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This cyborg bike reminded me of the Thanator from Avatar the movie...

Parts of the Typical Skateboard

•DECK: This is the main component to making a skateboard, it is also the main product for this site. The deck is the wooden part of the skateboard, these are usually made from about seven peices of high quality wood glued and compressed together then cut to give the shape. A common skateboard deck is 7ply, or made from seven peices of wood. The parts where the board raise on the ends are called the nose and the tail. A good board has a nose that is a little bit larger in size than the tail, this is for better control of flip tricks.

•GRIPTAPE: The black sandpaper part on top of the deck. This allows the skater to 'stick' to the board when they are doing tricks. This is a very important part to skateboarding, without it the rider would slip off the surface of the deck if they attempted to do any kind of trick.

•TRUCK: The metal axle that attaches to the board. This piece holds the wheels on so a skater can actually skate. Trucks also allow the rider to turn and do certain grind tricks.

•WHEEL: A very important part of a skateboard, without wheels how do you plan on rolling?

•BEARINGS: Just like on a car the bearings allow the wheels to turn.

•HARDWARE: Another overlooked piece. The hardware is a set of 8 nuts and bolts which hold the trucks to the skateboard base. If there wasn't any hardware you wouldn't be able to do much other than stand on a piece of wood.

•RAISER: The little pads attached under the deck and before the trucks to give more space between the wood and the wheels. If your wheels are to large then they will rub against the deck which is very dangerous and is called "Wheel Bite". If the skater is going at a decent speed and they get wheel bite they will no doubt go flying forward. Although raisers sound important they are rarely used in street skating. 

The bearings are a crucial part of the skateboard and the most complex. The most parts of the entire skateboard are within the wheels.

360

360 is a revolutionary design that works on the movements of the body to give the ride and feel of various kinds of surface. Out here it’s the user’s mind and human imagination that is taken as the base and one can feel the drive be it roads or grasslands. All one needs to do is fit their feet into the inner part of the wheel and one gets into the natural riding position. The sensations experienced are very much similar to snowboarding, surfing or skateboarding.

Designer : Francesco Sommacal

Taken from: http://www.tuvie.com/360-takes-skateboarding-to-a-new-level/

Pumpboard

The concept of Pumpboard by 3KANT has shown the world how the skateboard may look like in near future. According to the designer, this mind-blowing skateboard would be one of the world’s most handy decks. This three wheeler transporter is inflatable with its removable rear axle that will allow the “board” to be revolved into a very compressed unit when you are not using it. The top and the bottom of the Pumpboard are semi-ridged and can give it the required superstructure when the user will fill the deck with compressed air. This cool looking and featured board is able to and surely will attract the attention of all skateboarders.

Designer : 3KANT

Taken from: http://www.tuvie.com/pumpboard-might-be-your-future-skateboard/

Tayo Sport Urban Ski Skateboard

The Tayo Sport Urban Ski Skateboard can be ridden in either the skiing position or whilst seated and is small enough to pack away in a back pack when not in use for ease of portability. Which is handy, as this means that you’ll still be able to keep the Tayo Sport with you when you’re being pushed about in a wheel chair on account of having broken both your legs.

Magic Wheel

Weighing in at 6.3Kg and measuring 29 inches in height, the Magic Wheel consists of a ‘professional sports wheel’ mounted to an ABS plastic frame featuring a rear mounted swivel

 

Taken from: http://nexus404.com/Blog/2007/07/11/magic-wheel-skateboard-meets-penny-farthing/

CURVE Extreme Sport Skateboard

CURVE Extreme Sport is a new skateboard concept that creates a racing sport on skateboard. The skateboard design has a pair of Motor GP-inspired tires that taper on both ends to allow the rider to make sharp turns during a high speed down-hill race. Thanks to the drafted angle of the tires, the rider can ride skateboard with minimal friction, maximum speed and great agility in a race.
Curve skateboard is focus on the mobility of the skateboard which moves as a line instead of a flat surface. This skateboard takes a new approach to the skateboard sport that creates a unique sensation to the rider. Ready to race with Curve skateboard ?

Designer : Gary Yu Chuan Chang

Taken from: http://www.tuvie.com/are-you-ready-to-feel-the-extreme-race-with-curve-skateboard/

Foldable Skateboard

The need of space-use efficiency has directed the designers to many innovative concept products ranging from bicycles to full fledged cars. But folding skate board is quite an exceptional idea for user convenience, portability and space minimizing. The board is actually a combination of two parts connected with a clump at the middle. The combination of black upper surface with a led direction indicator and the white under surface has given the skate board a fabulous look. The movable rear wheel base will allow you to place the wheels in an organized way when you will fold the board. Foldable skateboard might look cool, but the real skateboarders don’t seem to agree with this idea.


Taken from: http://www.tuvie.com/foldable-skateboard-is-it-a-good-idea/

BMW Streetcsrver

 

BMW started manufacturing StreetCarvers in 2001, and discontinued manufacting them in 2005.

The streetcarvers were designed at BMW's Southern California design center by Stephen Augustin, and were manufactured in Germany. The skateboard is extremely agile, and replicated snowboarding and surfing on pavement.













Before the StreetCarver was released in the fall of 2000, it went through several design changes from the Irvine design studio.




 

First Production Model

Construction

 The deck itself is constructed by an outside vendor for BMW, consisting of Bavarian Pine and fiberglass. The truck assemblies are cast aluminum, the wheels are two-piece five spoke alloys patterned after the X5, and the tires are a rubber-polymer compound. The StreetCarver has eight 6000z bearings, which Kelly replaced with 6000rs types when he peformed the last major overhaul. The RS bearings have a rubber insert, which can make repacking the bearings a lot easier.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this board. The advantages are the increased agility and the outright cool factor only afforded by an eighties Lambo Countach.

The StreetCarver also won several design awards, including Red dot 2000, I.D. Magazine Award iF Award 2001, Good Design Award, 2000 Design Award and the Baden-Württemberg 2001.

Taken from: http://www.kellyscars.net/streetcarver.html

History of Skateboarding

History

The 1940s-1960s

Skateboarding was probably born sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s when surfers in California wanted something to surf when the waves were flat. No one knows who made the first board, rather, it seems that several people came up with similar ideas at around the same time. These first skateboarders started with wooden boxes or boards with roller skate wheels attached to the bottom. The boxes turned into planks, and eventually companies were producing decks of pressed layers of wood -- similar to the skateboard decks of today. During this time, skateboarding was seen as something to do for fun besides surfing, and was therefore often referred to as "Sidewalk Surfing".

A skateboarder in Tallahassee, Florida.

The first manufactured skateboards were ordered by a Los Angeles, California surf shop, meant to be used by surfers in their downtime. The shop owner, Bill Richard, made a deal with the Chicago Roller Skate Company to produce sets of skate wheels, which they attached to square wooden boards. Accordingly, skateboarding was originally denoted "sidewalk surfing" and early skaters emulated surfing style and maneuvers. Crate scooters preceded skateboards, and were borne of a similar concept, with the exception of having a wooden crate attached to the nose (front of the board), which formed rudimentary handlebars.

A number of surfing manufacturers such as Makaha started building skateboards that resembled small surfboards, and assembling teams to promote their products. The popularity of skateboarding at this time spawned a national magazine, Skateboarder Magazine, and the 1965 international championships were broadcast on national television. The growth of the sport during this period can also be seen in sales figures for Makaha, which quoted $10 million worth of board sales between 1963 and 1965 (Weyland, 2002:28). Yet by 1966 the sales had dropped significantly (ibid) and Skateboarder Magazine had stopped publication. The popularity of skateboarding dropped and remained low until the early 1970s.

 

The 1970s

In the early 1970s, Frank Nasworthy started to develop a skateboard wheel made of polyurethane, calling his company Cadillac Wheels. The improvement in traction and performance was so immense that from the wheel's release in 1972 the popularity of skateboarding started to rise rapidly again, causing companies to invest more in product development. Nasworthy commissioned artist Jim Evans to do a series of paintings promoting Cadillac Wheels, they were featured as ads and posters in the resurrected Skateborder magazine, and proved immensely popular in promoting the new style of skateboarding. Many companies started to manufacture trucks (axles) specially designed for skateboarding, reached in 1976 by Tracker Trucks. As the equipment became more maneuverable, the decks started to get wider, reaching widths of 10 inches (250 mm) and over, thus giving the skateboarder even more control. Banana board is a term used to describe skateboards made of polypropylene that were skinny, flexible, with ribs on the underside for structural support and very popular during the mid-1970s. They were available in myriad colors, bright yellow probably being the most memorable, hence the name.
Manufacturers started to experiment with more exotic composites and metals, like fiberglass and aluminium, but the common skateboards were made of maple plywood. The skateboarders took advantage of the improved handling of their skateboards and started inventing new tricks. Skateboarders, most notably Ty Page, Bruce Logan, Bobby Piercy, Kevin Reed, and the Z-Boys (so-called because of their local Zephyr surf shop) started to skate the vertical walls of swimming pools that were left empty in the 1976 California drought. This started the vert trend in skateboarding. With increased control, vert skaters could skate faster and perform more dangerous tricks, such as slash grinds and frontside/backside airs. This caused liability concerns and increased insurance costs to skatepark owners, and the development (first by Norcon,then more successfully by Rector) of improved knee pads that had a hard sliding cap and strong strapping proved to be too-little-too-late. During this era, the "freestyle" movement in skateboarding began to splinter off and develop into a much more specialized discipline, characterized by the development of a wide assortment of flat-ground tricks.
As a result of the "vert" skating movement, skate parks had to contend with high-liability costs that led to many park closures. In response, vert skaters started making their own ramps, while freestyle skaters continued to evolve their flatland style. Thus by the beginning of the 1980s, skateboarding had once again declined in popularity.

 

The 1980s

A skateboarder "Ollies" over a garbage bin.

This period was fueled by skateboard companies that were run by skateboarders. The focus was initially on vert ramp skateboarding. The invention of the no-hands aerial (later known as the ollie) by Alan Gelfand in Florida in 1976 and the almost parallel development of the grabbed aerial by George Orton and Tony Alva in California made it possible for skaters to perform airs on vertical ramps. While this wave of skateboarding was sparked by commercialized vert ramp skating, a majority of people who skateboarded during this period never rode vert ramps. Because most people could not afford to build vert ramps or did not have access to nearby ramps, street skating gained popularity. Freestyle skating remained healthy throughout this period with pioneers such as Rodney Mullen inventing many of the basic tricks of modern street skating such as the Impossible and the kickflip. The influence freestyle had on street skating became apparent during the mid-eighties, but street skating was still performed on wide vert boards with short noses, slide rails, and large soft wheels. Skateboarding, however, evolved quickly in the late 1980s to accommodate the street skater. Since few skateparks were available to skaters at this time, street skating pushed skaters to seek out shopping centers and public and private property as their "spot" to skate. Public opposition, and the threat of lawsuits, forced businesses and property owners to ban skateboarding on their property. By 1992, only a small fraction of skateboarders remained as a highly technical version of street skating, combined with the decline of vert skating, produced a sport that lacked the mainstream appeal to attract new skaters.

The 1990s to the present

The current generation of skateboards is dominated by street skateboarding. Most boards are about 7¼ to 8 inches wide and 30 to 32 inches long. The wheels are made of an extremely hard polyurethane, with hardness(durometer) approximately 99a. The wheel sizes are relatively small so that the boards are lighter, and the wheel's inertia is overcome quicker, thus making tricks more manageable. Board styles have changed dramatically since the 1970s but have remained mostly alike since the mid 1990s. The contemporary shape of the skateboard is derived from the freestyle boards of the 1980s with a largely symmetrical shape and relatively narrow width. This form had become standard by the mid '90s.


Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skateboarding

Inspirational Images

A good images search came up with these alternative, unusual and comical skateboard related images.

MagicWheel

Chariot Skates

BMW Street Carver

Altered Electric Skateboard M4 800

360 Extreme Sport Concept

Curve Concept

Xelider Fusion Street Board

Foldable Skateboard

Vertrax Skateboard

Cool Skateboard Table - Thinking about skateboards for different applications

Razor Soul Skate

Pumpboard Concept

2x4 Skateboard - Actually In Production

This was too funny to not post

Freeline Skates

Tayo Urban Ski Skateboard