Ollie

Learn a life lesson

It’s a trick that changed the whole (skateboarding) world.

Lightly but quickly pop with your back-foot ankle, bring up your upper body, right away raise your front foot to slide the nose, level out the board heading over the obstacle, and landing with all wheels. It is still the threshold for any newbie to enter the skate world and the essence and foundation of most movements. It originated in the 1970s, a time the world was changing and full of modernist spirit. Not only the skateboarding contained experimentation with materials and the need to create new things, but also was the beginning of capitalism commodification and self-referentiality. The art world was in the transition from modernism to contemporary.

An early photo of Alan Gelfand performing the Ollie Air. source: wbur

In the history of skateboarding for over 60 years, Ollie was first originated in 1976 by a teen skater Alan “Ollie” Gelfand, and was named after his nickname. Since then, Ollie has ruled the skateboarding world to this day. We can divide even the history of skateboarding into two distinct eras — “pre-Ollie” and “post-Ollie”.

Beginning with Alan, skaters began to move from flat to vertical aerial performances. “If no one invented This Trick, skateboarding is likely to disappear because it doesn’t develop,” legendary skater Rodney Mullen said, who later in 1982 sparked the flat-ground version of Ollie, pressing the skateboard’s tail to lift the nose and then level the board mid-air using the front foot. This maneuver opened more doors for skateboarding so the skaters could take vertical moves to the flat ground again, which has developed the street style of skateboarding. Style and maneuvers are not the only things Ollie has affected, it also changed what skaters ride and wear, and later meshed with punk and new wave music, Ollie changed the skate style to what we’ve seen today. It also changed what we see when we enter a skate shop, the aesthetics of different skateboards, and the design of skate shoes…. all influenced by Ollie.

Before the Ollie, there was surf skating, ramps skating, vertical half pipes, pool skating, freestyle skateboarding et cetera. However, skateboarding still has had its ebb and flow in popularity. Bad manufacturers, inferior products, lack of research and development, and the safety issues that made cities ban skateboards, economic recessions… have all contributed to the ebb. The invention of Ollie brought a tremendous change to the skateboarding landscape, it completely renovated the way skateboarding exists, into the various street style era.
Though a few geniuses could get Ollie in a few hours, most people need months or even a year or two (like me). But once you learn its principle and become familiar with the maneuver, a gorgeous world will open for you, following with f/s b/s 180, 50–50, kickflip, heelflip, boardslide, and rail tricks….

A good Ollie is about knowing the dynamic relationship, keeping momentum in flux, make it high and effortless. Cohering the speed and popping the tail, using your weight and strength to react with the gravity, keeping the momentum into the air. The state of being chilling is much admired among skaters that came from skilled experience. Just like the common hobby “go fishing” of many skateboarders, both progress forward in a state of being loose enough.

Ollie’s creation expanded the boundaries of possibility. It focuses more on letting everything happen with your Ollie instead of forcing it to happen.