Impactful moments that made you fall in love with skating

[Violator]

I started skating around '95 and I already loved it but the first time I laid eyes on the early Enjoi ads / watched Label Kills for the first time I legit fell in love.  Been obsessed ever since 

[Not A Damn Chance]

Fortunately I have had many amazing moments.
Maybe the first moment was when I first got introduced to the skate world. My uncle bought me a skateboarder mag And TWS The Reason. Everything about it amazed me. I had no idea what was possible. I also didn’t understand it at all, I think I loved the novelty of it.
Thankfully I get that same spark and feeling from time to time.

[Tom Pearl]

yesterday

i went on a bender and didn't skate for 2 weeks and then i woke up yesterday wanting to skate, had more fun in that hour and a half than i did the whole 2 weeks of doing drugs.

i was seriously telling myself damn i fucking love skateboarding, im not gonna neglect it like i just did ever again. i gotta skate, it means everything to me

[GBLange]

got introduced to it by a friend back in 1990 when i was 11. living in a tiny oil n gas town in Miri, Borneo Island.  just the fun factor and bombing hills with friend. then 1991 got a proper Santa Cruz Tom Knox skateboard from Isetan Mall after going on a school holiday to the capital city Kuala Lumpur. 1st skate video that i watch was Sims The Second Coming, which also introduced me to Nirvana

[TheDraught]

got introduced to it by a friend back in 1990 when i was 11. living in a tiny oil n gas town in Miri, Borneo Island.  just the fun factor and bombing hills with friend. then 1991 got a proper Santa Cruz Tom Knox skateboard from Isetan Mall after going on a school holiday to the capital city Kuala Lumpur. 1st skate video that i watch was Sims The Second Coming, which also introduced me to Nirvana

Cool! You still live in Malaysia?

[Darryl_Blueberry]

First ccs blank back in 1997

-Heath Kitchart & Jeremy Klein -> Destroying America
I used it as a english presentation project

Element > Forbes / Pepper / Cannon (2000- 03)

Fulfill The Dream / Jamie Leap of Faith

Fufill The Dream > All of em

[Mr. Kamikazi]

 For me, it was getting skate shoes & realizing that if I was going to wear those, I had to start riding a skateboard. I went to my local shop & the guy who I’m not really cool with anymore, at the time was very nice & talked to me for three hours straight. He was wearing a pair of Nike Angus’s & there was a photo of Shimizu & Weiger wearing Nikes. I was hooked.

[carbonite]

[ziggy]

Animal Chin, I don’t care how corny you think it is

blew my 12 year old mind

[TwisT]

For context, I use to roll up next to curbs, kick turn, and put my front truck over it, stall for a sec then pivot out. It was my way of imitating the ramp skating I saw on SK8TV re-runns

Something that made me fall in love with skating was learning that when I kicked turned onto this ONE rotted wood parking block in my neighborhood, I could boardslide. It only worked on the one rotted Block. I could only skate it when it and the spaces on the left and right were unoccupied. So basically I could only skate it when 3 parking spaces were open. I couldn't land the board slide, but it did not matter. I couldn't ollie either, but I just sort of did it. It was magical. And I Loved it. Again, I couldn't talk to anyone about this. No message boards, or social media. It was just being able to barge this block, after school for 45min before people got home from work.

I think in general, me skating alone, with no social media or friends and just figuring the fuck out, was me falling in love with skating.

[Shalom Peterson]

1. I used to BMX and at the track I remember seeing kids always skate in the cement patch in the spectators area. The first time I saw someone do a boardslide, with all four wheels suspended in air, I was BLOWN AWAY.

2. I went to work with my mom in downtown Miami one day in the summer and while I was there I saw about four different skaters hitting a handrail across the street. Not just boardslides and 50-50s, but legit tricks. Someone also had a VX, and it was the first time I realized ppl film skating too.

3. Tony Hawk landing the 900. That was huge news for everyone I feel like. Even ppl who didn't skate knew about it.

4. Tony Hawk pro skater releasing. One thing I'm thankful for with THPS is it had all the proper terminology. It made learning tricks and trick names easy. The game Top Skater, which I used for trick name references before THPS, was all fake tricks with fake names.

All this happened within like eight months. I was hooked after.

[justpassingthrough]

Heath Kirchart UCI stuff.

[justpassingthrough]

got introduced to it by a friend back in 1990 when i was 11. living in a tiny oil n gas town in Miri, Borneo Island.  just the fun factor and bombing hills with friend. then 1991 got a proper Santa Cruz Tom Knox skateboard from Isetan Mall after going on a school holiday to the capital city Kuala Lumpur. 1st skate video that i watch was Sims The Second Coming, which also introduced me to Nirvana

That video had amazing soundtrack.  Frank Hirata skated to Smells Like Teen Spirit I think.  Been trying for a couple years to find it online somewhere.

[SatanicPanic]

When I was a kid my uncle came to visit and brought his skateboard. He was like “skating is one of the arts”. Been into it ever since.

[adam22savage]

in the PJ video when Pulp asked 'What? Is? This? Feeling Called Love?'
chills

[notinternetfamous]

Getting my first physical skate video which was Emerica Stay Gold and I religiously re-watched Bryan Herman's and Andrew Reynold's parts.

[work_lurker]

I legally fell in love with skateboarding in the 6th grade, year 2005, when I was watching TV with my parents and all I could think about was doing pop shuvits and front 180's in the garage instead. That same year during the science fair, I learned 50-50's on the curb outside, and felt like I developed a super power.

[Paul Cicero]

I skated by myself as a young teen and I still remember having to muster up the guts to go to the only local park on my own, intimidated as hell. I remember doing a nose manny across the park pad and one of the locals there who fucking killed it gave me the board slap and a big “yeah!” when I finally did it without clipping on the way out.
Intimidation completely disappeared and it made me feel part of the session. Fuck, that was like 15 years ago and I could still tell you exactly where the guy was standing in the park when he propped me.

[GardenSkater77]

First skateboard shop in my town sold high end slalom equipment. Even in the Mid-80s I remember the price for a complete being well over $100.

They also had a few regular boards and those really stoked me out. Unfortunately, I got a Nash and stickers for these beauties:

[tkp]

[rawbertson.]

i rub bricked my first spot june 20, 2021

since then i have made around 20 spots, some a little more involved requiring some construction adhesive etc.
there is something really rewarding about building your own spots, the first time i did that curb was a really amazing feeling.  i was so scared about getting caught. now i am almost too careless about it, but i wear a hi-vis safety vest and just act like i am supposed to be there and no one seems to give a shit 

yesterday i did a new spot and i realized when i got there i forgot all my supplies. All I had was an old indy hangar, and the most dollar store wax possible. After 2-3 min of grinding the indy on the curb and couple min of waxing i was grinding that shit. it was so crunchy, the feeling was awesome. never gets old. now my friend has a new curb in front of his house

[sharkin]

my neighbor skated in the early 90s he was probably 10 years older than me.

I have an image burned into my brain of watching him and his friends taking turns doing ollies over a folding stool. I had never seen someone ollie before and it just blew my mind and looked completely magical.

[stevedave]

For me, I think I can look back at certain moments/vids/photos that made me fall in love with skateboarding, but as I’ve gotten older (almost 50), I try to think about the things that make me STILL love skateboarding.

[chris.]

My older sister went to college at UNC in Chapel Hill. There’s one visit in particular I remember well. I went to School Kids Records and got a copy of Grandaddy- Sumday and Sonic Youth - Experimental Jet Set…. It was freezing cold that night, and I just cruised around the whole campus listening to Sumday over and over. CD player jammed into my pants pocket somehow. Bombing hills and popping over manhole covers. Great night.

[blurst_of_times]

Opening up an issue of Skateboarder at the public library when I was 14.

[tom]

Something that made me fall in love with skating was learning that when I kicked turned onto this ONE rotted wood parking block in my neighborhood, I could boardslide. It only worked on the one rotted Block. I could only skate it when it and the spaces on the left and right were unoccupied. So basically I could only skate it when 3 parking spaces were open. I couldn't land the board slide, but it did not matter. I couldn't ollie either, but I just sort of did it. It was magical. And I Loved it. Again, I couldn't talk to anyone about this. No message boards, or social media. It was just being able to barge this block, after school for 45min before people got home from work.

I think in general, me skating alone, with no social media or friends and just figuring the fuck out, was me falling in love with skating.

Funnily enough one of my earliest skate memories was similar. I got my first board sometime in 97, but I couldn't ollie until 99. The few skateparks that existed were really intimidating; vibing, shit talking, and bullying kept me out of the parks for years. There was one of those kinds of parking poles that people pole jam just hanging out on the ground in this fenced in area with one of those huge electrical boxes outside of a warehouse at the end of my street. I'd hop the fence and no pop boardslide it for hours on end. Since I couldn't ollie I'd do lots of ride on grinds off of curbs and tons of slappy noseslides. I even found a curb that had a little bit of pavement sloped up to it so you could kickturn onto it. My limited abilities at the time made me seek out spots I could skate. I'd skate a lot solo even though I had the early makings of a skate crew. Once someone got a copy of Fulfill The Dream we all started learning to ollie and flip our boards

[Pooh Drunx]

welcome to hell came out the summer going into 6th grade.... it was a wrap after that.

[switchfakie]

we blew it at some point opened my mind

[pops]

I think I was on 4th grade, tried my friends old school board and got hooked. The same year THPS came out and we played it. Seeing the little video clips of actual pros and later on I saw The End and Misled Youth. Then I felt "this is it".

[OneMore]

The first time I saw Penny skate did it