Museum Adds ‘Rad’ Exhibit

What’s attracting all these young dudes to the Anaheim Museum Children’s Gallery?

Museums can’t be cool.

Unless, of course, there’s an exhibit explaining “Skateboard Mania.”

Called “sidewalk surfing” in the early ‘60s, skateboarding’s popularity has soared over three decades to attract 20 million dry-land acrobats. It has also created its own subculture with “outlaw” clothing and equipment, league competitions that draw thousands of spectators, “skateboard gridlock” at popular runs and city ordinances prohibiting daredevils from riding their boards on public property.

The history of the sport, its changing styles and accessories, as well as memorabilia from enthusiast Mike Folmer and Skateboarding magazine are on view at the Anaheim Museum through April 15.

Skateboard technology has evolved as quickly as a spin around a corner. One display shows the development of the board from a 2-by-4 piece of pine to a synthetic slab.

Another display spotlights the materials used to create a board. Today’s best specimens combine decks made of wood, foam, fiberglass, epoxy and plastic, with finely machined bearings and wheels.

Harnessed for the exhibit is “White Lightning,” an aerodynamic spaceship on wheels that once traveled 75 m.p.h. Other one-of-a-kind boards, such as a four-foot-long “show board,” are also on display.

The Anaheim Museum seems an unlikely place for a skateboarding exhibit.

A collection of rad “decks” (boards without wheels) and “trucks” (a skateboard’s suspension) is one floor below fossils found in Anaheim Hills and within earshot of Madame Helene Modjeska’s century-old Steinway.

Skateboarding dates back about 30 years, beginning with inventive kids who dismantled their roller skates, attached the metal wheels to a 2-by-4 and let it fly.

Jerry Roach of Laguna Beach came to view the exhibit with his sons, Jesse, 12, and John, 9, both skateboard masters.

When Jerry pointed to a makeshift board, its wheels hammered crudely into place with a bent, rusted nail, John and Jesse looked at it like it belonged upstairs with the fossils.

The brothers approached the displays much like Little Leaguers looking around Cooperstown, although these guys are already on track to their Hall of Fame.

In a sport of acrobatic stunts done on homemade ramps or in dry swimming pools by guys with a lot of nerve, the Roach brothers are winners.

Jesse took 15th place out of a field of 72 in the “Factory Team Riders Mini-Ramp Category” last month at the California Amateur Skateboard League Competition in Carlsbad, and John came in second in the “Sponsored 14 and Under Mini-Ramp Category.”

Who then but these chairmen of the board should review such an exhibit?

Wearing shorts and long-sleeved T-shirts, hands in pockets, they originally approached the idea of going to a museum with how-long-do-we-have-to-stay? attitudes. What they saw when they arrived improved their interest. Their eyes widened as they moved around the small exhibit.

John played with a hands-on display about wheel materials. He then raced over to a safety-gear display: helmet, shoulder pads, kneepads, elbow pads, fingerless gloves. He tried on a glove and then put it down. He’s got all this stuff at home.

The equipment keeps these guys fairly safe. Only once, John says, “I fell and got knocked out at the skate park and didn’t know where I was. But they gave me a free ticket.”

Die-hard skateboard fans will be interested to know that after careful review, the brothers gave the exhibit a “thumbs up” rating.

The Anaheim Museum is open Wednesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is by donation. The museum is at 241 S. Anaheim Blvd. For more information, call (714) 778-3301.