What is a fingerboard and what is it for

Extreme sports have always been able to change and reformat under the pressure of surrounding factors. One day skateboarding had a little brother – fingerboarding. We’re talking about the very small skateboards that many teenagers “skate” on at home, at school and on buses. How it happened, who brought this culture to Russia and what it takes to start skating too – we will answer all these questions below.

Fingerboard is a word that is a complex of finger and board. This is the name of a smaller copy of the classic skateboard, on which you “ride” with the help of your fingers. The tricks are identical to what skaters do. And you can “skate” anywhere.

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The legend of the first fingerboard

In 1988, one rainy day in 1988, a young skater from California, Steven Asher, stayed home. He needed a way to “kill” time, so he made a small semblance of a skateboard out of whatever was at hand. Intuitively it turned out that it was convenient to “ride” on such a skateboard with index and middle fingers, and you can also do the same tricks that you can do on the street. And then the stars aligned.

Peter – Steven’s father – was a well-known man in the toy industry in America at the time. He was greatly fascinated by his son’s idea, and he decided that it would appeal to all teenagers in the United States. Especially since skateboarding was already popular not only in the country, but also in the world. This is how Tech Deck fingerboards came into being.

Tech Deck produced fingerboards in collaboration with the Hong Kong toy company Prime Time Toys and the American Pangea. Images from cartoons and computer games were used to design the boards: the Japanese manga Speed Racer, the animated movie Nascar, the game Crash Bandicoot and many others.

In the mid-1990s, Tech Deck’s “boards” gained mass popularity, which contributed to their movement beyond the toy world and the creation of a professional line of fingerboards with designs from skateboard brands.

The first prototypes of fingerboards were stationary toys. Their wheels didn’t spin, their suspensions were conventional, and the skateboard deck was made of cardboard.

As a counterbalance to this beautiful story there is the fact that Robert Lance Mountain in 1985 released an article “How to make a fingerboard”. And not somewhere, but in the cult magazine Transworld Skateboarding, thus launching a new popular hobby.

All in the same 1985, the American skateboard company Powell Peralta published a video in which Lance Mountain himself rode a miniature skateboard on a sink. The video viralized heavily on the web and was popular with other skaters.

In the noughties, fans of fingerboarding began to organize contests around the globe. For example, at the Fast Fingers competition in Germany, 64 specially invited participants competed for a prize of $ 1.5 thousand. Even Tony Hawk himself could not pass by this boom and in 2011 took part in one of these contests.

Tony Hawk

Appearance of miniature toy in Russia

The question of who was the first to make a toy skateboard in Russia is more like a riddle about an egg and a chicken. But if you look at it from the other side, the popularization of this subculture and the opening of the first mass production of fingerboards in Russia are connected with Nikita Ryabin. He was a system administrator when he was offered a part-time job at an online skateboarding store that also sold fingerboards. Nikita wanted to get involved in selling these miniature skateboards more tightly, but to do it not like everyone else, but to get a more truthful likeness. Later, he met skater Alexei Sitasem, who had already been making fingerboards on his balcony for several years. They teamed up, and soon there was a brand of toy skateboards “Turbo”.

Domestic fingerboarding today

Nikita Ryabin

leader in the development of fingerboarding in Russia, owner of the “Turbo” sports brand.

Now fingerboarding is more of a hobby than a sport. There is no official federation in Russia, and only TRB Group has been organizing competitions on a regular basis since 2006. Last year we launched the Russian championship in fingerboarding and skateboarding. The prize fund of the fingerboard contest amounted to 100 thousand rubles. This year the contests will be held in 22 cities of Russia, and the prize fund will be 250 thousand rubles. Our goal is to make fingerboarding closer to professional sports, to awaken the desire to hone skills, compete and win.

Firstly, it is just a cool and interesting toy that has been winning the hearts of teenagers around the world for decades. Secondly, it is a hobby of skaters. After all, tricks on a fingerboard are done on the same principles as on a regular skateboard.

Differences of the “fingerboard” from classic skateboards

Fingerboards are almost no different from full-size skateboards, except… size. The decks are made of several layers of wood, a sandpaper is glued on top to improve grip on the fingers, the wheels are made of polyurethane, and the suspensions are made of metal. There are variations of boards with different deck widths and different concaves (camber).

Perhaps the difference is really in the proportions: fingerboards come in very wide (up to 42 mm with an average length of about 100 mm). Skateboards are not made in such proportions, they are uncomfortable to ride.

Fingerboards are very affordable

Taking up miniature skateboarding is the most budget-friendly hobby possible. The cost of the simplest wooden fingerboard of Russian production starts from 700 rubles. Advanced models, including custom models (created not in production, but by hand) can cost 3-5 thousand rubles. Superbudget versions of skateboards (including plastic), of course, you can order on AliExpress, but the quality is not guaranteed.

To improve in skating can be used figures – obstacles similar to those that stand in large skate parks. Depending on the size and complexity of their price will average from 1 thousand to 4 thousand rubles. And if you become a real fan of fingerboarding, you can buy a whole fingerstol (skate park in miniature) at a price of 30 thousand rubles.

It is very easy to start lessons

First you need to buy a fingerboard. Then free up a place for skating at home. After that, in YouTube you type in the phrase: “How to make an “ollie” on a fingerboard?”, look and try to repeat. There are a lot of training videos, the main thing is to find the ones that are clear to you.

You can ride a big fingerboard for free in the skate shop “Legend” in Krasnodar (29 Mira Street) and in the same skate shop in the park “Uram” in Kazan (33 Kremlin Street).

Read about the world of big skateboarding in this article.