Street skateboarding

Street skateboarding is a style of skateboarding that focuses on tricks and transitions in public places. Street skateboarders skate in urban streets, plazas or industrial areas, making use of park benches and picnic tables, guard rails and handrails, planter boxes, bins, stairs, retaining walls and other street furniture not purpose-built for skateboarding.

Competition street skateboarding is conducted in purpose-built skateparks designed to replicate real-world urban environments featuring purpose built benches, stairs and rails alongside traditional skatepark elements like vert ramps and funboxes.

As skateboarding gained popularity during the 1980s and 1990s, skateboarders no longer limited their activities to drained swimming pools and purpose-built skateparks. Instead, they began performing tricks in urban areas and skating through urban areas as skateboards increasingly became an accepted mode of transportation as others followed. Traversal through urban areas evolved to where some skateboarders began focusing on skating in and around those urban areas; honing their skills by skating improvised courses made up of existing urban features.

Given street skateboarding makes use of urban environments and public areas, it is the style of skateboarding that most often brings skaters into contact with the public, law enforcement, and other authorities. In some cases, local authorities in popular skateboarding areas have introduced a range of initiatives to ban skateboarding, confiscate skateboards, or make skateboarding difficult or impossible.

A number of major international competitions include a street skateboarding event or component, including:

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