Product Description

Designed for a dedicated readership of skateboarding fans and aficionados, The Concrete Wave provides: A spectacular history of skateboarding (1960-2000); Hundreds of fabulous photographs - from the archival to the awesome!; An interview with world champion Tony Hawk, and much more...; All presented in a format both radical and readable and designed to appeal to everyone who loves their skateboard!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1234793 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

From Library Journal
Forty years after its birth on the streets and in the empty swimming pools of California, skateboarding has become a legitimate sport. Legend Tony Hawk has graced a "Got Milk?" ad, and skate parks are popping up in landlocked middle America. Although Brooke, a "skategeezer" and member of Toronto's Metro Longboarders, wrote this for skateboarding's retired, active, and future practitioners, any sports fan will enjoy this colorful crash course. After a brief prehistory, readers ride four "waves"Aa nod to surfingAfrom 1959 to the present. Within each, Brooke features skateboarding's inventors, investors, stars, companies, media, and technological advances in a magazine-like layout. Best of all are the smart-ass anecdotes (e.g., Bob Schmidt's "The Day They Invented Skateboarding") by skateboarders, which originally appeared on Brooke's Skategeezer home page. A four-part appendix lists skate pros, movies, competitions, and parks. A high-speed treat, even for the gravitationally challenged. Highly recommended, duuude.AHeather McCormack, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Author
I have been skateboarding since 1975 and run a website called the Skategeezer Homepage. It was this site that led to the publication of this book.

About the Author
Michael Brooke is a sportswriter, sports historian and, not surprisingly, skateboarder.

Customer Reviews

Early History of Skateboarding
This 1999 book is more like a bunch of 'zines stitched together than a straightforward histroy of skateboarding: There are lots of sidebars, numerous authors and topics, full-page illustrations that look like ads, and unexpected excursions into such areas as "Skateboards at the Movies."

Still, there's a lot of love within this book. Those of you who enjoyed the recent documentary, "Dogtown and the Z-Boys," will find a similar fan/participant enthusiasm here. The early years are emphasized: The index lists Tony Hawk on only about 10 pages, and the X-games on only 4 pages. Still, for a chronicle of (especially) the early years of skateboarding, for its photos, density of information, and the enthusiasm of the writers, this is a good book for the skateboarding fan. 197 pages of text, an index, lots of photos, and five interesting appendices: "Pros of the Last 40 Years," "Skateboards at the Movies," "Skateboard Competitions (through 1993 only)," "Memorable Skateparks of North America," and "Skate 'Zines." What's really needed is an updated version of the book.

badly jaded book
Possibly one of the most lame jaded skateboard books written without good fact checking and bought and paid for by a fausto vitello mythology of SF- centric [stuff].
It is full of horrible misconceptions and leaves out the real people who built the sport. It is total BS by a dude in the frozen north who is so detached from the scene.

absolute GARBAGE, should be a 0.

concrete wave
this book was kick [rear].If you want to learn your skateboard history this book is perfect for doing so.