[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by riichkay

artsy.net

This is labeled "East L.A. Skateboarders, 1950's".....possibly El Sereno as the photographer, Joe Schwartz, lived there in the early '50's.

Interesting pic. Kids were nailing roller skates to boards at least as far back as the 1920s and '30s, so I think boards with skates attached long predate the 1950s and 1960s. Often the kids nailed a vertical board or wood box to the front for a hand hold, but not always. Usually the things were used as scooters. However, I'm not aware of any evidence they stood up and rode them surfer style for short distances without a handhold but maybe some did. I was a young kid in the 1950s, and I have vague memories of kids in the hood using boards without a vertical handhold as push scooters, usually with one foot pushing forward on the ground. I can't remember if they ever kept both feet on the board and rode them surfer style, but they might have. Maybe a surfer kid invented the modern skateboard back then, and rode it like a surfboard, but it didn't take off until the mid '60s when it became a craze, replacing hula hoops and frisbies. It essentially became "land surfing", an offshoot of the ocean variety, and shared cultural features including surfer lingo. Surfers (and hot rodders) were held in high esteem by many kids, especially white kids, and this was the age of the surfer movies such as the Gidget and Frankie and Annette franchises. Kids who couldn't get to the beach may have deliberately experimented with a land version.