INVENTING the SKATEBOARD

by

Mark Barkawitz

  

  

    I was born in a place called Kew Gardens, New York.  Back in the early ’50s, before the invention of the skateboard, we rode scooter-boxes.  A scooter-box was made by taking apart a steel-wheeled skate, then affixing the wheels under the ends of a two-to-three-foot long 2”x4”.  On the nose of the 2”x4”, a wooden, fruit crate was nailed upright on its end.  And on top of that, two wing-like, wooden handles were secured for steering.  Then to customize our scooter-boxes, we nailed or glued bottle caps all over the fruit crate.  Daddy made me one when I was just a little fart.  And because we owned a small delicatessen in Astoria on Long Island—above which we lived in an equally small apartment—there was a bevy of assorted bottle caps to trick-out my ride.

    In 1957, we moved across the country to Pasadena, California.  I didn’t notice any west-coasters riding scooter-boxes, so I figured it was an east coast thing.  In ’59, my parents bought our house on Mar Vista Avenue for $12,500.  And like most north/south streets in Pasadena, it was hilly.   I figured a scooter-box would be fun to ride downhill, but I’d left mine behind in New York (no room for it on the propeller-driven commercial airline).  So my little brother Bruce and I—six and eight, respectively at the time—borrowed one of my little sister Cyndi’s metal skates and went out to the garage to build one.  We couldn’t find any 2”x4”s or a fruit crate of any kind.  So while Bruce took apart Cyndi’s skate, I improvised our building supplies with what was available: a four-foot long, six-inch wide piece of dog-eared, cedar fencing.  When I nailed the skate-ends on the bottom, the eight-penny nails stuck up through the top side, so I bent them over with the hammer.  But they still looked dangerous.  So we used scissors to cut a carpet fragment to fit atop the cedar board and affixed it with ½” roofing nails.  We stood back to admire our work.

    “It’s pretty long,” Bruce said.

    “Let’s see if we both fit.”

    I sat over the back wheels, my knees scrunched up into my chest; Bruce sat likewise in front of me.  We wobbled and put our hands down to steady ourselves.

    “Just like a sled,” I said.  We’d ridden a sled together during our last winter back east.

    “What are we gonna use for brakes?” he asked.

    “Turn onto the parkway grass.”

    Together we carried our two-man, box-less scooter-box up to the corner.  We sat on it—he in front of me—and used our hands to steady ourselves on the downhill sidewalk until we got rolling.  We crashed every couple of houses until we got our leaning in sync.  After a few runs, we made it all the way down from Claremont Street to the parkway in front of our house, where we rolled onto the St. Augustine grass, crashing and tumbling to a stop under the old oak tree, laughing our guts out.  We started experimenting with different riding positions: both on our knees, one sitting and one kneeling, one sitting and one standing behind, et cetera.  It was a lot of fun.  Other kids on the block watched us enviously.  David, one of the bigger kids who lived on Claremont, came over to check out our ride as we prepared for another run.

    “What is that?” David had started a fist-fight with me right after my family moved onto the block.  He threw nine punches at me; I blocked them all—the advantage of having a brother with whom to fight daily.  Then he said he heard his mom calling him and went home.  That was our fight. 

    “It’s kinda’ like a scooter-box without the box,” I said.

    “For two,” Bruce added.

    “Scooter-box?” David didn’t seem to know what I meant.  “What kinda’ wheels?”

    “We took apart one of our sister’s skates,” I explained.

    Bruce flipped-over the board. 

    David looked closer.  “Huh.  So it’s more like a board-skater.”

    “Somethin’ like that,” I agreed.

    “For two,” Bruce added again.

   

    A few months later, David’s family moved to Venice Beach.  Back then, Bruce and I thought that was some place in Italy.  But it was actually just forty miles away on the coast just south of Santa Monica, where years later with the invention of the polyurethane wheel, the Z-Boys skateboarding team would revolutionize the sport by riding empty swimming pools.

    But back in ’59, it was my little brother Bruce and I who were the revolutionary innovators.  Oh sure, lots of people claim to have invented the skateboard in one way or another around that same time.  But it was the Barkawitz Boys who invented the tandem skateboard.  Unfortunately at six and eight years-of-age, we lacked the marketing skills and manufacturing capabilities of Wham-O and missed out on creating a family fortune.  And we got grounded for ruining our sister’s stupid skate.   As with any revolution, its practitioners pay a steep price for progress.