Powerslides are the coolest and fastest way to stop on skateboards. A powerslide is where you are skating along, sometimes pretty fast, and spin your board to the side and skid to a stop. It's very similar to how you stop on a snowboard, except that if you mess up, instead of falling on snow you eat concrete or pavement. Most people have a hard time learning to powerslide, but it's extremely valuable. Imagine being able to stop immediately - you can use the powerslide to keep yourself from getting into traffic, to keep from running into someone, and to stop with style.

Read How to Powerslide to learn how to put on the breaks, and look good doing it!

Photo © Jamie O'Clock

etnies just announced the 3rd Annual etnies Girls Get on Board (GGOB) clinic, a nation-wide series of female-only action sports instructional programs committed to inspiring girls to participate in action sports and encouraging them to remain active to lead a healthy lifestyle. For this year’s program, etnies has again partnered with the Girls Riders Organization (GRO), a nonprofit group with a mission to inspire, educate and support girls in action sports, to present a tour of GGOB clinics and special events. Other partners in the event series include skateboarding label Cool Girls Decks, the Boarding For Breast Cancer foundation (B4BC) and the HB Wahine All Girl Surf School. Find out more about Girls Get on Board.

Have you ever been to a clinic like this? Leave a comment and tell us about it!

Logo © Etnies

The Free Flow Tour will include a total of 29 skate competitions (five skate vert and 24 skate park) and 20 BMX competitions (four BMX vert and 16 BMX park) at 28 parks across the U.S. The top skate and BMX finishers at each of the 49 competitions will be flown to the AST Dew Tour’s Toyota Challenge, in Salt Lake City, Utah for the Free Flow Tour Finals, where one champion will be crowned in each discipline. Encompassing the ‘Flow to Pro’ theme, the two overall skate and BMX park champions and the two overall skate and BMX vert champions win a wild card spot to compete against the pros at that final stop of the AST Dew Tour, the PlayStation Pro®, in Orlando, Fla.

Find out more about the 2008 schedule and the Free Flow Tour!

Logo © AST

It's almost Mother's Day - time to celebrate! And the Fifth Annual Mighty Mama Skate-O-Rama is the place to do it, held Sunday, May 11th 2008 at the Laguna Niguel Skateboard Park in Orange County, CA. The Mighty Mama Skate-O-Rama features skateboarding women of all ages in a non-competitive, family friendly atmosphere. You don't have to be a "mom" to participate - all women and thier supporters are welcome! As always, there will be a raffle of skate gear and other cool prizes, with benefits going to children's literacy programs. Check out the Mighty Mama Skate-O-Rama website for more!

Skateboarding is a strange business right now - it focuses so much on the young, the punk, and the street, that you have to wonder where skateboarding is going.

Recently, IASC, the International Association of Skateboard Companies had a get together, and they had Andrew Smith, a former employee of Harley-Davidson talk a little. So what can skateboarding learn from Harley-Davidson? A lot, actually! Take a look at IASC, Harley Davidson and Me by Michael Brooke, AKA Skategeezer of Concrete Wave magazine, as he digs in to what we can learn, what skateboarding has done, and where it needs to go.

The Ian Tilmann Foundation was formed in 2006 by Ian's parents, and in memory of Ian who died from traumatic brain injury suffered from a skate boarding accident. The Foundation’s mission is prevention of traumatic brain injury, with focus on skateboarding. their approach is simple and direct…If a skater will promise to wear a helmet they give them one…..FREE. Since 2006 the Foundation has given out over 1,200+ helmets to skaters on the Florida west coast and south Louisiana.

This is an incredible idea, and I'm impressed that the Tilmanns have taken this on themselves, but they need help. They raise half the funds for helmets from private donations (both corporate and individuals) and half through skate event productions including amateur, sponsored and soon professional skaters. They did 450 helmets in 2007. So far in 2008, they have already done over 300 helmets!

Can you help them out? They are looking for contributions (it costs about $25 to put a helmet on a kid), volunteers, and groups, companies or philanthropists who will help the program with sustaining funds. In 2008 the Foundation is expanding the helmet program to public skate parks and they plan to place over 2,500 helmets. For more info, check out the Ian Tilmann Foundation website.

Photo © Ian Tilmann Foundation

The Bert Slide was invented by the Zephyr team (the Z-Boys), and was named after the famous surfer named Larry Bertleman. Bert is currently living on Kauai, and is working with Jay Adams and ActivEmpite to release a molded technology surfboard series of his classic Seventies twin-fins.

The Bert Slide is where the skater crouches down low and plants one hand on the ground, letting their feet and board slide out 180 degrees. The Bert Slide is a very stylish, smooth, old school trick that anyone can learn - you don't even need to know how to Ollie in order to learn to Bert Slide! Plus, it just looks sweet. Learn how to Bert Slide!

So exactly how much do you know about the origin of skateboarding? Do you know who invented it? Where it started? And exactly who are the Z-Boys? Or what about the Bones Brigade?

The answers to these questions, and many more, can be found in the History of Skateboarding - a thrilling ride through the early days of skateboards (or what we would today call planks with metal wheels nailed to them), all the way up to the birth of the X Games. You can also find out the true history behind the infamous Zephyr team (or Z-Boys), and the history of the X Games.

Then, when you say "Ollie", you'll know the vicious and bloody tale that goes along with that name. Or, you'll know that it's named after Alan Gelfand ... but you'll KNOW that! Revel in the power of KNOWLEDGE!

Photo © Makaha Skateboards

Warren from Hong Kong X Fed & Hkskateboarding.com recently told us about the recent AST Skateboard contest in China.

"The organizers of AST here in Guangzhou China changed the rules on the fly to exclude Hong Kong Skaters from ever getting a chance to get any prize or go to Beijing, meaning they excluded them from even the slightest chance of trying for the prize of Woodward for training. As you can see from the video footage, they allowed Hong Kong skaters to 'participate' & skate in the contest, but they were exempt from any placings at all."

This has become quite a scandal in Hong Kong, and the organizers later issued a statement on Skatehere.com saying their decision to change the rules was because Hong Kong is a separate region and to give mainland Chinese skaters more opportunity to go to the US to train since Hong Kong skaters were so good already.

So, it's like being complimented while being kicked in the face. It's weird the things that China gets away with. Can you imagine that in the US, or ... anywhere else? If we had a skate competition in the States, but said no Californians could win? They could enter, but no winning!

Ever wonder how many skaters there really are out there? No one knows! Skaters are like cockroaches - you turn the lights on, and we scatter! And, you just can't kill us, no matter how hard you try. And some of us are very very disgusting.

I get this question a lot, so when I know anything at all, I like to share it! I recently had a conversation with someone who knew a thing or two, and she shared the stat with me that the average participation in skateboarding from 2004 to 2006 was 14,433,000 skaters in the United States.

So, how many skaters are there now, then? Well, all I know for sure are more. And how does this compare with the rest of the planet? These are all good questions, and I'm sure that someone out there knows the answers! So, if you know something, or have a guess, or just want to lie online, please leave a comment below!