These were dangerous contraptions, not least because the metal wheels would grind to a halt on the smallest pebble. There were no skateboarders yet, just creative and adventurous kids. With the advent of soft yet durable polyurethane wheels in the 1970s, however, children, teenagers, and young adults were able to roam more freely, and a world of possibilities slowly began to open up in the everyday spaces of the Southern Californian cities where skateboarding was born. Now devoted to the activity, these young people began to develop a whole new way of seeing. Perhaps a backyard pool would be even more fun if we drained it and skated the transitioned walls? The earliest explorations were modeled on established individual sports: slalom and downhill skateboarding mimic alpine skiing, freestyle skateboarding mimics figure skating, bank and pool skateboarding mimics surfing. Yet even as these skateboarders were imitating other sports, they were also developing a new criterion for evaluating the built environment. They even had a new word to describe it: "skateability." As is often the case, new ways of seeing foster new ways of designing. No longer content with merely repurposing existing architecture, these young adults became vernacular architects in their own right. By the late 1970s, the backyards of Southern California had spawned a new typology, the half-pipe. The first of these were rickety jumbles of plywood and framing lumber. Before long, though, small construction firms began selling plans for more durable structures, and small manufacturers, like Firestone Welding in San Diego, began selling modular prefab half-pipes made from Plexiglas panels over square-tube steel framing. These started to appear in small numbers around the country. During this same era, skaters with some sense of how to navigate municipal government were surprisingly successful in lobbying for concrete parks. All over Southern California, and to a lesser extent on the southeast coast of the United States, cities approved the construction of parks that simulated backyard pools, schoolyard banks, and large drainage ditches.
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