. Yeah, with a
little outfit that comes with it. One out yeah. Um.
So the last part arguably the most important part, well
one of three most important parts, is it the deck? Yeah,
and the deck has evolved over time. We talked about
(20:51):
how the tail kicked up in the early seventies and yeah,
that allowed a lot of like tricks. Um. And the
if you look at a skateboard from the top or
the bottom were you're looking at the outline, that's called
the plan. And then if you look at how the
tail or the nose is kicked up and then the
(21:11):
concave to the interior of the skateboard which allows more
control and stability. Um, that's called the concave. So you
get the plan in the concave, and those are part
of the deck. They informed the shape and size of
the deck and um, then on top of that deck
you have the grip tape, which I thought that would
have been a recent innovation. Apparently grip tape was invented
(21:34):
all the way back in for scooters. They get it
back then, and a guy named Ferdinand's switz Offer invented it. Nice. Yeah,
and they changed the name from switz Offer tape to
grip tape. Um. Yeah. And in the eighties too that
the thing now is your whole board is covered with
(21:54):
grip tape. In the mid eighties, I remember, I just
had like there were graphics on tops said tape at
the front and the back, and it really didn't make
any sense, like you the whole thing should be grippy. Yeah,
but I mean, like again, the Powell graphics are pretty awesome.
Steve Cavalilero had that your dragon or like at least
you had the bones guy. Uh. The decks are not
(22:15):
a solid piece of wood. It's actually thin layers of
veneer and they are laminated and then you spread adhesive
and you just you know, like with a lot of furniture,
it is just many layers of thin wood compressed together
into a mold. And it's a hydraulic press that just
smashes it all together until you've got your really solid
(22:35):
piece of wood. Yeah, and it's definitely a lot stronger
than just the sum of its parts. Yeah, for sure
from being molded plywood. Um. And then you cut that
plan out, uh. And then after that you spray it
with some sealing because you don't want to accidentally alli
into a puddle or a fountain or something like that
and have your boardwarp or purposefully allie into a fountain.
(22:59):
And then the graphics are put on, and then the
grip tape. I get a sense that graphics aren't like
super cool anymore? Am I wrong? That it's sort of
like I think it's a matter of preference. It definitely
isn't like in the mid eighties it was like they
were so obnoxious. Oh yeah, remember the Gator one. It
was like, um, kind of like, uh, I guess a
(23:20):
vertigo thing, but it was made out of different spikes.
You would recognize it immediately. Yeah. I definitely had the
stickers on my car and like it was a thing.
We had a shop in a Stone mountain called surfs
up in Stone Mountains, their Stone Mountain that was obviously
open for like, you know, four and a half years,
and they had like skate gear in surper gear and
(23:43):
for all of us, like you know, in in inland
living people. Yeah, it was like you used to have
to initially at the early wave in the early eighties,
like you had to go to like a ski shop.
Skiing was already established, and then like they'd open up
a little section for skateboards and then eventually got a
little bigger and then all of a sudden there were
actual skate shops. All right. So that is the actual
(24:07):
uh skateboard in all its three parts. Um, and I
guess we need to talk about how to ride this thing, um, yeah,
because the fourth part is you. That's right. Although it
looks cool just hanging on your wall. If you want
to impress the ladies, sure, like check out my skateboard. Yeah,
that was all into that. Um. But it is like surfing,
(24:29):
And the reason they compare it to surfing is that
it's sort of it's like a smaller version. You have
the side stands, just like on the surfboard. And if
you heard our surfing podcast, you heard us talk about
regular foot and Goofy foot is their mongo foot on
surfing tea. No, because you're not pushing off of it. Um,
regular foot is your left foot forward, and uh, you're
(24:51):
using your right foot to push goofy foot is the
opposite of that, your right foot forwards. You're pushing with
your left just does not feel right. No, And I
was a mango foot and I never knew it until
I looked this up. Um, that is when your left
foot is forward. I'm sorry, your your right foot is
on the board, but you're using your left foot to push,
and your foot is at the rear not the front. Yeah,
(25:14):
and I just that just feels supernatural to me. But um,
not supernatural, but very natural. But um, apparently mango foot
is is I think you're sort of frowned upon as
a person, but by real skaters if your mom like
lay off, I've watched you. You can't even kick flip,
(25:35):
so you pay attention to how you stand. That's what
you say to people if they give you guff about
being mango foot. Well, the problem with mango foot is
you have to shift your feet a little bit once
both are back on the board. And uh, I guess
you can't like bust a move immediately with a trick, uh,
which matters if you're like competing for half a million dollars,
but not if you're like on your way down to
(25:57):
the seven eleven. Yeah, if you've never skated before and
you want to try it, um, I would advise to
not start with mango foot at all if you don't
know any better, because you know you won't be made
fun of. You know, maybe is that what kept you back?
Maybe you'd be like, right now, that's what it was.
But I've never seen this before. It makes sense if
(26:18):
they if you don't know which foot you're prominent with,
although I would say if you're right footage, you're probably
gonna be a regular foot, and if you're goofy foot footed,
you might be goofy foot. I think it has to
do with handedness. So like, if you're right handed, your
left foot is gonna be ford, You're gonna push with
your right foot. If you're left handed, you're gonna be
goofy foot. Where your right foots forward you push with
(26:38):
your left foot. I think you push with your foot
in the rear of the dominant hand side or foot
side right, Yeah, but I think your dominant hand is
typically your dominant foot as well. Yeah, it seems right.
And then if if, if you if somebody came up
and pushed you, Yeah, that's the test. The foot you
put back to steady yourself, that the one you want
(27:00):
to use to push with before you crow hop and
punch him in the head. Right, what what the h man? Yeah,
so I've never heard that. That's a little trick you
can do. And I guess you're not. Maybe surprise somebody,
because if you think about it too much, like all right,
push me, you try to put both feet back at
once and you end up just hopping. Uh. So there
are a few different quite a few different things you
(27:22):
can do. Back in the day, it was all about
like the downhill slalom, which is boring, I mean, super
speed is not boring. Scary, she said. I I suffered
a pretty decent head injury once. Really. Yeah, I got
the wobble wheel going downhill and I was like, I
got a bail out, and right before I went to
(27:43):
go jump on the grass, the board went and I
went forward and landed on my head and skidded on
my head entirely. Tell it at all right, No, yes,
it's like right, and uh yeah it was it was something. Yeah,
I remember I have not been the same since. Its
neighborhoods have one hill you know that you don't dare
(28:03):
go down. And my best friend his name was Chuck
actually at the time, and then in high school, he
had a hill like that and I remember standing at
the top of it and thinking there's no way I
should be doing this, and getting on the skateboard and
trying to go down, and like you said, bailing out
into the grass was always Uh, if you're in the neighborhood,
(28:25):
a nice way to go about things. Is that what
you did? Uh? I think I went all the way
down actually, but yeah, it's a little scary, you know,
no way I do that now. I remember a car
was driving past and stopped and went, oh my god,
are you okay? I was like, wow, is that bad? Huh?
And they finished their beer and drove on. So you
(28:48):
also have freestyle, which is um doing tricks and things
on a flat surface. Um, And we're gonna get into
the tricks a little bit in a minute, which if
you are like, what's free style, it sounds stupid. Look
up Rodney Mullen or pare Wellinder on YouTube. Check out
some of their especially their eighties stuff. The early mid eighties,
(29:10):
they were doing some pretty cool stuff. And some of
it is like that stuff that you were saying the
California dudes doing like handstands on making skateboard or just
the three sixties, like standing in one place with a
nose in the air. But then they would take their
hands and like flip their board three sixty degrees eight
times and land on it. They're pretty good, pretty great stuff,
(29:31):
and its for sure, it's definitely like choreography and a skateboard. Well,
I have the feeling you're about to say vert skating.
I wasn't, but I will. Are you ready? They didn't
give rise to vert skating SKA well, vert skating, Yeah,
it kind of that came out of those Dogtown guys
(29:54):
in the swing pools. Yeah, because a pool is considered
vert skating. Vert is short for vertical, right, because you're
skating on vertical services like a pool or a bowl
or a half pipe or a quarter pipe or whatever.
Or if you're like me, to milk crates in a
piece of plywood, did you do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Josh pipe it was not that stable. Uh, it's a
(30:16):
vertical is when people started leaving and catching air leaving
the side of whatever surface they were on, which was
really exciting at the time. Yeah, I can't imagine having
been there, and it's only gone open up since then,
you know. Uh. And then you got street skating, which,
um is if you've seen h ladies and dudes on
(30:37):
the street like jumping up the air onto a park
bench and grinding that park bench or a railing, or
smashing themselves trying to grind a railing, that is uh
street skating. Or if you've ever played the Tony Hawk
video game. Did you ever play that? Yeah, the first one. Yeah,
if you play that enough, people who played that enough?
Now I'm talking about you start walking around in life
(31:00):
and everything you see. Oh man, I could grind that
so hard if I could really skate. Yeah, not in
real life, um, but yeah, so so street skating kind of.
I guess you could say it combines freestyle with obstacles,
using obstacles in the um built environment. That's street skating. Yeah,
and that's the stuff that usually you'll see like frowned
(31:22):
upon by businesses and people thinking like these hooliguns are
out there right, which skateboarding is not a crime man, Nope,
Although if you use the skate go to jail. But
to combat all that crime stuff, a lot of cities
built skate parks in the seventies. And what they didn't
realize is that, um, when those kids fell and cracked
(31:45):
their heads, their parents were gonna sue. And so all
of a sudden, the insurance premiums four skate parks went
through the roof and all the cities shut them down
and they went away for a very long time. And
then I guess there was some changes in liability laws
that allowed skate parks to come back. And so now
skate parks are back, but they're very frequently put up
by cities. They're like, we'll build a skate park, and
(32:07):
they don't ask the skaters how to build a skate park.
So they build like a terrible skatepark and the skaters
don't use it, and the cities are like, use skate
punk kids use the skatepark, and they're like, your skate
park sucks, and they're like, no, it doesn't, and yes
it does in the skateaway um, or they do it
well and it's too crowded. Well, if there's one thing
(32:29):
I know is that for every skate park in any
city there will be a group of skaters saying this
place sucks. I remember when we shot at a skate park.
Remember these local kids and it was a new skate park.
One of them, that one kid was pretty good. Yeah
he's all right, but U I s him. I was
like this this is great, right, this is new and
it's indicator and like the sucks. Yeah. Well then that
(32:50):
one kid lied. He said he lived from like a
seedier part of Atlanta. Hit us up for bus fair
and somebody. Yeah, one of the crew saw him, like
go into his house a block away and it's a
very nice neighborhood Decatur and hide his skateboard in his backyard. Um,
if you and they can be different, they can be
(33:10):
like uh smaller half pipes and ramps and rails and
things and obstacles. To my recommendation if you ever visit
l A is to go to Venice Beach to their
newish skate park there, and it is like the Cument Bowl.
It's like a huge series of connected swimming pools. And
this is where you'll see some like you'll see the
(33:31):
old school guys that aren't leaving the bowl that are
just like carving it up. Is like sweet as pudding.
And uh, then you've got guys that really know what
they're doing, like catching air and doing you know, three sixties.
And and there's a bulldog that rides a skateboard there too,
I've heard of that. You should see him. It's quite amazing.
(33:52):
I'm for sure it is like you can't catch air
or whatever, but just the fact that a dog is
using a skateboard is pretty awesome. So should we talk
about some tricks. Let's well, almost every trick on earth
is based on the Ali the trick named after Alan
Alie gelfand he invented it in the early nineteen seventies,
(34:14):
mid nineteen seventies, and that is basically when you jump
up in the air. And if you've seen skateboarders do it,
you might wonder, how on earth do they jump up
in the air and have that skateboard seemingly attached to
their feet. I never was very good at it, I
really no, I could all be pretty good. I was
more of a sidewalk surfer than like a trick aerial guy.
(34:38):
You know. Well, I wasn't a trick aerial guy either,
but I could Allie, you know, well, explain the Alie
oh well, okay. So the ALIE is let's say you're
on your board and you're on a flat surface. You
kick your the tail of the skateboard down really hard
against the ground and uh, what this does is this
um exerted force allows you to overcome the force of gravity.
(34:58):
And since you're jumped ing at the same time you
jump into the air, um, you're taking off your own
downward pressure on the board. So the front of the board,
the nose, goes up high in the air and the
fact that you've slapped the tail against the ground means
the tail comes up into the air until it's even
with the nose and the boards flat in the air,
(35:19):
and it looks like it's attached to your feet if
you do it right, and all of a sudden you
and the board are four feet into the air and
then you come back down and you landed. That's an ALI.
It's funny you mentioned four feet The world record Danny
Wainwright of h I think he's from England, Uh, recorded
at forty four and a half inch ALI. Well, it's
pretty amazing, yeah, but was that like standing still? No,
(35:42):
you know, it's like, you know, they just set up
something to jump over. You keep adding layers until you
know you can't jump any higher, and then you've got like,
you know, ten feet to get going, and then just
pop up and it looks like it's attached to his feet.
And the allie is so integral this so many other um,
so many other tricks that it's it's almost not a
(36:04):
trick any longer in and of itself. It's like the
basic mechanic of whatever other trick that follows. But like
you pretty much can't do anything without ali ing. And
that's how those those guys originally caught air convert skating
was to ali off of the coping the top and
then you would catch some serious air because you already
had that extra momentum behind you as well. All Right,
(36:27):
So we'll talk about a few of the terms here
in a minute that if you watch the X Games
and you're not familiar and you hear these words, we're
going to clear it up for you right after this message. Okay,
(36:50):
we're back, Chuck. We're gonna talk about the names of tricks,
different types of tricks. All right. So, if you've ever
watched the X Games and you hear the uh sort
of annoying announcers admittedly talk using all these words you've
never heard. We're gonna explain what some of these words
mean just to help you follow along a little bit.
That's right. Um, you might hear speak out front side
(37:13):
there or whatever. Front side is when you're facing the
obstacle and performing a trick as opposed to backside, when
you're back is to the obstacle. Yeah, Like you're basically
going backwards on the skateboard. That's right. Yeah. Um. One
eight is pretty basic trick. But it's um, well, it's
where you ali and you and the board turn eight
(37:35):
degrees to face in the opposite direction. Yeah, Like you
go up the ramp and then you turn the mid
air and you come right back down. You can also
do it on a flat surface, or you could one
eighty onto like a park bench or something and trained
it whatever. Um, but the one eighty also kind of
forms a basis for a lot of other tricks, especially
vert tricks like three sixties and five forties all the
way up to ten eighties, and you can grab the
(37:56):
side of your board and just do all sorts of
cool stuff. Tony Hawk famously completed the first nine hundred
degree turn and for many years they thought that was
it until a twelve year old named Tom Shar in
two thousand twelve pulled off the first ten eighty and uh,
they filmed that it wasn't in competition. The first one
(38:18):
in competition was a guy named Mitch Brusco. He did
at the X Games. And that is three full rotations
in the air. Uh. And obviously you have to land
successfully for it to count and to live and live.
And uh, it's amazing, man, three full rotations in the air.
These dudes are getting up super super high. Now. Uh,
have you ever heard the word fakey? I have? Fakey
(38:41):
is um basically where you remain in your regular stance,
but you're going backwards, so you're doing like, um, you're
going into a backside trick. That's right. Uh. Pop shove
it is when you do an ali with the one eight,
but your body isn't moving. You're just uh popping up
in the air and flipping the skateboard around underneath you
(39:03):
and then landing on it. And then we talked about grinding. Um,
there's a couple of ways you can grind. A true
grind is when you're on the actual axles, so you've
got to be going forward, or you can go sideways
and grind on your board and it's called a board
slide or a rail slide. And then the kick flip,
of course, is the one that you see people busting
(39:23):
butt on which I've pulled off once. That's right, the
famous Josh kick flip. And then, of course, Chuck, there's
the manual, which is another way to say a wheelie.
I was good at those front side manual backside manual
I could do, like I was not good. I think
that's becoming clear. Like I thought it was cool if
(39:44):
I could do a little wheelie and do a little
one a D turn on the ground. Yeah, no, I'm
with you, man, I understand I wasn't very good either,
But Chuck, I had years of enjoyment. Twice third Wave
and fourth Wave loved skateboarding, love it like I just
love skateboarding. I think everybody should go out on skateboard
(40:05):
all the time. She's never gonna be one of those
old men that's like, quit grinding my rail. Well, yeah,
I mean if I had a nice rail out trying,
I'd be like, hit the hell off of my rail,
but I I would Still, it's not like a hate
skateboarding in general, but you would chip in and help
build a half pipe in your neighborhood, maybe away from
my really nice rail. Right, that's a good idea if
(40:28):
you do want to try skateboarding. Obviously these days, with
the safety consciousness of people, you should get a helmet
and some kneepads and elbow pads and if you're smart,
maybe some risk guards, although that might not be cool.
Well no, actually, like there's a that's another reason skate
parks off and go and use is because there's local
ordinances that say you have to wear a helmet and pads,
(40:50):
and of course skaters are like that sucks. Yeah, but
the risk guards. That's a common injury because you'll you'll
often go to brace yourself with your arms when you fall,
and they say to try and follow in your fleshy
parts of your body, but you're really kind of at
the whim of where gravity takes you. At think at
that point, well, you know, that was another reason I
think I wasn't ever that good, just because back when
(41:11):
I was a kid, they were all fleshy parts. It's
hard to get air. We should have been safe. It was, uh,
you got anything else? No, man, that's it. Uh, skateboarding.
If you want to know more about it, you should
type skateboarding into the word search bar at how stuff
works dot com. That's the first thing you should do.
(41:33):
You should follow that up by watching skate videos and
going to buy a skateboard and go skating. Yeah, you know,
I want to get along board now? Oh yeah, yeah,
that's the old man style. Yeah, just cruising. Get on
a flat surface and use it a carving the concrete
way a mode of transportation. Yeah. Are you gonna learn
to do handstands on it? Uh? Let's see. Since I
(41:54):
said handstands and then laugh, that means it's time for
listener mail. I'm gonna call this Josh, what are you hiding?
And I'm glad to get this email because I knew
I wasn't crazy. So let's just get into this, you know.
Can I say I don't even remember this most recent reference?
All right, well, let's just explain here what's going on.
(42:16):
This is from Ben Ben says, Hey, guys, I've been
living like a trog globitic trug bloodt for the past
six years because I just discovered your amazing podcast a
few weeks ago. As penance I've been listening to UH
several per day and have since gone to over one hundred.
So he's binging, he said, just noticed something in UH.
(42:38):
During the can Cats Scuba dive episode not one of
our best on August twelve, two eight, Josh goes into
detail about he was a certified scuba diver and at
the one time he was in open water, he not
only got sea sick, but also got a slight case
of the bens due to surfacing too quickly. Then UH.
In two thousand thirteen and the Diving Bell episode, Chuck says,
(43:00):
I thought I remembered many months ago you mentioned something
about getting the bends, and Josh quickly and confidently retorted,
I've never had the bends. So I know this is
almost five years later, but it begs the question, what
are you trying to hide? Josh? You have answered some
of the greatest, long lasting questions in history, but this
is one of the few times where you simply added
(43:21):
another mystery into the pile of the enigma and conspiracy
that is our world. So UH, have you ever had
the BENSU? So uh in I was skating down the
hill and I fell in in my head. Uh. Yeah,
I would call it a mild case of the bens. Okay,
so you just don't remember denying you had the bends? Okay,
(43:44):
all right, well there's your answer. Yeah, well I not
only do I not remember denying having the bends. When
I denied having the bends, I had forgotten that I'd
had the bends before. And again, this is a very
mild case. But it wasn't just seasickness. It was directly
related to having just bent half an hour under water,
you know. Alright, So I would call that the case
(44:05):
of the ben. I think that clears it up. Then
that is from Ben Helms from Mount Shasta, California. I'm
sure Ben will be unsatisfied with your explanation of Ben.
I just forgot. That's pretty much it. Yeah, let's see.
If you want to get in touch with Chuck and I,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
(44:25):
You should know. You can see us on our YouTube channel.
Just look up Josh and Chuck on YouTube. Tons of
fun there, uh and send us an email stuff Podcast
to Discovery dot com and really and join us at
our home on the web. Stuff You should Know dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(44:49):
Is it how stuff Works? Dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant's with me, so
stuff you should know. And Jerry of course is here,
who just celebrated a birthday. Yeah, happy birthday, Jerry in
(00:22):
Valentine's Day. Run our Indian sweat lodge that we call
a recording booth. Yeah, man, that's hot. Yeah. Part of
it's this thing. You want to turn this off, just
this It really does put out a tremendous amount of heat. Yeah,
Josh's we have a lamp on our table that we
used to see. Well we can't see any longer. Oh
well blin'd blind. Yeah, that did make it like three
(00:44):
cooler immediately. Yeah, it's that lamp. It's the lamp. And
then like you know, just people generating heating here. Yeah,
podcasters were a ball me bunch, the blusters, a herd
of oxen in the corner. And it doesn't help. It's
been the best intro ever I think. Do you think that?
I think so you're not being facetious. No, you know
(01:06):
the word facetious. What do you got for me? Well,
when I was younger, I knew the word facetious. It
was a word that my dad used a lot, so
I used it in like regular conversation correct yeah, okay,
but I've never seen it written out, or so I thought.
And then finally one day I ran across in a
book again this word I kept coming up on, and
(01:27):
I was like, what is that word fastidious? Facidious, facious?
And I was like, that's facetious. I don't know that
I've seen it spelled either. Yeah, it looks like factious,
you know, it looks like facet like a facet of
a jewel or something. And then E s I O
U S. Yeah, there's no I would have so bombed
(01:48):
the spelling of that, right. But the thing is, it's
like I was using it correctly in conversation, and I
had seen it in books. I just never put the
two together until finally one day it clicked and you
had to get your tattoo changed. Facetious across the back
of your neck in the heart, all right. So um skateboarding. Yeah,
(02:09):
about the same time that I realized the word facetious
when it was correctly spelled, as I was skateboarding at
the time. So that's how it ties in that was
a little skateboarder for a long time. Yeah, I was too.
I Um, I did not. I'm not old enough to
where I saw all the different waves of skateboarding. Of
the four, but the first two I saw, I didn't
(02:32):
see the first one. That's pretty funny. That would mean
I'm dead now. There's plenty of old boarders out there, sure, yeah,
but I was of the age where I definitely had
the um small sort of plastic board with the single
little tail on the back only and clay wheels. No, no, yeah,
(02:56):
clay wheels. It seems to me like that the skateboards
from from biblical times. Clay wheels. That's what I think
of when I see clay wheels. What do they even
look like? Uh? Just brown? Were they super dangerous? Well? Yeah,
And if you've seen the great documentary um Dogtown and
z Boys they go over. It's a really good doc
(03:19):
by the way, like amazing footage that they have and
good music and highly recommended over the movie version. The
Lords of Dogtown was Val Kilmer in that, No, Heath
Ledger was. He played the the mentor. I can't remember
his name. Skip the Zephyr Crew, yes, skip skip Skip
went on to found Santa Monic Airline Skateboards. Yeah, yeah,
(03:43):
he was. He stayed on. It's like a big influence
in skateboarding's good. So anyway, I just wanted to point
out that I have branched a few different Like I
started with a little clay one, and then in high
school is when I got the big, huge fat skateboard
when they were super obnoxious. Yeah, let's see, that's when
I came into skating. Four had like a nice Lance Mountain. Um,
(04:05):
it was my first board. My first board, remember the
Nash tough tops there was it was blank on the bottom,
there were no graphics, but on the top cut out
in the grip tape was like a star that looked
kind of like a saw blade circular saw blade. And
then the big difference was the different colors of the
board underneath blue or pink or yellow or what it
(04:27):
was like neon green. Yeah, you're a big fat one.
Yeah and looking back like kind of corny. And I
think after that is when like true skater started being like,
you know, we don't really care that much about like
awesome graphics, Like we just want a good board, good board.
You wanted some rib bones, on the side. You remember
those underneath. Yeah, yeah, but I don't think people like
(04:48):
those now either. Oh no, not anymore skaters. No, that
that the whole point of those. I think it was,
you know, to let you rail slide or whatever easier.
But I think it was also to protect those graphics too.
They told he was because I had a little big
plastic bumper under the tailpiece too, which is counterintuitive to
the tricks. Yeah, but I mean, like, who cares about
(05:09):
protecting the tail It's weird. Yeah. I was also a
nosebone too. That was not never very good. Oh I
wasn't either. I don't mean to give that. I mean
I spent a lot of our skating and I never
got very good. I think I pulled off one kick
flip once, really once. That's good. I thought it was
pretty good too. That is the trick that you most
(05:29):
often see kids not landing driving down the street. If
you ever see a kid like I, rarely see a
successful kickflip just on the sidewalk. Oh yeah. If you
see somebody who pulls off a kick flip, the chances
are there somebody filming them because they know that they're
going to be able to pull off the kickflip in
l A. Actually I would see more, you know, obviously
(05:49):
better skaters out there in New York. Yeah, all right, skateboarding.
Should we get going with a little history. Yeah, let's
talk about the history of this. This this is so
close to my heart. Man, I fell down the rabbit
hole to day watching like old skate videos and like
checking out old Powell Peralta boards. That was my dam
was Powell. Well, we mentioned that there have been four
(06:12):
distinct waves of skateboarding starting in UH ninety nine, and
each new wave like it's it's just waned in popularity
here and there and then come back strong or in
stronger due to either UH advances mainly in like skateboard
technology right and trickery, yes, and um parental acceptance. Because
(06:37):
it never really goes away. Skateboarding is either ever since
its inception, it's either been mainstream or else forced underground
and like practiced by juvenile delinquents who kind of kept
it going and advanced it quietly until it came back
into the mainstream and parents were like, Okay, you guys
can skate again. But the true origin of the skateboard,
(06:57):
the first one that came out, the first commercial produced
when it was in nineteen fifty nine. It's called the
roller derbry skate. Yeah. And before that, you know, if
you've seen the movie Back to the Future when Martin
might Fly rips the little milk crate off the front
of the homemade wooden scooter, that was where skateboards really
came from. You just you know, it was a sort
of a homemade deal with like a peach crate as
(07:19):
the front of your scooter, a couple of handles. Yes,
steal wheels from roller skates, yeah, and that was super dangerous, right,
But like you say, if you take the peach crate
off and take the handles off, you have that two
by four with the roller skate wheels. And they don't
know exactly who did it. They think actually several people
probably did it simultaneously Marty right in the forties. They
think surfers in California did it. There are kids in
(07:41):
France that were seen doing it in the forties, so
it kind of spread. It happened, it arose independently around
the world at about the same time. That's called the zeitgeist.
That is my friend. So now we're in the nineties,
early nineteen sixties and it was I mean it really
took off like a rocket in the first few years
of the nineteen sixties. Like fifty million skateboards were sold
(08:03):
in those first three years and it was everywhere. Yeah,
it was like the hot new craze. Well it was
like also like hula hoops and things like that, Like
it was America was in a crazy mood, a craze mood,
like whatever the big thing was, Yeah, and skateboard fell
into that big time. The problem is, uh, they were
pretty dangerous. There wasn't a lot you could do with
(08:27):
them now they because again there's steel wheels there. It's
basically two by four on steel wheels, ride down the
street and you could fall off of it exactly. That
was so and I think because of the safety concerns
overnight skateboarding just went away in like nineteen sixty five.
It was over, but it's still kind of stayed somewhat
(08:50):
popular as a thing to do among surfers. When the
waves weren't breaking, Um, they would just kind of sidewalk
surface what they called it, And they never really saw
it as anything bigger than a supplement to surfing. It
was just kind of like it wasn't its own thing
until uh the sixties, the late sixties or the early seventies,
(09:15):
when clay wheels came about. You could do a little
more stuff. I think, Well, clay was better than the
steel wheels, but still bad. And that's hit a rock
in the road your toast, and like that's when people
started dying from skateboards, which kind of led to its
decline again. Sure, and then some surfers, the Zephyr Crew
(09:36):
are the ones who like broke skateboarding out once and
for all. Well, yeah, thanks to uh Frank Nasworthy's invention
of the Eurothane wheel in nineteen seventy two. Uh he
founded Cadillac Wheels, and all of a sudden, it was
like a smooth, like steady, silent experience on a skateboard
for the first time. And then you changed everything it
(09:57):
did because it could grip. Um, it wasn't just that
it was it rumbly any longer like that. You're a
thing could grip like concrete or pavement. Yeah, instead of
just stopping and um, yeah, all of a sudden, there
were way more surfaces that could be skated. And that
plus the invention of the truck, yeah, which is basically
(10:20):
an axle for your wheels that not only allows the
wheels to revolve more smoothly, especially when you add a
set of bearings, but it also allows you to maneuver
to the left or the right, which is a big deal.
Kind of opens things up there, twisty. And then the
kicktail also changed everything. All these kind of came together
(10:41):
at about the same time. Yeah, and you mentioned the
Zephyr Crew in ve that held the first um uh
basically competition in Delmark, California, and that's when and if
you've seen the documentary, it's pretty great. I mean they
had sort of the holdovers from the sixties doing like
handstands and all these sort of square, antiquated moves, and
(11:02):
then these little punks came in there and just like
toward the place up and like the judges didn't know
how to judge them at the time because they've never
seen anything like it. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It was
a pool. They were skating in pools right well at least, Yeah,
the pool thing came a little later because they um
there was a big drought in the mid seventies in
southern California and water was actually in short supply. So
(11:25):
people would drain their pools or not refill them or
whatever for the new summer. And so they started busting
in the backyards and skating in pools. Yeah, and they
would bring their own pumps and hoses to drain like
all the muck out entirely and then just like skate
that pool. And there was um at one of those pools,
a kid named Tony Alva who was in that Zephyr crew.
(11:46):
It was Tony Alva, j Adams, and Stacy Perelta, yeah,
among others. Right, but those are like the big three.
Tony I was your guy, right, Stacy Perelta, Oh, I
thought you were like a huge Tony Alba dude. Okay, No,
I respect for Tony album, but no, I was always
pal par Alta. Um. But Tony Alva at one of
(12:06):
those pools kept going and going and pushing himself harder
and harder, and then one day he cleared the coping
of the pool and like caught air, yeah with his
hand at first, Oh, he did like a hand plant. Yeah,
that was how that originally came about. But he did
leave contact with the pool, and no one had ever
done that, and everyone's like, and that was like the
(12:29):
creation of vertue style skateboarding. UM and Alva went on
at like age nineteen and found his own skateboarding company.
He was the first one to use some Canadian maple Veneers,
which we'll talk about UM. And it was like really innovative,
especially for a nineteen year old skate punk from southern California. Yeah,
(12:49):
they all were. Yeah, it's pretty amazing, like this collection
of kids were. And it most of them ended up
being like very savvy, like wealthy businessmen like yeah. And
and right after the del Mar competition, the Zephyr crew
kind of scattered to the wind and went in and
found purchase and and expanded skateboarding as a sport and
(13:10):
as a theme. And one of the things that they
brought with them from having been part of a crew
is to form their own crews um of people that
they sponsored, which made those people pros. And those pros
would go on tour. And when those pros went on tour,
they were skating say palm Pearl to skateboards and showing
local kids what could be done with the skateboard. And
(13:32):
those kids would go buy pal Pearl to skateboards and
go out and skate. And it that whole idea of
doing demos on tour with pros who are sponsored by
skateboarding companies really helped expand skateboarding in the eighties and
and created that third wave where skateboarding just became it. Yeah,
I mean it was big in California and Florida. Like
(13:55):
my cousins were way into it in Florida early on.
But it really took off when kids like me and
Georgia and you and Ohio we're skiing, you know, skiing
skating up my like steep driveway and trying to do
a little one eight turns going back down like it
was a wave, and I was, you know, it was
one of those silly little kids, like was so caught
(14:15):
up in it at first. Well, I had a kid
who lived across the tracks from me who had a
half pipe, like a good half pipe that his dad
built him UM, and that was part of that rise
in nineteen three. I think that third wave where UM
because I should say we didn't really mention UM in
the late seventies, after Alva Skateboards was founded and and
(14:38):
pau Perelta was founded and all that, UM, skateboarding took
a hit mainstream wise, and it became associated with punks
and like just like like just punk kids, bad kid
yeah yeah, the bad kids and who literally gave skateboarding
a bad name. Um. And so it was kind of
driven underground again. And then in the early eighties that
(14:59):
experienced their rise and its image kind of changed a
little bit thanks to the pal Peralta team, the Bones Brigade,
who were actually like they were all young kids and
they were skateboarders and all they cared about was skating.
But they were also like kind of clean cut as
far as um as far as skateboarders went, and like
they didn't do drugs, at least they didn't publicly do drugs.
(15:22):
Stay was a good kid, yeah um. And so the
kids that he sponsored, like Tony Hawk, Mike McGill, Steve Caballero,
Christian Hassoi, all those kids were good kids too, and
they had a tremendous amount of influence on the the
skaters who were into them, and so it kind of
changed skating's image a little bit too. It went from
like being something that like punk kids were into to
(15:45):
something all kids were into. Yeah it um. It did
go into another four year lull towards the end of
the seventies before it started coming back in the mid
eighties and BMX had a lot to do with it.
That became more popular and um, you know some skateboarder
magazine shut down or change names to a different you
know title, and it just like you said, it never
(16:08):
went away to the adherents of like like the true
underground skateboarders, right, it's always there's always somebody who's been
skating at some point ever since the ninety nine. But
in the mid eighties is when it definitely came back
to the big time mainstream. Yeah. And I can't tell
if it's just nostalgia on my part or else if
that was when it like really exploded, but like that
(16:30):
was when that was my wheelhouse. Remember the videos man,
Bones Brigade videos. Yeah, and that was another thing too.
One of the reasons why UM skateboarding was able to
spread as a sport or recreation or whatever UM was
in part the access to cheap VHS players because the
Bones Brigade made videos and people bought them, Like you
(16:50):
could go to your local skate shop and buy like
a Bones Brigade VHS tape for like twenty five or
thirty bucks. You kind of had to if you wanted
to learn the cool tricks. Right, It's like the only
place you could see him at the time. Yeah, and
then they were produced in a way like you'd want
to watch him again and again, like they think the
fourth one, the Search for Animal Chin, actually had like
a plot and everything. Yeah, so you would watch these
(17:11):
things again and again. These guys became like your heroes.
And not only were you watching them do their tricks
and and you know, watching their videos, but like you
also wore their t shirts, like you got their deck
and it said a lot Like I had a Mike
McGill deck. I really was into Mike McGill. I had
a Lance Mountain deck. Was really into Lance Mountain, and
I like Tony Hawk and everything, but I never had
(17:31):
a Tony Hawk deck like that. You identify with the
skater based on your personality type of yeah, and your style. Yeah,
style had a lot to do with it for sure. Uh.
Then there was another law in the early nineties because
um of the recession is what everyone seems to blame
it on. And I don't know, I thought it was weird.
I don't remember that happening, But now that I think back,
(17:53):
late high school early college that there wasn't a lot
of like skate stuff going on in the world, and
I wasn't skating in the time, but I was still
just young enough to pick up on that fourth wave
in the early mid nineties. Well, thanks to the X games,
that's what really brought it back big time. Antony Hawk too, Yeah,
he kept it going. His video games definitely helped spread
(18:16):
that fourth waves too. Um, and I guess it's never
really gone away. He's bigger than ever skating. Yeah. Well,
another thing I think that helped is that eighties nostalgic craze. Yeah,
you know that how the eighties inform everything today. Part
of that was that the I guess re exploring that
(18:41):
third wave of um skateboarding. So like if you're go
into a band store, they're all like old Powell decks
are old like UM Vision Vision street wear decks. Yeah,
and slimeballs. Yeah. I have and I still have a
pair of Vans Old Schools the black and white checker No, no, no,
those were this, I can't remember the name of those.
(19:02):
The slip ons. Yeah, the Old Schools are the black.
They have the low top in the high top that
has the little sort of white wave on the side.
But um, yeah, I still wear those shoes. Ye. So uh,
I think we should talk about the skateboard itself. Um,
right after this message break, So CHUCKO, we're going to
talk about the skateboard itself. You promised. Yes. Um. There
(19:26):
are three main parts. You have the deck, you have
the trucks, and you have the wheels. And like we said,
the trucks connect the wheels to the deck and they
service the the axles on the front and the back
a little T shaped thing. Um. And I remember definitely
like taking a lot of time to get your trucks
the way you wanted. Some people like them really loose
(19:49):
and some people like them a little tighter. If they're looser,
you can turn more aggressively. Yeah, but you also get
wobble wheel and you get wheel. But um, yeah, I
like my little tighter too, Like you want to be
able to turn, but you also I like the stability
of a tighter truck. Um. You've also got your wheels,
which have a set of bearings. Yeah. And the wheels
(20:10):
haven't changed too much. They're still polyurethane. They've changed in
size a little bit, but it's the same basic concept
and again, it still depends on your preference. Like you
can buy a pre made skateboard that's all put together.
But as you know, any skate worth its salt buys,
the deck buys the trucks, buys the wheels that they want,
puts it all together. You might as well just go
(20:30):
to like a department store and by your skateboard, if
you're just gonna buy it all together. Yeah, with a
little outfit that comes with it. One out yeah. Um.
So the last part arguably the most important part, well
one of three most important parts, is it the deck? Yeah,
and the deck has evolved over time. We talked about
(20:51):
how the tail kicked up in the early seventies and yeah,
that allowed a lot of like tricks. Um. And the
if you look at a skateboard from the top or
the bottom were you're looking at the outline, that's called
the plan. And then if you look at how the
tail or the nose is kicked up and then the
(21:11):
concave to the interior of the skateboard which allows more
control and stability. Um, that's called the concave. So you
get the plan in the concave, and those are part
of the deck. They informed the shape and size of
the deck and um, then on top of that deck
you have the grip tape, which I thought that would
have been a recent innovation. Apparently grip tape was invented
(21:34):
all the way back in for scooters. They get it
back then, and a guy named Ferdinand's switz Offer invented it. Nice. Yeah,
and they changed the name from switz Offer tape to
grip tape. Um. Yeah. And in the eighties too that
the thing now is your whole board is covered with
(21:54):
grip tape. In the mid eighties, I remember, I just
had like there were graphics on tops said tape at
the front and the back, and it really didn't make
any sense, like you the whole thing should be grippy. Yeah,
but I mean, like again, the Powell graphics are pretty awesome.
Steve Cavalilero had that your dragon or like at least
you had the bones guy. Uh. The decks are not
(22:15):
a solid piece of wood. It's actually thin layers of
veneer and they are laminated and then you spread adhesive
and you just you know, like with a lot of furniture,
it is just many layers of thin wood compressed together
into a mold. And it's a hydraulic press that just
smashes it all together until you've got your really solid
(22:35):
piece of wood. Yeah, and it's definitely a lot stronger
than just the sum of its parts. Yeah, for sure
from being molded plywood. Um. And then you cut that
plan out, uh. And then after that you spray it
with some sealing because you don't want to accidentally alli
into a puddle or a fountain or something like that
and have your boardwarp or purposefully allie into a fountain.
(22:59):
And then the graphics are put on, and then the
grip tape. I get a sense that graphics aren't like
super cool anymore? Am I wrong? That it's sort of
like I think it's a matter of preference. It definitely
isn't like in the mid eighties it was like they
were so obnoxious. Oh yeah, remember the Gator one. It
was like, um, kind of like, uh, I guess a
(23:20):
vertigo thing, but it was made out of different spikes.
You would recognize it immediately. Yeah. I definitely had the
stickers on my car and like it was a thing.
We had a shop in a Stone mountain called surfs
up in Stone Mountains, their Stone Mountain that was obviously
open for like, you know, four and a half years,
and they had like skate gear in surper gear and
(23:43):
for all of us, like you know, in in inland
living people. Yeah, it was like you used to have
to initially at the early wave in the early eighties,
like you had to go to like a ski shop.
Skiing was already established, and then like they'd open up
a little section for skateboards and then eventually got a
little bigger and then all of a sudden there were
actual skate shops. All right. So that is the actual
(24:07):
uh skateboard in all its three parts. Um, and I
guess we need to talk about how to ride this thing, um, yeah,
because the fourth part is you. That's right. Although it
looks cool just hanging on your wall. If you want
to impress the ladies, sure, like check out my skateboard. Yeah,
that was all into that. Um. But it is like surfing,
(24:29):
And the reason they compare it to surfing is that
it's sort of it's like a smaller version. You have
the side stands, just like on the surfboard. And if
you heard our surfing podcast, you heard us talk about
regular foot and Goofy foot is their mongo foot on
surfing tea. No, because you're not pushing off of it. Um,
regular foot is your left foot forward, and uh, you're
(24:51):
using your right foot to push goofy foot is the
opposite of that, your right foot forwards. You're pushing with
your left just does not feel right. No, And I
was a mango foot and I never knew it until
I looked this up. Um, that is when your left
foot is forward. I'm sorry, your your right foot is
on the board, but you're using your left foot to push,
and your foot is at the rear not the front. Yeah,
(25:14):
and I just that just feels supernatural to me. But um,
not supernatural, but very natural. But um, apparently mango foot
is is I think you're sort of frowned upon as
a person, but by real skaters if your mom like
lay off, I've watched you. You can't even kick flip,
(25:35):
so you pay attention to how you stand. That's what
you say to people if they give you guff about
being mango foot. Well, the problem with mango foot is
you have to shift your feet a little bit once
both are back on the board. And uh, I guess
you can't like bust a move immediately with a trick, uh,
which matters if you're like competing for half a million dollars,
but not if you're like on your way down to
(25:57):
the seven eleven. Yeah, if you've never skated before and
you want to try it, um, I would advise to
not start with mango foot at all if you don't
know any better, because you know you won't be made
fun of. You know, maybe is that what kept you back?
Maybe you'd be like, right now, that's what it was.
But I've never seen this before. It makes sense if
(26:18):
they if you don't know which foot you're prominent with,
although I would say if you're right footage, you're probably
gonna be a regular foot, and if you're goofy foot footed,
you might be goofy foot. I think it has to
do with handedness. So like, if you're right handed, your
left foot is gonna be ford, You're gonna push with
your right foot. If you're left handed, you're gonna be
goofy foot. Where your right foots forward you push with
(26:38):
your left foot. I think you push with your foot
in the rear of the dominant hand side or foot
side right, Yeah, but I think your dominant hand is
typically your dominant foot as well. Yeah, it seems right.
And then if if, if you if somebody came up
and pushed you, Yeah, that's the test. The foot you
put back to steady yourself, that the one you want
(27:00):
to use to push with before you crow hop and
punch him in the head. Right, what what the h man? Yeah,
so I've never heard that. That's a little trick you
can do. And I guess you're not. Maybe surprise somebody,
because if you think about it too much, like all right,
push me, you try to put both feet back at
once and you end up just hopping. Uh. So there
are a few different quite a few different things you
(27:22):
can do. Back in the day, it was all about
like the downhill slalom, which is boring, I mean, super
speed is not boring. Scary, she said. I I suffered
a pretty decent head injury once. Really. Yeah, I got
the wobble wheel going downhill and I was like, I
got a bail out, and right before I went to
(27:43):
go jump on the grass, the board went and I
went forward and landed on my head and skidded on
my head entirely. Tell it at all right, No, yes,
it's like right, and uh yeah it was it was something. Yeah,
I remember I have not been the same since. Its
neighborhoods have one hill you know that you don't dare
(28:03):
go down. And my best friend his name was Chuck
actually at the time, and then in high school, he
had a hill like that and I remember standing at
the top of it and thinking there's no way I
should be doing this, and getting on the skateboard and
trying to go down, and like you said, bailing out
into the grass was always Uh, if you're in the neighborhood,
(28:25):
a nice way to go about things. Is that what
you did? Uh? I think I went all the way
down actually, but yeah, it's a little scary, you know,
no way I do that now. I remember a car
was driving past and stopped and went, oh my god,
are you okay? I was like, wow, is that bad? Huh?
And they finished their beer and drove on. So you
(28:48):
also have freestyle, which is um doing tricks and things
on a flat surface. Um, And we're gonna get into
the tricks a little bit in a minute, which if
you are like, what's free style, it sounds stupid. Look
up Rodney Mullen or pare Wellinder on YouTube. Check out
some of their especially their eighties stuff. The early mid eighties,
(29:10):
they were doing some pretty cool stuff. And some of
it is like that stuff that you were saying the
California dudes doing like handstands on making skateboard or just
the three sixties, like standing in one place with a
nose in the air. But then they would take their
hands and like flip their board three sixty degrees eight
times and land on it. They're pretty good, pretty great stuff,
(29:31):
and its for sure, it's definitely like choreography and a skateboard. Well,
I have the feeling you're about to say vert skating.
I wasn't, but I will. Are you ready? They didn't
give rise to vert skating SKA well, vert skating, Yeah,
it kind of that came out of those Dogtown guys
(29:54):
in the swing pools. Yeah, because a pool is considered
vert skating. Vert is short for vertical, right, because you're
skating on vertical services like a pool or a bowl
or a half pipe or a quarter pipe or whatever.
Or if you're like me, to milk crates in a
piece of plywood, did you do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Josh pipe it was not that stable. Uh, it's a
(30:16):
vertical is when people started leaving and catching air leaving
the side of whatever surface they were on, which was
really exciting at the time. Yeah, I can't imagine having
been there, and it's only gone open up since then,
you know. Uh. And then you got street skating, which,
um is if you've seen h ladies and dudes on
(30:37):
the street like jumping up the air onto a park
bench and grinding that park bench or a railing, or
smashing themselves trying to grind a railing, that is uh
street skating. Or if you've ever played the Tony Hawk
video game. Did you ever play that? Yeah, the first one. Yeah,
if you play that enough, people who played that enough?
Now I'm talking about you start walking around in life
(31:00):
and everything you see. Oh man, I could grind that
so hard if I could really skate. Yeah, not in
real life, um, but yeah, so so street skating kind of.
I guess you could say it combines freestyle with obstacles,
using obstacles in the um built environment. That's street skating. Yeah,
and that's the stuff that usually you'll see like frowned
(31:22):
upon by businesses and people thinking like these hooliguns are
out there right, which skateboarding is not a crime man, Nope,
Although if you use the skate go to jail. But
to combat all that crime stuff, a lot of cities
built skate parks in the seventies. And what they didn't
realize is that, um, when those kids fell and cracked
(31:45):
their heads, their parents were gonna sue. And so all
of a sudden, the insurance premiums four skate parks went
through the roof and all the cities shut them down
and they went away for a very long time. And
then I guess there was some changes in liability laws
that allowed skate parks to come back. And so now
skate parks are back, but they're very frequently put up
by cities. They're like, we'll build a skate park, and
(32:07):
they don't ask the skaters how to build a skate park.
So they build like a terrible skatepark and the skaters
don't use it, and the cities are like, use skate
punk kids use the skatepark, and they're like, your skate
park sucks, and they're like, no, it doesn't, and yes
it does in the skateaway um, or they do it
well and it's too crowded. Well, if there's one thing
(32:29):
I know is that for every skate park in any
city there will be a group of skaters saying this
place sucks. I remember when we shot at a skate park.
Remember these local kids and it was a new skate park.
One of them, that one kid was pretty good. Yeah
he's all right, but U I s him. I was
like this this is great, right, this is new and
it's indicator and like the sucks. Yeah. Well then that
(32:50):
one kid lied. He said he lived from like a
seedier part of Atlanta. Hit us up for bus fair
and somebody. Yeah, one of the crew saw him, like
go into his house a block away and it's a
very nice neighborhood Decatur and hide his skateboard in his backyard. Um,
if you and they can be different, they can be
(33:10):
like uh smaller half pipes and ramps and rails and
things and obstacles. To my recommendation if you ever visit
l A is to go to Venice Beach to their
newish skate park there, and it is like the Cument Bowl.
It's like a huge series of connected swimming pools. And
this is where you'll see some like you'll see the
(33:31):
old school guys that aren't leaving the bowl that are
just like carving it up. Is like sweet as pudding.
And uh, then you've got guys that really know what
they're doing, like catching air and doing you know, three sixties.
And and there's a bulldog that rides a skateboard there too,
I've heard of that. You should see him. It's quite amazing.
(33:52):
I'm for sure it is like you can't catch air
or whatever, but just the fact that a dog is
using a skateboard is pretty awesome. So should we talk
about some tricks. Let's well, almost every trick on earth
is based on the Ali the trick named after Alan
Alie gelfand he invented it in the early nineteen seventies,
(34:14):
mid nineteen seventies, and that is basically when you jump
up in the air. And if you've seen skateboarders do it,
you might wonder, how on earth do they jump up
in the air and have that skateboard seemingly attached to
their feet. I never was very good at it, I
really no, I could all be pretty good. I was
more of a sidewalk surfer than like a trick aerial guy.
(34:38):
You know. Well, I wasn't a trick aerial guy either,
but I could Allie, you know, well, explain the Alie
oh well, okay. So the ALIE is let's say you're
on your board and you're on a flat surface. You
kick your the tail of the skateboard down really hard
against the ground and uh, what this does is this
um exerted force allows you to overcome the force of gravity.
(34:58):
And since you're jumped ing at the same time you
jump into the air, um, you're taking off your own
downward pressure on the board. So the front of the board,
the nose, goes up high in the air and the
fact that you've slapped the tail against the ground means
the tail comes up into the air until it's even
with the nose and the boards flat in the air,
(35:19):
and it looks like it's attached to your feet if
you do it right, and all of a sudden you
and the board are four feet into the air and
then you come back down and you landed. That's an ALI.
It's funny you mentioned four feet The world record Danny
Wainwright of h I think he's from England, Uh, recorded
at forty four and a half inch ALI. Well, it's
pretty amazing, yeah, but was that like standing still? No,
(35:42):
you know, it's like, you know, they just set up
something to jump over. You keep adding layers until you
know you can't jump any higher, and then you've got like,
you know, ten feet to get going, and then just
pop up and it looks like it's attached to his feet.
And the allie is so integral this so many other um,
so many other tricks that it's it's almost not a
(36:04):
trick any longer in and of itself. It's like the
basic mechanic of whatever other trick that follows. But like
you pretty much can't do anything without ali ing. And
that's how those those guys originally caught air convert skating
was to ali off of the coping the top and
then you would catch some serious air because you already
had that extra momentum behind you as well. All Right,
(36:27):
So we'll talk about a few of the terms here
in a minute that if you watch the X Games
and you're not familiar and you hear these words, we're
going to clear it up for you right after this message. Okay,
(36:50):
we're back, Chuck. We're gonna talk about the names of tricks,
different types of tricks. All right. So, if you've ever
watched the X Games and you hear the uh sort
of annoying announcers admittedly talk using all these words you've
never heard. We're gonna explain what some of these words
mean just to help you follow along a little bit.
That's right. Um, you might hear speak out front side
(37:13):
there or whatever. Front side is when you're facing the
obstacle and performing a trick as opposed to backside, when
you're back is to the obstacle. Yeah, Like you're basically
going backwards on the skateboard. That's right. Yeah. Um. One
eight is pretty basic trick. But it's um, well, it's
where you ali and you and the board turn eight
(37:35):
degrees to face in the opposite direction. Yeah, Like you
go up the ramp and then you turn the mid
air and you come right back down. You can also
do it on a flat surface, or you could one
eighty onto like a park bench or something and trained
it whatever. Um, but the one eighty also kind of
forms a basis for a lot of other tricks, especially
vert tricks like three sixties and five forties all the
way up to ten eighties, and you can grab the
(37:56):
side of your board and just do all sorts of
cool stuff. Tony Hawk famously completed the first nine hundred
degree turn and for many years they thought that was
it until a twelve year old named Tom Shar in
two thousand twelve pulled off the first ten eighty and uh,
they filmed that it wasn't in competition. The first one
(38:18):
in competition was a guy named Mitch Brusco. He did
at the X Games. And that is three full rotations
in the air. Uh. And obviously you have to land
successfully for it to count and to live and live.
And uh, it's amazing, man, three full rotations in the air.
These dudes are getting up super super high. Now. Uh,
have you ever heard the word fakey? I have? Fakey
(38:41):
is um basically where you remain in your regular stance,
but you're going backwards, so you're doing like, um, you're
going into a backside trick. That's right. Uh. Pop shove
it is when you do an ali with the one eight,
but your body isn't moving. You're just uh popping up
in the air and flipping the skateboard around underneath you
(39:03):
and then landing on it. And then we talked about grinding. Um,
there's a couple of ways you can grind. A true
grind is when you're on the actual axles, so you've
got to be going forward, or you can go sideways
and grind on your board and it's called a board
slide or a rail slide. And then the kick flip,
of course, is the one that you see people busting
(39:23):
butt on which I've pulled off once. That's right, the
famous Josh kick flip. And then, of course, Chuck, there's
the manual, which is another way to say a wheelie.
I was good at those front side manual backside manual
I could do, like I was not good. I think
that's becoming clear. Like I thought it was cool if
(39:44):
I could do a little wheelie and do a little
one a D turn on the ground. Yeah, no, I'm
with you, man, I understand I wasn't very good either,
But Chuck, I had years of enjoyment. Twice third Wave
and fourth Wave loved skateboarding, love it like I just
love skateboarding. I think everybody should go out on skateboard
(40:05):
all the time. She's never gonna be one of those
old men that's like, quit grinding my rail. Well, yeah,
I mean if I had a nice rail out trying,
I'd be like, hit the hell off of my rail,
but I I would Still, it's not like a hate
skateboarding in general, but you would chip in and help
build a half pipe in your neighborhood, maybe away from
my really nice rail. Right, that's a good idea if
(40:28):
you do want to try skateboarding. Obviously these days, with
the safety consciousness of people, you should get a helmet
and some kneepads and elbow pads and if you're smart,
maybe some risk guards, although that might not be cool.
Well no, actually, like there's a that's another reason skate
parks off and go and use is because there's local
ordinances that say you have to wear a helmet and pads,
(40:50):
and of course skaters are like that sucks. Yeah, but
the risk guards. That's a common injury because you'll you'll
often go to brace yourself with your arms when you fall,
and they say to try and follow in your fleshy
parts of your body, but you're really kind of at
the whim of where gravity takes you. At think at
that point, well, you know, that was another reason I
think I wasn't ever that good, just because back when
(41:11):
I was a kid, they were all fleshy parts. It's
hard to get air. We should have been safe. It was, uh,
you got anything else? No, man, that's it. Uh, skateboarding.
If you want to know more about it, you should
type skateboarding into the word search bar at how stuff
works dot com. That's the first thing you should do.
(41:33):
You should follow that up by watching skate videos and
going to buy a skateboard and go skating. Yeah, you know,
I want to get along board now? Oh yeah, yeah,
that's the old man style. Yeah, just cruising. Get on
a flat surface and use it a carving the concrete
way a mode of transportation. Yeah. Are you gonna learn
to do handstands on it? Uh? Let's see. Since I
(41:54):
said handstands and then laugh, that means it's time for
listener mail. I'm gonna call this Josh, what are you hiding?
And I'm glad to get this email because I knew
I wasn't crazy. So let's just get into this, you know.
Can I say I don't even remember this most recent reference?
All right, well, let's just explain here what's going on.
(42:16):
This is from Ben Ben says, Hey, guys, I've been
living like a trog globitic trug bloodt for the past
six years because I just discovered your amazing podcast a
few weeks ago. As penance I've been listening to UH
several per day and have since gone to over one hundred.
So he's binging, he said, just noticed something in UH.
(42:38):
During the can Cats Scuba dive episode not one of
our best on August twelve, two eight, Josh goes into
detail about he was a certified scuba diver and at
the one time he was in open water, he not
only got sea sick, but also got a slight case
of the bens due to surfacing too quickly. Then UH.
In two thousand thirteen and the Diving Bell episode, Chuck says,
(43:00):
I thought I remembered many months ago you mentioned something
about getting the bends, and Josh quickly and confidently retorted,
I've never had the bends. So I know this is
almost five years later, but it begs the question, what
are you trying to hide? Josh? You have answered some
of the greatest, long lasting questions in history, but this
is one of the few times where you simply added
(43:21):
another mystery into the pile of the enigma and conspiracy
that is our world. So UH, have you ever had
the BENSU? So uh in I was skating down the
hill and I fell in in my head. Uh. Yeah,
I would call it a mild case of the bens. Okay,
so you just don't remember denying you had the bends? Okay,
(43:44):
all right, well there's your answer. Yeah, well I not
only do I not remember denying having the bends. When
I denied having the bends, I had forgotten that I'd
had the bends before. And again, this is a very
mild case. But it wasn't just seasickness. It was directly
related to having just bent half an hour under water,
you know. Alright, So I would call that the case
(44:05):
of the ben. I think that clears it up. Then
that is from Ben Helms from Mount Shasta, California. I'm
sure Ben will be unsatisfied with your explanation of Ben.
I just forgot. That's pretty much it. Yeah, let's see.
If you want to get in touch with Chuck and I,
you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
(44:25):
You should know. You can see us on our YouTube channel.
Just look up Josh and Chuck on YouTube. Tons of
fun there, uh and send us an email stuff Podcast
to Discovery dot com and really and join us at
our home on the web. Stuff You should Know dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(44:49):
Is it how stuff Works? Dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
Show Links
Order Our BookRSSStoreSYSK ArmyAboutPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.