Those that know me will probably tell you I’m really annoying about this. Some could go so far as to say I’m anal about it, in fact. Yet, I think few really understand – or care – why, but I believe it’s a very important part of our lives as skaters.
See, we’re our own little society, a group detached from all else around us. We’re quite a modern society, only 50 or so years old, yet the average young skateboarder could tell you more about the history of their country (In the UK, this stems back thousands of years… If you’re reading this in the USA, you only have a few hundred years, but it’s still relevant) than the history of skateboarding. How many people now know the guys like Russ Howell and Torger Johnson that were around right back at the beginning? Sure, you all know who the Dogtown guys were… now. 10 years ago, long before the Dogtown hype, the likes of Tony Alva and Jay Adams were practically forgotten.

So why get so anal about it? Why bother with such things as trick names? Quite simply, every name is a definition. It gives a unique insight or description of a trick name… If you know why it’s named as it is. For example, did you know the bigspin was named after Brian Lotti, and it was called the Bigspin not just because of the fact it spins round so much, but because that was the name of a Californian lottery from the time? I think that’s quite a quirky little story, there. I mean, thanks to his own creativity, Primo Desiderio is now remembered worldwide through his trick, the Primo slide. Mike Smith’s name is immortalised with the Smith grind and Smith-vert. I wonder how many kids know who invented those tricks though? It’s a shame. These people should, and must, be remembered for their skills and the tricks they contributed to the endless list of moves available to the skater today. That’s one reason names are important.
The second reason is clarity. Especially in this era of electronic communication via the internet, where pictures are not always available, you want to be able to discuss what you did that day. No matter how hard you try, if you didn’t know what to call it, you probably wouldn’t be able to describe something ridiculous like a rail to casper to no handed 50/50. You’d just get lost. However, a lot of terminology gets mixed up. For example, lots of people say kickflip instead of ollie kickflip, meaning when someone does a kickflip (not an ollie kickflip, the original kickflip, invented first, that the ollie kickflip was named after) and says kickflip, nobody really understands. I love kickflips and so that particular example gets to me. Things like trick names are especially important in freestyle though. We have a far wider trick vocabulary, as it were, and so it’s important to define tricks to understand each other. However, short of making a “tricktionary” (an idea many people have wanted to do, but would take a lot of effort) the only way for people to learn the real name for a trick is to learn their history. You see how it all links up now?
I know there are those out there who’ll argue that trick names and what to call a trick isn’t really important. Sure, I agree in that being able to do a trick is more important – but as I’ve established, there are many reasons you should learn what they’re called. Although ignorance is indeed bliss in some cases, it can get really annoying and idiotic as far as skateboarding goes.
Please, do us all a favour. Learn the terminology, use it, and spread the word. If only for the sake of my sanity, if not for the sake of skateboarding as a whole!