When the World Wildlife Fund asked artist Mac Premo to find everyday objects and give them a new purpose, he turned trash into skateboards. Two organizations, Chill and Stoked, helped them give forty Bucket Boards to underpivileged kids. They hope to sell them to the general public soon.
Find out more here.
Story and editing by Jeremy Dreyfuss
It's hard to imagine having fun in a water park if its been emptied of all the water. But that's exactly what Red Bull set out to do. They brought in three pro skaters to Dubai's Aquaventure Waterpark on a maintenance day, and they turned the water slides into their own personal skate park.
Produced by Rob Ludacer
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Stair-Rover is a custom longboard built to ride on stairs seamlessly.
Produced by Jenner Deal
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Shaun White is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and winner of 23 Winter and Summer X Games medals. He's best-known for being a professional snowboarder and skateboarder, but he's also an entrepreneur. White recently launched a new clothing line called WHT SPACE, in partnership with Macy's.
He stopped by Business Insider to discuss a range of topics, from sports and business to personal strategy. We asked him how he manages to succeed during high-pressure situations.
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The International Olympic Committee announced Wednesday that six sports will be added to the docket at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
The IOC voted to include baseball, softball, surfing, skateboarding, karate, and sport climbing. The news comes on the heels of the 2014 vote from the IOC that ended a 28-sport cap at the Summer Games. The six sports will also add 18 more medals and nearly 500 new athletes to the 2020 Olympics, according to Sports Illustrated.
While baseball and softball were both featured in the Olympics as recently as 2008, the other four events will be new.
Climbing will reportedly feature two categories for both men and women: bouldering and a combined lead and speed. From SI:
"In lead climbing, the competitors start at the bottom of a course and must climb within a set time frame and on only one attempt. Speed climbing involves a sometimes easier course that athletes focus on completing as fast as possible. Bouldering involves no ropes and can be attempted several times as courses are shorter and more difficult within a set amount of time."
Karate, debuting in its country of origin, will reportedly feature two categories. From SI:
"The Olympic competition will feature 60 athletes in six kumite and two kata demonstration categories. Kata is more of a demonstration sport that shows off karate's technique. Kumite is fighting that involves punching and kicking."
Details about both surfing and skateboarding as Olympic competitions are not yet clear.
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Shaun White is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and winner of 23 Winter and Summer X Games medals. He's best-known for being a professional snowboarder and skateboarder, but he's also an entrepreneur. White recently launched a new clothing line called WHT SPACE, in partnership with Macy's.
He stopped by Business Insider to discuss a range of topics, from sports and business to personal strategy. We asked him how he manages to succeed during high-pressure situations.
Follow BI Video:On Twitter
Disclaimer: Do not attempt to try this.
Skateboarder Cheung Jai has taken his love of heights to a scarily new level.
One of his latest videos shows him balancing his skateboard on a rusty railing on top of a Hong Kong skyscraper.
He's gained a lot of attention on Instagram, with people either praising his bravery or criticising him.
Produced by Claudia Romeo
One thing is for sure, electric skateboards are way cooler and way more fun than those ridiculous hoverboards.
I spent some time with the new second generation electric skateboard from one of the biggest names in the business, Boosted Board, and I'm not looking forward to returning it.
The new board improves on the original with a few useful and meaningful new features, and it's an absolute blast to ride. That said, it's an expensive blast. It's $999 for the base Single model, and up to the Dual+ for $1,499.
Check it out:
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You can set different levels of power depending on how proficient you are. The higher the level, the more sensitive the remote, and the faster you can go.
You can go up to 18 to 22 miles per hour, depending on the model.
The Boosted Board basically addresses everything I didn't like about regular skateboards. I remember thinking when I first rode skateboards that I wished I didn't have to kick to maintain speed so I could simply cruise and enjoy the ride. And going downhill was never fun because I had little control of my speed.
The remote takes care of the accelerating and braking you did with your feet on a regular skateboard. There's a trigger that activates the board's electric motor, and you roll the remote's wheel up with your thumb to accelerate, or down to brake.
The next Olympics are still a year away, and already, Shaun White is thinking about the games after that.
And it has nothing to do with the halfpipe.
The world's best-known snowboarder tells The Associated Press he's exploring competing at the Tokyo Summer Olympics in skateboarding, which will be added to the program for 2020.
"It's right there in the distance for me," White said.
Since he was a kid, the 30-year-old White has excelled on both the snow and on the ramps. Of the 23 X Games medals he's won, five of them came in vert at the Summer X Games. But with snowboarding part of the Winter Olympics and no similar option in the Summer Games, White put most of his focus on the snow, and it paid off with gold medals in 2006 and 2010.
The International Olympic Committee is adding street and park skateboarding, neither of which are White's specialty. Some thought it might count him out for the Summer Games, but he's viewing park skateboarding — which mixes vertical jumps with street features like rails and stairs — as a conquerable challenge.
"It's going to take a little learning curve but it won't be too dramatic," White says.
Right now, of course, White's main focus is returning to the top on the halfpipe. Wednesday marked the one-year-out celebration to next year's Olympics in South Korea.
White's fourth-place finish in Sochi at the last Winter Olympics was a stunner — and it still leaves a sour taste in his mouth, though White says ultimately, it kept his career going.
"I didn't think that would be my last Olympics; I was thinking about Korea," White said. "But people kept bringing it up, and it kept getting spun in the media about that being it for me and I should retire. And I started listening. I started thinking, 'Oh, wow, should I?'"
Answer: No.
White doubled down on his fitness, brought 2002 Olympic medalist J.J. Thomas in as his new coach and considers himself as fit and prepared as ever heading into the run-up to Korea.
White struggled at this year's Winter X Games, finishing 11th, but last weekend, he bounced back with a title at the Mammoth Grand Prix — held at the resort he grew up on and now co-owns.
He will not go into Korea as the prohibitive favorite for gold, the way he entered the last three Winter Games. Japanese snowboarders Ayumu Hirano and Taku Hiraoka won silver and bronze in Sochi behind Iouri Podladtchikov, the iPod, who is also considering trying skateboarding in Tokyo.
White describes his ascent in the two sports as "a hard and strange time in my life when I bounced around" and didn't exactly fit in on either universe. In snowboarding, he was too young (and too successful) to be welcomed in with other top riders; in skateboarding, he says he was, at first, viewed as an outsider coming in to chip away some of the other riders' shot at money and fame.
"I'm obviously taking my time to just focus on Korea right now," White said. "But I'm already talking about trying to build a (skateboarding) setup at my house or somewhere accessible to me in LA so I can start training for that."
Vans — the California clothing company best known for its action sports apparel — is looking to broaden its appeal to people beyond the skating community.
Its latest ad campaign highlights individuals from a variety of different creative walks of life and represents a departure from its usual skater-focused marketing.
Vans' global brand president Doug Palladini said in an interview with Adweek: "We are no longer just a skateboarding brand. We’ve become a broader lifestyle brand."
He added later: "We’re very much focused on that powerful point of view that thinking differently and being a true individual is really an important thing to us."
Palladini said the "Off the Wall" slogan still retains its history in skateboarding, but the brand hopes this campaign will represent all kinds of self-expression.
Each video from the digital series brings in a different personality from music, art, street culture, and skateboarding, who talk about how they work and express themselves.
In one video, for example, style blogger Jayne Min says: "You don't have to follow what the trend is, just be yourself."
Vans is coming off its 50 year anniversary in 2016, a year during which it opened a number of "House of Vans" locations — a spaces that mix skateparks, art galleries, cafes, and live music venues — in the US and one in London.
The company finished the 2016 financial year with a 6% lift in annual revenue to $2.3 billion.
Watch the full video series here:
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In 1999, Tony Hawk became the first skateboarder ever to successfully complete a 900, a 900-degree aerial spin.
It happened at the sixth X Games in San Francisco, and it took Hawk 11 tries to land the move. "This is the best day of my life,"he told the crowd.
But in hindsight, Hawk, now 48, doesn't see that moment as the pinnacle of his career. That came in 2003 — when Hawk played himself on an episode of "The Simpsons."
In the episode, "Barting Over," Bart meets Hawk and joins his skateboarding tour; then Bart's father, Homer, challenges Hawk to a skateboard match.
"To this day, I still get quoted on the streets from it," Hawk told Business Insider during an interview at the Success Makers Summit in April, hosted by American Express OPEN.
Even more importantly, guest-starring on "The Simpsons" showed Hawk that his personal passion — skateboarding — was gaining traction among a wider audience.
"It was a tipping point of skateboarding being accepted into the mainstream in a lot of ways. Even though Bart has always been a skateboarder per se, it was always considered more of a novelty or an outcast activity."
"It's still one of the highlights," Hawk said of his guest appearance. "I can't believe I got to do it."
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"You're only as good as your last trick."
This could easily be a metaphor for life in general, but in this case it's pretty concrete advice that skateboarding legend Tony Hawk imparts to his pro skater son, Riley Hawk. (You can see a photo of Hawk with young Riley below.)
At 48, Hawk is best known for his vertical-skating prowess. Riley, 24, is known as a street skater. In 2013, Riley was awarded the Best Am [Amateur] of the Year award from the Skateboard Mag.
Business Insider spoke with Hawk at the Success Makers Summit, hosted by American Express OPEN, and he told us that his "best piece of advice to stay relevant is to just keep challenging yourself and not rest on your accolades."
He added:
"You've got to keep trying to do something new or something better. Even if you're on top of the competition circuit, because that only lasts so long.
"If you rely on the tricks or the style that got you there in the first place — the judges are very harsh, and they expect you to keep improving. You've got to to challenge yourself in other ways, too."
Hawk said his son grew up practicing skating different styles, and has kept that up.
But Hawk learned the importance of variety from experience. Specialization probably helped him become the first skateboarder ever to successfully complete a 900-degree aerial spin in 1999; it may also have worked to his detriment.
"I'm mostly known for skating the bigger ramps, and so when my popularity started to rise, people said, 'Well, he's just a vert skater,'" he told Business Insider.
"So I learned how to street skate to an extent, because I wanted to do everything, and to skate pools, and other terrain. If I go to a skate park, I know there's something that I can do there that hasn't been done or is good enough to impress a crowd. Those little tricks are important to be a relevant professional."
Hawk's advice may be just as useful for non-skaters: Recent research suggests generalists — people who have bounced around between different roles and even companies — are more likely to become top execs than specialists are.
SEE ALSO: Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk says he knew he'd made it when he played himself on 'The Simpsons'
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Every week, innovative new tech gadgets come on the scene. But for every practical invention, there is also a totally outlandish, off-the-wall gizmo.
Here at Business Insider, our inboxes are flooded every day with emails from startups and companies "pitching" their game-changing products.
We can't write about everything, of course. But some of these products are so odd, unusual or just plain fun that it feels wrong to let them languish, unheralded, in the depths of our inboxes.
So we've compiled some of our recent favorites. And who knows, they might just change the world.
See for yourself:
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The HoverBike is a two-wheeled bicycle powered by your hoverboard. The bike weighs less than 10 pounds and has an attachment for two different types of hoverboards, which then work to power the bike. HoverBike's Kickstarter campaign launched in May, and the company says early bird orders will begin shipping by July.
The company says a pledge of $129 will get you your own HoverBike. As with any Kickstarter campaign, pledge at your own risk.
A company called Dynomighty has launched a Kickstarter campaign for what it claims is a reinvented lunch bag. Called the Mighty Stash Pack, it's an expandable bag that flips inside out for easy cleaning. When flat, the bag is only about an inch thick but once packed, it expands to the shape of a tent "to hold ample food for any adult lunch."
The bag will eventually cost $20, though a pledge of $15 to the company's Kickstarter campaign right now will get you one at a discount.
Rolkaz Collective has created a skateboard made entirely of hemp, flax, and plant-based resin "with the belief that skateboarding and the care for our planet should go hand in hand." There are two styles available, the Drifter and the Mala, for pledges of $150 and $120 respectively. Both styles come in raw, purple, lime, and blue.
For more information or to back this project, check out the company's Kickstarter campaign.
Movpak is a new product that combines a backpack with a remote-operated skateboard, including a built-in speaker, USB port, and tracker.
