Did Alan Gelfand STEAL the Ollie? 

there was a time.

Right. I remember that being the ONLY trick here in Gallup NM for about 6 months. Til a VHS tape from Cali opened us up to “Real” skating in ‘84-85

I got my very first board from KayBee. It was a Nash Tuf-Top. It was the upgrade board from the plastic banana. Wood and grip tape was the upgrade. Although looking back, it wasn’t even really grip tape. It was sprayed on aluminum oxide grit grip. I didn’t care. It had a tail and looked “rea”l at the time. I had nothing else to go by til I saw an ad in the back of BMX Action for Santa Cruz boards. I thought they were all the size of the Nash til I saw one in person a couple months later. Then the Nash trucks wouldn’t fit a real deck and that brought a new problem. Roller skate wheels fit though. That was an upgrade from the Nash wheels. Urethane Roller Skate Wheels!

Good idea! I'll write that down and see what I can do.

I'm not 100%, but I believe it has something to do with the wave-like motion of the wobble, and as you go faster, the bumps on the ground keep adding energy and amplitude to the wave until the back-forth swing is so violent it throws you off the board. it also has to do with us trying to adjust the wobble, like the balance meter in Tony Hawk games, when you go way too far to one side, your instinct is to counter that by going the opposite, but you're supposed to go just a tiny bit- but as we get worried about the wobble, we put a lot of force into pressing down the other side and go too far, now we have to reverse the wobble and go back, but because we're so worried, we do it so rapidly with a lot of force, it just makes the wobble worse. if you played THPS games, you would've probably tried to save a manual or grind when it tipped over to one side by mashing down the opposite direction button only to have the meter swing rapidly and throw you off.

So then, theoretically, I should just look down when I'm having speed wobbles as to collapse the wave function into a single state and become stable again

VLSkate and lowering your center of gravity.

I talked to my friend who does longboard downhill . . . it's Self-Exciting Oscillation generally speed gets a point where it triggers into the natural oscillation of your trucks and the trucks try to return to their natural (neutral) position, continually increasing the amplitude / wobble. Once can adjust it via more stable skateboard (trucks, bushings wheels, wheel base, wheel size / durometer), but even then you still get it. The general problem is the skater can't handle or over adjusts and they get thrown off. Experience teaches you to ride it out (lower center of gravity, body and limb positioning, and also doing speed checks / carves / different types of slides to control speed.

I call BS

but did you land it?

+Billy Hanning thanks dude! I'm glad you found my new stuff

Hahaha ding ding, you win this one

We'll see! If I get some more exposure and attention, I might be able to start doing interviews with some of these guys, which would be great. At this point, any time I try to reach out, I just get ignored. But you never know what the future will hold.

Interviews would be awesome to watch! Hope it happens :)

nice video, but you missed out NATAS & gonz! no others have done as much for the OLLIE, and modern STREET-SKATING!! they took it to the street and used it to get on walls, benchs and other stuff, history was made and nothing was safe...EVEN HANDRAILS!!!

Keep going,Skateboarding scene is like all things these days,so of course you ll get ignored..Industries run the game as they have the means and the fame to publish,although the youtube thing(that i am not exactly sure if its for good or for bad) gave them a good hit in that..

Jeff Duerr was a super quiet guy then, probably is now as well. Im pretty sure he wouldn't care.

Thank you!

leashes are for kooks.

Thanks! I hope you're right. I love your username.

I'm planning on it. I still have some more research to do. They were invented at pretty much the same time. I think Masahiro Fujii was the first guy to do hospital flips, but I haven't seen a good reference for where the name came from. I'm 28 and I knew about both names growing up.

hospital flip uses front foot and casper uss back foot

Hospital flip is a term made up for the tony hawk games, Rodney invented Casper flips in the late 80s and I think the first one on film is in questionable from plan b where Rodney does double kickflip Casper flip. Think about it, he's been doing Casper stalls since the early 80s the next step was Casper flips. In reality There is no such thing as a hospital flip. They're all Casper flips.

man alan is the man

Usually you're right! The dude was head and shoulders above everyone else, but there was tons of other talent around at the time too.

If I ever find some interviews about it and learn enough to make a proper video, I will. But here are my thoughts off the top of my head: Back in the day, you could do shove its in a line. Not even popped. You could do a shove it, then a bigspin, then a fakie 360 shove it, and it was cool. And if you ever did a trick where the board landed backward, it was no big deal because you could just do a shove it to turn your board back and keep going. In time, things changed. Every trick in a line had to be a hammer. So if you did a varial flip, you would HAVE TO do a hardflip, inward heel or varial heel too. Shove its just weren't hard enough to be cool. So 180 spinning tricks were falling out of favor. On top of that, varial flips are just an easier version of a 360 flip. People weren't doing laser flips and 360 hardflips that much yet, so the 180 versions of those weren't as 'uncool'. I hope that helps. Again, I'll make a full video if I run into any good info on it, but that's how I think it went down.

I really hope you've seen the Amazing Richie Jackson Skateboard Show episode about the varial flip.

Good tip!

No, I never saw that before! That was crazy. It doesn't look fake... But I don't know how it could be possible either. If you find anything out, let me know!

Rad Rat Video - I sent a few emails to companies and mags asking for any tips on how he did that, but only heard a "we'll let you know if we find anything out" response.

Great! Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.

According to Craig B. Snyder and other contemporaries, he wasn't.

+David Russell Yeah it's pretty lame. I watched a few interviews with him over the years and he very clearly talks about how he invented it. He knew what he was doing.

It’s a good deck for bowls tho. (Wide, Long wheelbase, short nose, and concave) you can get the bones deck, same shape but different guys pro model.

Yes, but that involves grabbing your board.

Rodney did, though.

It actually is Phil Hartman (voice of Troy Mclure).

That's him alright. He was also a commercial artist who created some legendary 70s album covers.

+Hosoi Archives they weren't watching until he was famous for inventing it

Rad Rat Video right but what is implied is some conspiracy, many tricks the inventor or first make are unknown. No one knew in the late 70's how big the Ollie would become to skateboarding

was backside

@@wantmeX so?

so alan did first frontside one

What'd you search yourself?

He sure does and he was pretty good back in the day too.