More skaters switching to longboards

Longboarding seemed like a good way to get the same rush. With longer decks than their shortboard brethren (usually about 38 inches instead of 30 inches), they are more stable at higher speeds and their softer wheels provide better grip. Further, their trucks, which connect the board to the wheels, are designed for turning (rather than for tricks like "grinding" across curbs or down handrails). These three qualities suggested to Yee that fun was as close as the nearest patch of pavement. Her hunch was right.

"When you're carving down a garage, it feels the same as a snowboard. It's just scarier because it's concrete -- even packed snow is a lot nicer to fall on," said Yee recently, taking a break from a skate session at a multilevel parking garage and sporting a bleeding hand and ripped jeans from a fall minutes earlier. "But when you're carving down a gentle hill, it reminds me of snowboarding so much. It's really calming for me."

One of the many recent converts fueling longboarding's growing popularity, Yee represents a population that once rarely participated in skateboarding -- females.

Now, however, young women and girls increasingly are becoming more involved with longboarding, said Kathleen Gasperini, senior vice president of Label Networks, which studies youth markets. Gasperini believes that female skaters choose longboarding over shortboarding because it's easier, more inclusive and has greater age diversity (longboarders range from preteens to baby boomers).

Although no definitive numbers are available to quantify longboarding's growth, manufacturers report steady increases in sales. Even new skateboard manufacturers, such as the unfortunately named snowboard builder Never Summer, are entering the market. And manufacturers and retailers love that many users own a variety of boards for different uses.

Beyond the tricks

When most people hear the word skateboarding, they think about the trick-based activity dominated by teens that has achieved mainstream popularity with contests like the X Games and high-profile personalities such as Tony Hawk and Shaun White. But longboarding has always been on the margins of skateboarding -- "a subculture within a subculture," according to Michael Brooke, author of "The Concrete Wave: The History of Skateboarding."