Collection 100. Research - Part 1

For this brief I was asked to come up with a subject which interests me and which i would be happy to work with for a while and research and investigate it through the context of '100'.

I had to gather 100 facts, opinions and objects (300 overall) that relate to my topic and are interesting and then categorise them appropriately.

the subject that I chose was Skateboarding.

I decided to start off this brief by finding the 100 facts about skateboarding. I wanted to have a variety of facts that covered a lot of subjects within skateboarding and I think I did this well. I used the various sources online like the Guinness Word Records website, some sites about the history of skateboarding and some council reports about skateboarding which carried facts and statistics.

I actually found the fact finding really hard to start with which surprised me. I hit about 25 facts quite quickly but then I really couldn't think of areas within skateboarding to find interesting facts or I couldn't find facts on the areas of skateboarding that i could think of (For example crime rates among skateboarders, skateboard related crimes and lots of statistics about skateboarders in individual countries).

After a while it started getting a bit easier when I found lots of links between facts and eventually managed to get loads.

One issue which i really noticed in the fact finding was that it was very difficult to find any information about skateboarding in any country other than the US. I guess this is a statement about the popularity of skateboarding in the US compared to other countries and the massive influence that their skateboarding culture has over the rest of the world.

These are my facts:

1. Skateboarding is a crime in a lot of places
2. There are roughly 18.5 million skateboarders in the world
3. Of these 18.5 million, only 2% skate Vert
4. Skateboarding was invented around the late 40’s or early 50’s
5. There are about 386 registered professional Skateboarders in the world
6. Element skateboards have been voted #1 in the top ten best skateboarding brands.
7. There are 639 widely known skate parks in the UK
8. The average cost of a skate park is between £30,000 and £80,000
9. The average cost of a full skateboard is about £125
10. There are about 25 major brands for skateboards
11. There were 42 deaths among skateboarders in 2006, almost all of which were as a result of being struck by a vehicle
12. There are about 41 defined flip tricks
13. There are about 21 defined grinds excluding spin variations
14. There are about 37 defined aerial grabs and spins
15. There is about a 50/50 ratio of skateboarders who ride regular compared to goofy
16. A very small minority of skateboarders push with their front foot which is known as ‘Mongo’
17. The term Mongo is derogatory, deriving from the words ‘Mongoloid’ and ‘Mong’ which refer to someone with Down’s Syndrome
18. Skateboard decks are almost all 7 to 9 ply layered Canadian-maple.
19. Skateboard trucks are usually a lightweight aluminium alloy
20. Skateboard wheels are usually Polyurethane polymer plastic
21. The average age of skateboarders is between 13 and 14
22. 90% of all skateboarders are male
23. 60% of skateboarders are under 15
24. There are 1511 well known skating spots in the UK
25. There are so many skateparks in the world that nobody knows the exact number
26. More than 61,000 children aged 5 to 14 were treated last year in hospitals in California as a result of skateboarding injuries
27. Over 100,000 skateboards are made every month
28. 55 million people watched the 1999 X-Games skateboarding competition
29. In 2007 there were an estimated 16,477 head injuries due to skateboards
30. Keith Baldassare achieved the world record for the most number of consecutive frontside ollies on a half pipe in September 2008 with 348 in a row.
31. Skateboarding equipment and related goods make a 1.2 billion dollar per year industry
32. Contrary to belief, skateboarding is one of the safest recreational sports with just 0.77% of skateboarders receiving any type of significant injury.
33. Of all active skateboarder in the US over half of them live in California
34. on 25^th February 2009, Rob Drydeck and Joe Ciaglia designed and produced the worlds longest skateboard measuring 11.14 meters in legth, 2.63 meters wide and stood 1.10 meters high. The deck itself was 5 ½ inches thick.
35. The fastest speed achieved on a skateboard without the help of a motor was 63 mph, with an unconfirmed rumour that the same man achieved 73 mph.
36. The furthest anyone has travelled on a skateboard in one day is 242 miles
37. Richie Carassco holds the world record for the biggest stationary spin while on a skateboard. He managed to spin 142,360 degrees without stopping.
38. Professional Skateboarder Danny Way has several world records for skateboarding, one of which involved jumping over the Great Wall of China.
39. Danny Way also holds the record for the longest ever jump on a skateboard at 79 feet.
40. The greatest speed ever achieved on a skateboard was 90mph when helped by a motorbike
41. The longest anyone has done a handstand on a skateboard for was 2 minutes.
42. The height record for a skateboarding jump is 23.5 feet
43. 1/3 of all skateboarding injuries occur at weekends
44. Skateboarding is the 6^th most popular sport on the planet in terms of participants
45. The wrist is the most injured part of the body when it comes to skateboarding
46. In 1996 the US saw 165 skateboarders injured who were over the age of 65
47. Between 1978 and 1989 skateboarding was banned in Norway as a result of a high number of injuries.
48. In the late 90’s the US military experimented with using skateboards for ‘indoor manoeuvres’. They were testing the use of completely standard skateboards to see their effectiveness in detecting tripwires and sniper fire.
49. Skateboarder Yvonne Dowlen still competes even though he is 81 years old.
50. Tony hawk has a deal to manufacture his own line of footwear with Khol’s to make skating shoes that anyone can afford. The shoes never go over $40 in price
51. Of nearly 500 recent skateparks found in the US, most of them were built in the last 10 years as a result of an increase in concern about children’s exercise and health.
52. Danny Way also holds the record for the biggest freefall drop on a skateboard. He jumped and fell 28 feet before landing into a quarter pipe below and rolling away cleanly
53. June 21^st is the annual ‘Go Skateboarding’ day for the entire world
54. Although skateboarding is illegal in New York City, on June 21^st hundreds of skateboarders take to the busy streets partially to make a statement but more likely just to hassle the local authorities
55. The current most expensive skateboard in the world is the Exkate M6 800 which costs $799.95. A previous model, Exkate X-24, cost just under $1000 but is now unavailable as a new (probably more expensive model) is due for release soon.
56. Skateboarding began when surfers wanted a way to surf when they were on land. This is the reason that skateboarding was originally referred to as ‘Sidewalk Surfing’
57. The first skateboards were made by individual users who took the wheels from rollerskates and attached them to wooden boxes and boards.
58. Skateboarding really took off when a group of pioneering skateboarders called the Z-Boys started skating empty swimming pools during the 1976 drought in California.
59. Soon after the Z-Boys started skating pools, they invented the ‘Vert Ollie’ in 1978 which was lifting off from the top of the swimming pool (getting air) and then rolling back into the pool.
60. Rodney Mullen Invented the Flatground Ollie soon after as a freestyle flat ground skater. In this way, Rodney Mullen became the pioneer for Street Skating as almost all street skating tricks are further variations of the Flatground Ollie.
61. Rodney Mullen also invented tricks such as the Kickflip, Heelflip, 360 Flip, and Impossible. In total Mullen has invented at least 39 distinct individual skateboarding tricks.
62. The Kickflip was originally known as the ‘Magic Flip’ because the trick was seen as being so impressive and difficult that it was almost as if being done by magic. Few understood how the Magic Flip was accomplished and for a time Rodney Mullen was the only person able to perform it.
63. There is another trick known as the Kickflip that was actually invented before the modern Mullen version but was far less difficult. It didn’t involve the Ollie part of the trick at all and is now usually know as an ‘Old School Kickflip’
64. The worlds youngest skateboarder was 2 years old. Now at 10 he skates better than most teenagers.
65. The oldest pro skateboarder today is Rob Drydek at 36 years old.
66. The country with the largest population of skateboarders is the USA
67. The Bones Brigade Video Show was the first skateboarding video
68. The most viewed video related to skateboarding on Youtube shows a 14 boy being “assaulted” by a police officer in Baltimore
69. Skateboarding will likely be in the 2012 Olympics in London
70. Most professional skateboarders makes between $2000 - $3000 a month with an annual income of no more than $30,000
71. Although most pro skaters make no more than $30,000 a year, professional skateboarder Bam Margera earns an average of $250,000 a year.
72. 62% of professional skateboarders have some kind of serious injury in their career
73. SMP skatepark in Shanghai, China is the largest skatepark in the world. It covers 147,000 square feet and is roughly 6 or 7 times larger than most large skateparks
74. The Xgames is a sports competition of extreme sports including BMX, Inline and Skateboarding
75. The Xgames was started in 1993, making 2010 it’s 17^th anniversary
76. ‘Skateboarder Magazine’ is probably the worlds most popular skateboarding mag, followed closely by Thrasher Magazine and Transworld
77. Nike SB team consists of 17 pro skaters and 4 amateurs
78. In any given community roughly 4.6% of the population will be skateboarders
79. In 1963 skateboard wheels were often made of clay
80. The first skateboarding competitions started 25 years ago
81. ‘Skaters for Public Skateparks’ is the most notable non profit organisation for helping skateboarders in small communities build public skateparks but there are several others.
82. Art and Music are the favourite subjects in school for almost all skateboarders
83. One in ten teenagers owns a skateboard
84. During the last 10 years there has been no sport that increased more in popularity than skateboarding
85. In 1968 the USCSC (United States Consumer Safety Commission) came up with a way of ranking sports and recreation in terms of danger from 10 to 2516 (10 being least severe). Skateboarding received 34 whereas bicycles were 70 and swimming pools were 335
86. Irregular riding surfaces are responsible for over 50% of all skateboarding injuries
87. The most common skateboard injury is from a flying skateboard
88. A third of all injured skateboarders have been skating for less than a week
89. Two of every five injuries happen to a person using a borrowed skateboard
90. Less than one percent of kids 14 and under said they would use drugs while skateboarding and preferred their sport to drugs.

A lot of these facts are really interesting but generally are really individual and closed off like a world record or are not that interesting.

However, I did notice that safety and injury popped up a lot of times in the facts as a seperate area of skateboarding. As a skateboarder I know that it does have its dangers. Like with a lot of sports, people who are new to it are generally at more risk and are a bit more clumsy and inexperienced compared to others which is a health risk. I also know that there are a lot of things that you can do on a skateboard which are much more difficult and far more dangerous than others. I have always seen skateboarding as one of the most difficult things to do but I have never really seen it as particularly dangerous.

After getting the facts, I decided to focus on the opinions. I decided to make a questionnaire/survey to get peoples opinions about skateboarding. I made the questions easy to understand and simple so that people from a variety of ages could understand them and be encouraged to answer my questions. I made sure that I gave the survey to an equal range of ages and gender to get the most reliable results for the questionnaire. I chose to do a genuine physical survey as opposed to the facebook online type because I thought that it would vary my results a lot more. Almost all of my friends on facebook are between 17 and 25 so they only represent one small generation. They also all know me and the majority of them know that I skateboard which might discourage them to be anti-skateboarding and not tell me their true opinion or I may even affect their opinion of skateboarders by being a skateboarder. Either way, I chose to ask a small number of people that I knew and then take a quick street survey to get the rest of the results.

The survey only has 2 questions to keep it short and each question has 2 parts. They each have one multi-choice question to give me a qualitative result and one open-ended question to give me some qualitative data as well. By doing this I made sure I could get some statistics and some reasoning behind them.

Because I had seen that safety appeared to be a big issue in skateboarding I used it as one of the questions for a questionnaire. I wanted to see if other people thought that skateboarding was unsafe and the results seemed to say that they did.

The multi choice question asked the person taking the survey to choose from the following 4 options as to how dangerous they think skateboarding is as an activity:
Not Dangerous
Not Very Dangerous
Quite Dangerous
Very Dangerous

0 people said ‘Not Dangerous’

10 people said ‘Not Very Dangerous’

38 people said ‘Quite Dangerous’

2 people said ‘Very Dangerous’

76% of people think that skateboarding is a ‘quite dangerous’ activity

I thought this was a really interesting statistic because I thought a lot more people would say that it was a 'Not Very Dangerous' sport which is my opinion.

The 'Why?' question seemed to have overall fair comments but many seemed to not know alot about skateboarding. For example, one person said that it isn't very dangerous because the skateboarders have to wear pads and a helmet, which although theoretically true is not at all enforced at any local skatepark that I have been to.

Another strange comment said that no one wears the right safety equipment and as a result it kills people. Again this is technically true but fatalities among skateboarders are incredibly low, as are any truly serious injury at all.

The other question I asked was about anti-social behaviour. I put this question in because I know from experience tht skaterboarders are often looked down on and a lot of people really dislike the idea of skateboarding. On several occasions parents, workers, elderly people and police have been really agressive for no reason other than the fact that ive been skateboarding somewhere with my friends. With no public skatepark in the whole of my town it isn't easy to skateboard anywhere other than in public places.

I wanted to see exactly what the statistics were for the hatred of skateboarders so I put in the question "Do you think that Skateboarding is an anti-social activity?" with a simple yes or no answer and then a 'Why?' boc for explainig the choice.

31 people said no

19 people said yes

That means that 38% think that skateboarding is an anti-social activity.

The figure doesn't actually surprise me because for some reason skateboarding has a really negative reputation. In fact I think that some people may have been lying when they said that they didn't think it was anti-social.

Because im quite young and thats pretty obvious by my clothes and youthful good looks, I think that some people may have assumed that I am the youner generation and would probably be quite pro-skateboarding and so wouldn't want to offend me or upset me incase I stab them like all older people think teenagers do. I think that this could have had an affect on the participant's honesty and might have made the results less accurate. In an ideal world I would be able to use older people to conduct the survey as hopefully people would see it as more official and give an honest opinion.

The why section of this question had mostly fair comments but some exceptions which didn't seem to be supported by anything. For example, people commented saying that skateboarding is anti-social because of tresspassing and violent behavior. I suppose this is true sometimes but skateboarding is not inherently about breaking the law. As an activity it is about fun and exercise and socialising, violence or trespassing are the choice of an individual and shouldn't be associated.

After getting the facts and opinions I moved onto taking the pictures of the objects. I had originally planned to visit skateparks to ask skateoarders if I could take photos of their boards but the bad weather meant that skateoparks were completely empty. Another attempt to find skateboarding related objects was to go to the St Albans skateboard store Conspiracy. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take photographs of any of the items in the shop so I would have had to buy them to take the photos.

In the end I used my own skatebparding things to find the objects. I included some shoes, parts of the skateboard, safety gear and a couple of catalogues.

After collecting all my research I gave a short presentation to a few people in the group and they gave me a bit of feedback to help with continuing the project and what needed to be done next.

After this I categorised some of my objects in a few different ways and too photos.

Colour

Size

Shape

Red to yellow to green to blue to black to white to chrome

Colour groups