Skateboarding is popular at BYU–Hawaii because of its fun, ease of transportation, and its roots in surfing, conjectured BYUH skater students.
Skateboarder and roller skater Spencer Grubbe, a sophomore studying music from Oregon, said Laie might be biased because of the college students all in one area. “It's a product of the environment,” he said.
The environment requires poor students to travel from place to place, which is why some students start skateboarding to get to places faster than walking.
Lauren Nelson, a junior studying business management and accounting from California, said she started to learn how to longboard weeks ago for this reason and loved it. “It's faster and easier than walking,” she said.
Nelson added in California people skate as a hobby or sport. Yet in Hawaii people pick up skateboarding to get around and go to school.
People said in Laie skateboarding is more than a hobby. “It's more like a lifestyle,” said Taylor Steele, a graduate from BYUH who now teaches a video editing class and has skated as long as he can remember. “For me, it's fun and very therapeutic... You can do it at any time in any spot of smooth asphalt. You need nothing but skateboard bearings and nice wheels. It’s to replicate the feeling of surf,” he said.
Skateboarders generally have a stereotype in places other than Laie. Kodai Otahara, a freshman studying accounting from Japan, said there are strict regulations when it comes to skating in Japan. “Here skateboarding is an accepted way to get around campus. In Japan, skateboards are mostly accepted by doing tricks.”
Priscilla Tandiman, a junior from Indonesia studying biochemistry, sees the difference as well. “Back home, skating was a style kind of thing. Here, people go places with it.”
Students have other ways to ride wheels without a skateboard or a longboard, using roller skates or scooters, which tend to be cheaper than skateboards. Aaron Brown, a freshman studying business from Utah, uses a scooter, but said he usually looks for cheap skateboards for sale on Facebook. “Everyone is looking for one, and when one is for sale, usually people respond quickly.”
Though the origins of skateboarding are hazy, Skateboarding Magazine states skateboarding first started in the 1950s when surfers in California took to the streets on contraptions made of roller skate wheels attached to wooden boards due to the absence of waves.
It became a popular form of sidewalk surfing, and technology has developed since then, reported Skateboarding Magazine.
As skateboarding developed, so did tricks such as the “ollie” and other jumps, according to Skateboarding Magazine.