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MotoBoard was a mass-produced motorized skateboard, made possible by the advent in the mid-1970s of polyurethane skate wheels, as well as the production of lightweight small industrial two-stroke engines (typical of today's string trimmers).
Shortly after urethane wheels became available,[ citation needed ] Jim Rugroden, a student in Berkeley, California, [1] designed and built the first MotoBoard in the garage of his brother's home in the South San Francisco Bay Area town of Campbell while on break from his physics studies in summer 1975. The MotoBoard evolved from a simple push start prototype, to a precision automatic shaft-driven sport vehicle.
During a photo shoot for Skateboarder Magazine in Carlsbad, California, near San Diego, Rugroden met Bill Posey, an onlooking entrepreneur, and they eventually teamed-up to form Quantimotion, Inc., DBA MotoBoard International.
Originally, MotoBoard Intl. operated from both a small northern California shop in Sunnyvale, where Rugroden manufactured the units, and Posey's established southern California office in Carlsbad, where much of the promotion and sales were generated. In 1979 the company was consolidated in a new, much larger facility in the newly established Foreign Trade Zone complex in San Jose, California.
MotoBoard sales were mostly through upper-end retail outlets and order catalogs such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Sports Pages, Hammacher Schlemmer and Bromley. Motoboards were often featured in widely distributed periodicals such as Playboy , High Times ,[ citation needed ] Time magazine, and center-staged in Road & Track magazine in 1978 as April's road tested vehicle of the month. [1] [2]
Few MotoBoard buyers were avid skateboarders, as the eventual $650.00 sticker was generally not within reach of the average skateboarder. MotoBoards did well in the movie industry. MotoBoards were featured in Hooper with Burt Reynolds, Coming Attractions, Skateboarders from Hell, the TV series Max Headroom and The San Pedro Beach Bums . Appearances on The Price Is Right were frequent, and MotoBoard was spotlighted as McLean Stevenson ( M*A*S*H ) rode in on stage introducing his short lived variety show America, featuring Michael J. Fox as premier guest in the wake of his Back to the Future box office hit.
MotoBoards were produced and sold worldwide until Posey and Rugroden parted ways in 1983. MotoBoards are still produced to this day[ clarification needed ] by a firm in Los Banos, California in limited quantities under the assumed name MotoBoard Int'l.
Skateboarding is an action sport that involves riding and performing tricks using a skateboard, as well as a recreational activity, an art form, an entertainment industry job, and a method of transportation. Originating in the United States, skateboarding has been shaped and influenced by many skateboarders throughout the years. A 2009 report found that the skateboarding market is worth an estimated $4.8 billion in annual revenue, with 11.08 million active skateboarders in the world. In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding would be represented at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, for both male and female teams. Skateboarding made its Olympic debut in 2020 and was included in the 2024 games.
Steve Caballero is an American professional skateboarder. He is known for the difficult tricks and air variations he invented for vertical skating and for setting the long-standing record for the highest air achieved on a halfpipe. In 1999, Thrasher Magazine named Caballero the "Skater of the Century".
Carlsbad is a beach city in the North County area of San Diego County, California, United States. The city is 35 miles (56 km) north of downtown San Diego and 87 miles (140 km) south of downtown Los Angeles. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 114,746. Carlsbad is a popular tourist destination and home to many businesses in the golf industry.
A Snakeboard, also known as a Streetboard is a board that was invented in South Africa in 1989 by James Fisher, Simon King and Oliver Macleod Smith. The concept was to fuse the original skateboard with elements of snowboarding and surfing to create a fun riding experience. The first prototype was constructed using two square wooden boards, an old roller skate chopped in half, and a piece of plumbing pipe to join them together. Many variants were tried before manufacturing began. The first boards to be mass-produced were made from a strong plastic nylon known as Zytel ST801.
A longboard is a type of skateboard typified by longer decks and wheelbases, larger-diameter and softer (lower-durometer) wheels, and often lower riding height compared to street skateboards, though there is wide variation in the geometry and construction of longboards. Among the earliest types of skateboards, longboards were inspired by surfing, with early longboards drawing from the design of surfboards, resembling and mimicking the motion of riding a surfboard, but adapted to riding on streets in a practice known as sidewalk surfing.
Longboarding is a variation of skateboarding typified by the use of longer boards ("decks") with longer wheelbases and softer wheels. While longboards vary widely in shape and size, compared to street skateboards longboards are designed to be more stable at speed and to have more traction due to larger wheel sizes and softer wheel durometers. While standard street skateboards may typically be between 28 and 34 inches long, longboards can range anywhere from 32 to 50 inches in length. Ride characteristics of longboards generally differ from that of street skateboards due to the use of specialized longboard trucks that have different properties than those typically used with skateboards; while street skateboards use "traditional kingpin" (TKP) trucks that are optimized for tight turning radii, ollie and flip tricks, slides, grinds, and transition skating, longboards are typically paired with "reverse kingpin" (RKP) trucks that are designed for increased stability at higher speeds, more "surfy" carving characteristics, and/or greater ride comfort for commuting over longer distances.
Mountainboarding (MTB), also known as dirtboarding, off-road boarding, and All-Terrain Boarding (ATB), is a well-established, but little-known action sport derived from snowboarding. The sport was initially pioneered by James Stanley during a visit to the Matterhorn in the 1990s, where snow was not available. A mountainboard is made up of components including a deck, bindings, four wheels with pneumatic tires, and two steering mechanisms known as trucks. Mountainboarders, also known as riders, ride specifically designed boardercross tracks, slopestyle parks, grass hills, woodlands, gravel tracks, streets, skateparks, ski resorts, BMX courses, and mountain bike trails. It is this ability to ride such a variety of terrain that makes mountainboarding unique from other board sports.
Frank Nasworthy is notable in the history of skateboarding for introducing polyurethane wheel technology to the sport in the early 1970s.
A kick scooter is a human-powered street vehicle with a handlebar, deck, and wheels propelled by a rider pushing off the ground with their leg. Today the most common scooters are made of aluminum, titanium, and steel. Some kick scooters made for younger children have 3 to 4 wheels and are made of plastic and do not fold. High-performance kickbikes are also made. A company that had once made the Razor Scooters revitalized the design in the mid-nineties and early two-thousands. Three-wheel models where the frame forks into two decks are known as Y scooters or trikkes.
Tum Yeto is a skateboard distribution company that operates out of San Diego, California, United States (U.S.).
A caster board, vigorboard or waveboard is a two-wheeled, human-powered land vehicle. Other names are J-board and RipStik, both of which are derived from commercial brands.
Ty Scott Page was a professional skateboarder known as Mr. Incredible and a leader in the skateboarding scene during "the golden era" of skateboarding in the early 1970s.
A skateboard is a type of sports equipment used for skateboarding. It is usually made of a specially designed 7–8-ply maple plywood deck and has polyurethane wheels attached to the underside by a pair of skateboarding trucks.
A fingerboard is a scaled-down replica of a skateboard that a person "rides" with their fingers, rather than their feet. A fingerboard is typically 100 millimeters (3.9 in) long with width ranging from 26 to 55 mm, with graphics, trucks and plastic or ball-bearing wheels, like a skateboard. A fingerboard can be used to do traditional skateboarding tricks, such as an ollie and kickflip.
A freeboard is a specialist skateboard designed to closely simulate the behavior of a snowboard. Freeboards were developed to allow snowboarders to transition to skateboarding without the need to adapt to a smaller deck and narrower wheel-base.
An electric skateboard is a personal transporter based on a skateboard. The speed is usually controlled by a wireless hand-held throttle remote, or rider body weight-shifting between front of the board for forward motion and rear for braking. As for the direction of travel to the right or left, it is adjusted by tilting the board to one side or the other. The classification of electric skateboards and legality of their use on roads or pavements varies between countries.
The following outline is provided as an overview of motorcycles and motorcycling:
NHS, Inc. is an American sports equipment distribution company based in Santa Cruz, California. It was founded by Richard Novak, Doug Haut, and Jay Shuirman, three surfer friends from Santa Cruz, California, teamed up to start NHS. The acronym NHS comes from their surname initials. The company distributes the following brands: Santa Cruz Skateboards, Santa Cruz Snowboards, Santa Cruz Surfboards, Creature Skateboards, Independent Truck Company, Bronson Speed Co., Krux Trucks, Ricta Wheels, Mob Grip, OJ Wheels, Road Rider, Slimeballs, Bullet and Nor Cal Clothing Co. NHS formerly owned shares of Santa Cruz Bicycles, also co-founded by Richard Novak, but sold to Pon Holdings in 2015.
A Penny board is a type of skateboard that is characterized by a short and narrow plastic deck. Although such skateboards were first manufactured during the 1970s, their name and contemporary popularity come from the Australian brand Penny Skateboards, founded in 2010. The company's name has since been widely genericized to describe all small plastic skateboards.
Boosted was an American manufacturer of electric skateboards and electric scooters based in Mountain View, California.