With thousands of bikers on campus, it’s easy to forget another, less-prominent faction of wheeled transportation — longboards.
“I don’t know how to ride a bike,” admitted longboarder Dean Schaffer ‘10. “I think I knew when I was younger, so people who say you can’t forget how to ride a bike are wrong.”
Longboarding, a variety of skateboarding also known as “sidewalk surfing,” makes for an appealing alternative to walking and biking around campus. Although biking is by far students’ most popular choice for transportation, longboarding has its upsides.
“When you’re riding a bike, getting from point A to point B is the point,” explained Martha Jensen Smith ‘10. “When you’re riding a longboard, the point is to enjoy your surroundings.”
The coolness vibe doesn’t hurt either.
“When I first got a longboard, I was really happy because it filled a niche in my life,” Schaffer laughed. “I thought it would make me cooler . . . but it hasn’t done that.”
Smith agreed that there is something to be said for projecting the image of a hip, flip-flop wearing, West Coast surfer.
“I do think that longboarding is something that’s growing in popularity,” Smith said. “People who are from the East Coast — and 51 percent of people at Stanford are from out of state — are like, I’m moving to California, and I want to pick up this California vibe.”
Smith is a longboarding veteran who picked up skateboarding in her hometown of San Diego, Calif., but Schaffer only recently adopted longboarding. For the first year and a half of college, Schaffer had neither a bike nor a board, but then his girlfriend bought him a used longboard — a smart decision, considering new boards can cost several hundred dollars.
“I learned slowly and painfully, and I’m still learning a lot,” Schaffer said. “I’m not very good at it. It gets me where I need to go, but I don’t do anything exciting on it.”
Not that there are scores of tricks to do on a longboard. Compared to skateboards, which are shorter and more conducive to stunts, longboards are difficult to turn and less maneuverable. Longboarding can also be a dangerous mode of transportation, especially on such a bike-dominated campus as Stanford.
“I tend to walk through the Intersection of Death because it’s so crazy,” Schaffer said. “Bikers have a much more fine ability to control their speed with brakes, and even then they crash all the time.”
Mark Frykman ‘11 offered up a story of his worst longboarding accident. While boarding to his machine shop class with two glass bottles in one hand and a package in the other, he hit a pinecone — not necessarily an obstruction to bicycles — and fell to the ground near Florence Moore (FloMo) field. The bottles shattered and sliced his hand open.
“The funny part is that it was the day that [Resident Assistant (RA)] interviews were going on at FloMo Field for WestFlo,” Frykman said. “I fell, and immediately when I stood up, I was surrounded by 12 or 13 wannabe RAs trying to impress their interviewers.”
Yet, safety isn’t too much of a concern for longboarders. When asked whether they wear helmets, Frykman, Alden Timme ‘11 and Quynh Phan ‘10 all laughed with a definitive “No.”
“Once I’m a grad student, maybe I’ll start wearing a helmet,” Frykman joked.
For now, Phan stays safe by avoiding certain places, like the area around the Claw, the new Coupa Cafe and the pavement around Memorial Fountain. She doesn’t know what she’ll do after graduating, though, especially if she moves to a city.
“On campus, it’s pretty easy to get around on a board, but once you move to real life it might be a little difficult,” Phan said. “Like San Francisco . . . wouldn’t that suck?”
Smith, who will graduate in June and move to Newark, NJ for Teach for America, is facing a similar dilemma.
“I’m going to bring my board anyway,” she said. “We’ll see how many weird looks I get.”