Skateboarding
Skateboarding
Skateboarding lingo you won’t learn at school
Skateboarders have their own set of coded words which is important to know if you are among them.
Before I started skating (i.e. skateboarding) if someone said, "Please get me a deck" I would have assumed they meant an audio tape player or playing cards (since I am old school). But in the urban sport of skateboarding, deck means the skateboard itself.
Here is a bunch of words skaters (skateboarders) use almost every time they go out skating with their buddies, but nobody else knows what the hell they are saying. It’s almost like a coded language for the uninitiated:
Gnarly- (narlee)
"Gnarly" is originally a surfing term but skaters use it avidly to describe anything that is awesome, amazing, retarded and/or dangerous, crazy and downright reckless. Sometimes skaters might even split and repeat it and say "gnar gnar" as in "lets go get some gnar gnar today". Which would mean let’s go do something awesome and dangerous today.
Getting Airborne
© The Outdoor Journal
Sketchy
Sketchy is used to describe anything that is not perfect or ideal. If the landing at the bottom of a set of stairs is rough and cracked up the landing would be called sketchy.
Similarly if some dude can make front side grinds but looks like he might fall off everytime he goes for it his style would be called sketchy. If you make a kick-flip over a gap, stick the landing but almost fall over that would be a sketchy landing.
Make
A "make" is when you land the trick you have been trying for a while. For example, "I am trying to make the backside tail slide", "Hey! I saw you filming my attempts, did you get the one I MADE?"
Landing Bolts
"Landing bolts" means to land your trick perfectly, technically you would be landing with both your feet on the bolts of your skateboard.
Dial/On lock
If you can do a trick over and over consistently without trouble, means you have that trick "dialled" or "on lock".
Snake
Here is a common situation, there are around 10 skaters around the bowl/mini-ramp/skate spot and only one person can skate the obstacle at a time. Skate sense dictates that everyone takes turns and you have to wait between your attempts. However there is always the impatient dude who can't wait for his turn, he is called the "snake". The snake will drop into the bowl when it is not his turn, forcing the next person to wait longer. It can also be used as a verb as in "I was waiting to drop in when that dude snaked me".
