Innovation
Ty was given a skateboard at the age of 4 by Greg when he received 3 boards one Christmas. Ty later said, “I’m a surfer, and I guess I like skateboarding so much because it’s very close to surfing. Surfing is harder than skateboarding, though. Every wave is different, and you have to start out fresh on each wave. With skateboarding, a hard surface is a hard surface. Once you get your balance on solid ground, you can go from there.” At first, he skated basic surf style, attempting anything that he and Bruce Logan made up. He began bank riding in 1969 and almost all of his freestyle maneuvers were original tricks. After the introduction of the urethane wheel in 1972, Ty saw real potential in the sport as a career, so he focused primarily on skateboarding.
He entered his first skateboarding competition in 1973 at the first Del Mar nationals. He says he was really nervous and couldn’t eat for days before the competition. However, in 1975, he was a contest veteran and placed second in the junior men’s freestyle division. It was at this competition that the Z-Boys debuted on the skating circuit. This competition was highlighted in "Lords of Dogtown" in which Hollywood rewrote history according to Stacy Peralta’s 2001 film about Santa Monica’s “Dogtown and Z-Boys.” The movie suggested that Ty tried to change his skate style from freestyle to a more surf style, similar to the Z-Boys; however, Ty and Bruce Logan had been skating surf style with kick-turns and round-house slides as far back as 1964, before the Z-Boys began skating.
Ty took first place at the Santa Barbara Skateboard Championships with long nose wheelies, headstands, and 360s. He continued to push limits and went on to win many national competitions. He said, “One thing I’m into is I don’t like to do anything that’s easy. In all the tricks that I do, I don’t do anything that’s easy. It’s just boring; it’s not a challenge. I’m just into the challenge of things.”
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Famous quotes containing the word innovation:
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)