Rick Howard

Rick Howard
Residence	California, US
Nationality	Canadian
Occupation	Professional skateboarder and entrepreneur

Rick Howard is a Canadian professional skateboarder, who is a part-owner of Girl Skateboards and cofounded the Lakai Limited Footwear company with fellow professional skateboarder Mike Carroll.

After relocating from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to California, US at the age of seventeen, Howard began his skateboarding career with Blockhead Skateboards (where he was assigned professional status) and Gullwing Trucks. Howard lived with the owner of Blockhead in San Diego and stated in 2011, "It was really fun living there and a lot of fun sessions, lot of different people coming through there, like Chris Miller that was awesome."

Following Blockhead, Howard skated for Plan B Skateboards in 1991 and, during his time with Plan B, he left Gullwing and switched to Independent Trucks. His part in the second Plan B video, Virtual Reality, is well known for his advancement of "switch-stance" skating (skateboarding with the opposite stance of that which a rider naturally adopts).

The "fakie frontside big spin heelflip" is named the "Rick Flip" or "Howard Heel"—the invention of this trick has been credited to Howard; however, Howard has publicly stated that he does not appreciate the recognition, as he does not believe that he is the trick's inventor.

While Howard was filmed performing in skits for the 2012 Girl/Chocolate co-production Pretty Sweet,he is not featured in the actual film.

As of December 2014, Howard is sponsored by Spitfire, Girl, Fourstar Clothing, Lakai Limited Footwear, Independent Trucks Glassy Sunhaters and Diamond Supply Co.

After leaving Plan B, Howard formed a new company named Girl Skateboards with Spike Jonze, Carroll, and Megan Baltimore in 1993. When asked in a 2011 interview about what he sought to make different with the formation of Girl, in comparison to other companies, Howard replied:

Everyone has a say. Efforts on everyone’s part, so just a team effort. There was a lot of things going on at that time that it was the natural thing to do. It’s not like people had plans and strategies and stuff like that. It’s like these were the people we skated with that were good at the time ... It was just all a group thing, it still is. We all still put in the same efforts as we did the day we started. That was the main idea, that it’s kind of a cooperative effort. Everyone has a say on the matter.

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