History of Snakeboards
Do remember when skateboarding first appeared and skateboards were enough? It seems now that the market has been flooded with a multitude of skateboard like boards which offer something a little bit different from the normal skateboard and open up new individuals to skate sports.
The 1st of these hybrid boards I can think back to is the snakeboard. Back 1990’s in the United Kingdom this board had gained quite a cult following in action sports circles and I can remember skating with quite a number of individuals who had taken up the sport. This is following it’s invention in 1989 by James Fisher and Oliver Macleod Smith. The snakeboard, at the time, offered a revolutionary design where two plates were connected via a bar with the feet bound to these plates. The rider would then move his or her feet in an S motion (where the name snakeboard comes from) to propel the skater along. Unfortunately, in the late 90’s the company was sold to MV Sports in England who ruined the sport by making low quality models for high street shops and eventually stopping production. Luckily for you and I, new companies have taken over the mantle these days and are producing highly popular and far better models that we could lay our hands on back in the nineties.
The exciting boards, named Street Boards, are designed in a similar way to traditional skateboards but the front and rear kickers are now move independently to the main body of the board and are fitted with snakeboard like bindings to fix the rider to the streetboard like the previous snakeboards did. The boards are now made by a number of companies such as Flipside Streetboards, Dimension Streetboards, Highland Streetboards and GrossO Boards.
This new activity streetboarding has grown so popular that that there is also world championships which is being held at NASS. This festival is the premier action sports fesitval offering competitions in the following discliplines skate, bmx, motocross, inline, mountain biking and free running.


