Old School, Surf Style, Aggro, Surf Skate, Burly, Flow Style … the type of skateboarding which is just now undergoing a major resurgence goes by many names.

Skateboarding was born out of the surf scene in the Sixties and although the equipment was primitive and the skating was rudimentary everything was geared around the surfing style. The first pro model skateboard was not endorsed by a pro skateboarder but instead by a pro surfer named Phil Edwards (this board was made by Makaha).

By the Seventies skating was advanced further in the direction of Surf Style skating by people like Jay Adams, Tony Alva and a host of undocumented others who never became as famous as the Z-Boys. The early eighties saw skating transformed by people like Steve Olson, Duane Peters and many more who adapted the surf style to develop what was to be known as the Burly Style, attacking skateparks and pools, etc. with a ruthless abandon.

By the late Eighties people like Tony Hawk, Danny Way and various other skaters began to move skating into a more technical and sometimes mechanical direction. With more and more tricks being added the emphasis shifted away from smooth flowing style and began an era of "who's got the biggest bag of tricks?" Vert ramps had become real popular by this time.

In the early Nineties people like Colin McKay, Rodney Mullen and a ton of other kids who shall go unnamed developed a style that would become "New School". Moving everything back into the street and advancing in a very technical direction. This new era changed skateboarding forever and attracted a whole new generation of people to skateboarding. Some of the "Old School" skaters got bitter over the way the new style of skating was choppy, disjointed, and didn't seem to have flow. Spawning jokes like: "How many tech skaters does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Just one, but it takes 'em fifty tries".

By the mid-Nineties people like Eric Koston, Rick Howard and many more skaters began to style out all the technical stuff and make it clean and flowy looking, nice 'n' smooth. In the late-Nineties skaters like Rick McCrank, Jamie Thomas and tons more people started adding large air and stunts back into the equation along with speed, fluidity, and technicality.

As we have entered the new decade, Surf Style is witnessed as returning in the form of new public skate parks that look like the late-Seventies private parks and companies like Skull Skates, Alva, Z-Flex, Bulldog Skates, Deathbox and others offering board shapes more varied in size and shape then they have been in a long time. Old Shred Dogs are dusting off their stinky pads and dropping in, all kinds of first time skaters are surfing hills, streets and alleys on longboards, ten year old kids go see The Dogtown Movie in the theaters and then go do Bertleman Slides at the park.

Old School, New School, Surf Style, Tech. Skating, Longboarding, Cruising, Bombing, Freestyle, Vert, Stunts or transportation the major appeal of skateboarding is that it cannot be controlled, skateboarding will always go where it wants to go, how much the styles have changed and continue to evolve is a testament to this. G-Turns to Switch Crooks and back it's all skateboarding, not just a pastime or a sport but a lifestyle and an art form, challenging and rewarding for the practitioner while remaining somewhat menacing to society at large. If the past is any indication, the future holds many more styles yet to be developed, by skaters yet to be known promising to take skateboarding into unimagined realms.