"Old School" vs. "New School"

The aesthetic of skateboarding had changed from the Old School to the New School. I have a vintage board collection now of twenty, but none of them reflect the New School. I have spent a large amount of time studying skateboard design history beginning in the 1970’s. I still need to collect a few more boards from the 60’s, but the golden age of skateboarding didn’t occur until the late l970’s. New School boards so it appears are ambidextrous. They are popsicle sticks that are reversible, so whether riding switch or not it does not matter what end of the board is pointed forward. Likewise the traditional kicktail has grown from the nose of the board. These elements have drastically changed the surf-style of skating popular in the l970’s. It was based upon the move of carving, which is a stylized turn created by throwing your weight. It requires a different stance than New School skating, because the Ollie had yet to be invented. Incidentally Alan Gelfand created the Ollie vertically, not horizontally like most of today’s skaters use. It happened at the top of a vert. ramp when kickturning to rotate back down the ramp. On vertical Gelfand found you could propel the board into the air by pushing down the tail and using it as a catapult. This later was extrapolated to horizontal skating, but shows the true lineage of skateboarding. New School came from the original vert. skating created by Dogtown’s Z-Boys. Slalom was also a crucial part of “Old School” skating, but it unlike the New School requires different technique. It would be interesting to see if today’s New School skaters would be interested in a slalom or downhill run. I think they would, but Ollie tricks have become the norm at skateparks and for competition. Old School boards differ drastically in design than New School boards. The center of gravity has been lowered considerably on New School boards. They have eliminated riser pads in between the board and the trucks, and the wheels have shrunk both in width and length. This makes the board more stable, because it is lower to the ground. Because the board is symmetrical, it can almost be said New School skating is more akin to riding a balance board over a central roller. The feet tend to stay in one place over the front truck and back truck eliminating the carving aspect of technique created by Stacy Peralta et al. He controlled the turn of the board by shifting his weight on the ball of his back foot creating a pivot much like slalom water skiing. I never could do this as a kid, but learned how by studying the Z Boys style of skating. Likewise the knees are bent most of the time and you pivot your hips, so there is a specific form in use. Steve Caballero had good form, as did most of the members of the Bones Brigade. Old School skating relied heavily upon the kind of truck you were using and its bushings, because the bushings were what dictated your carve. There were two basic kinds of trucks. The original was Tracker Midtrack. It differs today from the original, because it took into consideration both the Venture Truck and the Indy. The original Tracker had a squat barrel joint upon which the bushing sat. It was mostly vertical. Indy came along and tilted that barrel or the angle of the kingpin and placed a large washer underneath to hold the bottom bushing. This smoothed out the carve creating a less “tippy” turn like the original design. Both are pleasing to ride. Stock trucks whether they are quality are not almost always come with substandard bushings. You have to know the different durometers of urethane and know which bushings to use for your style of skating. Tracker for some reason offers very different bushings in their trucks. Flex was important in a carving and slalom board, because it allowed your to pump into and out of a turn providing momentum. Flex it seems has all but been eliminated in New School boards, with 7 ply maple being the standard. I was lucky enough to stumble upon a 5 ply Santa Cruz board that looks more like plywood. Amazingly enough it rides well, because it has a rocker. A rocker is the opposite of camber which is an arched design upward. The rocker is all ready in the right shape for maneuvering through a turn. That board is set up with Indy 169’s and classic Bel Air Bolts wheels. Gordon and Smith is not offering the 3 ply laminate original Fibreflex anymore. What I ended up buying was a Teamrider re-issue which was five plies with Bowtuff fiberglass on the top and bottom. I like it and it is my primary board, but it doesn’t flex like the older Fibreflex. Recently I cut down a Mike McGill Jet fighter re-issue to the shape of the older Santa Cruz, and it is nimble, light, and springy. I am trying to make it into a combination New/Old School board. Right now it has Tracker Six Track imitations, which I just found out yesterday are actually Powell/Peralta trucks built as demos for their own boards. It came on a Lance Mountain Dough Boy deck with Powell wheels. It has taken a while to figure out how to use them, because with that original vertical barrel joint housing the kingpin, the axles just tip to the side instead of pivoting nicely. Tracker Ultra-Lites in the same size have PLASTIC baseplates. Although I have these on the Mountain board replete with the original copers and newer stiff bushings, they are useless for turning because the baseplates flex. A word of advice for good truck operation. The kingpin has to be solid and not move, because it is upon what the axles pivots. Without a stable pivot point, the truck will always seem out of control. I have had several pairs of cheap trucks including the Nash X-2 that have loose fitting kingpins. You can never get performance out of these trucks, unless you put some liquid weld on the bolt head to glue it to the baseplate. New School trucks seem to be “lows” and “highs.” We looked at a pair of these in the local skateshop and it appeared everything about both truck was the same except the height of the bushing. I received a new pair of Venture 5.0 lows in the mail, but I have yet to be able to ride them to see what is up. It will be interesting to see how they perform in a carve.