Mr. Song

Next up is Daewon Song. I don't really know much about him since he wasn't a big part of skateboarding when I started learning about it and there isn't much to find on the Internet either. Maybe I just have bad luck searching.

From what I have found, daewon was born Februrary 25, 1975 in California. He is a Korean-American professional skateboarder greatly recognized for his technical street skating. Along with Rodney Mullen, daewon co-owns the company Almost. He also skates for the company team.

Songs First sponsor came from Sporting Goods In Gardena, California. Shortly after he was sponsored by World Industries, appearing in their film titled Love Child. Song left the company after nine years to form his own called Deca Skateboards. Unfortunately the company had to close after only three years due to the failure to Grow. Daewon then went on to co-found Almost with several other fellow pro skateboarders.

In 2006, Daewon Song was named Thrasher Magazines skater of the year. Daewon has also been featured in several Tony Hawk video games.

Since I really never heard of him until a few years ago, daewon song hasn't had much of an influence on skateboarding for me.

The one, the only, Rodney Mullen

Let's skip the rest of the formalities and get straight to the good stuff, the skaters. I believe the best person to start off with would be none other than Rodney Mullen.

First things first, he is one of if not my favorite skateboarder(s). Hopefully what I say about him does not turn out biased since he is one of my favorites and I am not trying to say that nobody could compare to him, because I do realize that there are plenty of pro's out there today. But seriously, he is good at what he does and I look up to him for it.

Many, including myself, consider Rodney to be the godfather of street and/or freestyle skateboarding. He alone created more than thirty tricks, several of which are very common tricks used today by skaters. Some of which I can do. These tricks are known as, 360 flip, Heelflip, Kickflip, Impossible, and the Flatground Ollie, not to be confused by the Ollie trick created by Alan Gelfand which was used as a half-pipe maneuver.

Born in 1966, Rodney started skating around age ten and has not stopped since then. His father originally objected to him skateboarding but willingly bought his first skateboard on a promise that he would always wear pads and would quit skating if he hurt himself. Rodney's first sponsorship came from an inland surfing shop. From that, he entered a Boys Freestyle Contest in '77 at Kona skatepark in Jacksonville. Rodney only placed third but happened to gained the attention of skateboard manufacturer Bruce Walker and was immediately sponsored. For the next three years, Rodney claimed first place in all of the 30 contests that he entered. I don't know about you, but to me, that is amazing.

Only a mere three years later, Rodney's professional career started in 1980 when he joined the Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade. Throughout the 80's was when Rodney created the numerous amount of modern skateboarding tricks we know and love today. His invention of the flat-ground ollie is considered his most significant addition to skating. It allowed him to further advance the sport and create the several tricks previously stated. Without him I doubt skateboarding would have progressed into the competitive sport that it is today and I most likely would not have ever picked up my first board.

The Beginning

Skateboarding started around 1950. It was created by surfers as a means of "surfing" the concrete streets. No one person invented the skateboard, though several have claimed they have. Instead, the first "skateboarders" used Wooden boxes attached to about a 30 inch two-by-four with roller skates attached at the bottom. The sport of skateboarding was in the midst of being born and discovered so anything went.