Jumat, 25 Maret 2011

Finger board

A fingerboard is a working replica of a skateboard that a person "rides" by replicating skateboarding maneuvers with their hand.



The device itself is a scaled-down skateboard complete with moving wheels, graphics and trucks.the founder of finger boards was Cam Fox Bryant. Others that have been given credit to the improvements of the common fingerboard are Andrew Lenert Maffson, Cody Fegger as well as Timothy Puffet. A fingerboard is 96 millimeters long or longer, and can have a variety of widths like 26mm (regular), 28mm (wide), and 29mm and up (extra wide). There are the 57mm minis and the 96mm regular and the cruiser boards. Skateboarding tricks may be performed using fingers instead of feet. Most tricks done on a fingerboard are the same as people do on skateboards. Lance Mountain helped develop fingerboarding as a hobby in the late 1970s and wrote an article on how to make fingerboards in TransWorld'sSKATEboarding magazine in 1985. ≥ Although fingerboarding was a novelty for years, they became a collectible toy as skateboard manufacturers realized the potential for product branding and profit starting in the 1990s. Fingerboards are now available as inexpensive novelty toys as well as high-end collectibles, complete with accessories one would find in use with standard-size skateboards. Fingerboards are also used by skateboarders as 3-D model visual aids to understand potential tricks and maneuvers; many users make videos to document their efforts.
Similar to fingerboarding, handboarding is a scaled-down version of a skateboard that a user controls with their hands instead of just fingers, while finger snowboarding utilizes a miniature version of a snowboard.
History



Fingerboards were first created as homemade toys in the 1970s and later became a novelty attached to key chains in skate shops (but were also mentioned as a model for a skateboard.) In the 1985 documentary "Future Primitive" a homemade fingerboard was ridden in a sink; some consider this the earliest fingerboard footage available for public viewing. Currently fingerboards are a popular hobby in Berlin, Germany and often made of wood veneer. The homemade fingerboard was built from cardboard, coffee stirrers, and Hot Wheels axles. Fingerboards have been a peripheral part of the skateboarding industry since the late 1980s and were originally marketed as keychains. Although barely "rideable," they were improved upon by the Tech Deck brand which mass produced a "rideable" miniature skateboard. The first entertainment licensed fingerboards were introduced by Bratz Toys, released through a Hong Kong-based toy company named Prime Time Toys, and designed by Pangea, the company that helped develop the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy line for Playmates Toys. The designs were harnessed from entertainment properties such as "Speed Racer," "Woody Woodpecker," "NASCAR," "Heavy Metal," and "Crash Bandicoot." The licensed boards drove the Tech Deck brand into licensing strong urban brands, rather than simply creating their own designs. In the late 1990s, as fingerboards became more prominent outside the skateboarding community, X-Concepts' Tech Decks licensed "actual pro graphics from major skateboard brands" riding "the 1999 fingerboard wave right into Wal-Mart and other major outlets." In 1999 there was a Tech Deck fashion of collecting one of each design similar to the Beanie Baby fad months prior. Thus, Tech Deck, and its distributors at Spin Master Toys, suddenly found themselves a large market to milk. Entertainment-based fingerboard brands couldn't compete against the urban juggernaut, and eventually disappeared. Other "major players in the skateboard industry" soon followed in hopes of reaping profits as young toy-playing children would choose to take up skateboarding. More modern fingerboards feature "interchangeable wheels and trucks, a fairly accurate scale size, and pad-printed graphics reproduced from the most popular skateboard companies in the business."Many fingerboard companies such as crackerwood provide all manner of fingerboarding accessories including sophisticated and customizable components able to duplicate, in scale-model, the skateboarding experience. They thus developed the fingerboard into a collectible toy and the practice into a "form of mental skating".
Fingerboarding is popular in Europe and the United States, and there is growing popularity in Eastern Europe. Besides skateshops and the internet, Fingaspeak, a fingerboard store opened inSteyr, Austria although rumored to be the worlds first fingerboard store it joins a very small list of fingerboard stores that are available. Although the sport of fingerboarding originated in the United States over 25 years ago it has really caught on fire in the European scene. The United States is following every so slowly and it is estimated that although the popularity seems to be in favor of the Europeans the American Fingerboard scene has much more sales. This may be due to the flooding of the market and the availability of resources in the United States. Fingerboarding has evolved from a hobby to a lifestyle for some people. Fingerboarders have regular "contests, fairs, workshops and other events".Fingerboard-product sales were estimated at $120-million for 1999.
Fingerboarding is a good match for videography as the action can be controlled and framing the activity offers opportunities for creativity. With the rise of the online video business from early 2006, fueled, in part, because the feature that allows e-mailing clips to friends, several thousand finger board and handboard videos can now be found on popular video-sharing sites such asYouTube. Thus even if the weather does not permit a skateboarder to practice outside they could try a potential trick with their scaled-down fingerboard and related items and share the video with whomever they wished.


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