A fingerboard is a scaled-down replica of a skateboard that a person "rides" with their fingers, rather than their feet. A fingerboard is typically long with width ranging from , with graphics, trucks and plastic or ball-bearing wheels, like a skateboard. A fingerboard can be used to do traditional skateboarding tricks, such as an ollie and kickflip.
History
Fingerboards first existed as homemade finger toys in the late 1960s and later became a novelty attached to keychains in skate shops.
Professional skateboarder Lance Mountain is widely credited with creating the first fingerboard. In the 1985 Powell-Peralta skateboarding video titled "Future Primitive," Mountain brought fingerboarding to the skateboarders of the world. Around the same time, Mountain wrote an article on how to make fingerboards in TransWorld SKATEboarding magazine. In the video, Lance Mountain rode a homemade fingerboard in a double-bin sink. It is widely accepted that this is where the idea for the ramp found in The Search for Animal Chin came from. Some consider this the earliest fingerboard footage available for public viewing. That homemade fingerboard was built from wood, tubes, and toy train axles.
The first company to notice the potential of the fingerboard was Somerville International's Fingerboard brand, established in 1987. They were the first to mass-produce fingerboards that weren't intended to be used with a figurine or accessories. They were also the first to include licensed graphics from actual skateboard graphics with the introduction of the Pro-Precision board.
Although fingerboarding was a novelty within the skateboarding industry for years, as skateboarding reached widespread popularity in the late 1990s, X-Concepts realized the potential for the fingerboards, specifically for products bearing the logos and branding of real skateboarding brands, and introduced the Tech Deck brand. Fingerboards caught on during this period and Tech Deck has since grown into a widely recognized fingerboard brand. Toy fingerboards are now available as inexpensive novelty toys as well as high-end collectibles, complete with accessories one would find in use with standard-size skateboards. Fingerboards are also used by skateboarders as 3-D model visual aids to understand potential tricks and maneuvers.
Fingerboarding is popular in Europe, Singapore, Asia and the United States. Although fingerboarding originated in the United States, it has gained much popularity in Eastern Europe. Fingaspeak, in Steyr, Austria, is rumored to be the world's first fingerboard store, and is part of a small list of fingerboard stores worldwide. Fingerboarding has evolved from a hobby to a lifestyle for some people. Fingerboarders have regular contests, fairs, workshops and other events. Examples include FastFingers and FlatFace Rendezvous. Fingerboard-product sales were estimated at $120 million for 1999.
Usage
Fingerboards are used by a range of people, from those using them as toys, to skateboarders and related sports professionals envisioning not only their own skating maneuvers but for others as well. Similar to train enthusiasts building railway models, fingerboard hobbyists often construct and purchase reduced scale model figures that would be considered natural features to an urban skateboarder such as handrails, benches, and stairs they would be likely to encounter while skating. In addition, users might build and buy items seen in a skatepark including half-pipes, quarter pipes, trick boxes, vert ramps, pyramids, banked ramps, full pipes, and any number of other trick-oriented objects. These objects can be used simply for enjoyment and also to assist the visualization of skateboarding tricks or the "flow" from one trick to the next (colloquially referred to as "lines").
Components
Similar to a skateboard, a fingerboard consists of several components: