Style:

As you probably expect, this section will tell you about basic styles of skateboarding:

-Different Board Setups (and its parts)

-Clothes (pants, shoes, accessories ect.)

-Styles of Skating

Different Boards and Setups:

This is a hard subject to start with, but knowing board sizes will be essential to getting your right setup. Here is a little chart I found on Skateboards.com to help you with this issue, though actual preferences will vary with experience.

Skateboard Deck Sizes

Micro:
Deck width: 6.5" to 6.75”
Deck length: 27.2” to 27.6”
Age: 5 years or younger
Height: under 3’4” tall
Shoe Size: 3 or smaller

Mini:
Deck width: 7.0”
Deck length: 28”
Age: 6-8 years old
Height: 3’5”- 4’4” tall
Shoe Size: 4-6

Mid-size:
Deck width: 7.3”
Deck length: 29”
Age: 9-12
Height: 4’5”- 5’2” tall
Shoe Size: 7-8

Full size:
Deck width: 7.5” and up
Age: 13 and up
Height: 5’3” tall
Shoe Size: 9 and up

Though keep in mind, when you are fully grown, your board size will vary upon style and skating preferences, such as street skaters, they use skinnier boards (usually between 7.5-8 inches) with smaller wheels(40-53mm); tranny, short for transition such as pools and half pipe, skaters use wider boards (8-9 inches) and bigger wheels (53mm-65mm).

There are also high and low trucks, not every brand does this, but most will. There's no specific measurement for truck height, but when you have them on your setup, there's a huge difference in overall height. Also, they don't appear much different in looks. The only thing this affects is pop, wheel bite, and lock-ups on coping (edges of a bowl, pool, or half pipe). Even if you have low-trucks, you can always buy risers that are rubber pieces that are places below the base plate of your trucks.

Truck size is common sense, just find one the matches, or closely matches your board size. This is said because trucks are usually measured by inches, and only go by whole, or half inches; such as 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9 and so on. In some cases though, you might find some brands that do more specific measurements.

Clothes:

Even though how you dress doesn't particularly make you a skater, there are reasons for some of the ways they dress, it's nothing really traditionalized as it is more convenient. Some people do dress according to their decade of skating they grew up in or are particularly a fan of. Like some skaters wear the Nike shoe the "Blazers" because that's one of the shoes people first wore skating in the 80s, and now Nike has released a more modern version of the shoe which more contemporary skaters choose to wear.

Another clothing trend that skaters of this day tend to abide by is wearing stretch jeans which can be slim or baggy fit. A lot of skateboarding clothing manufactures make their clothing comfortable to skate, thus making their jeans stretchiness larger in percentage, but not all do.

Here's some example of what these jeans might just look like.

Slim

Straight

Baggy

Boot cut

Belts:

The reason belts are being mentioned is because even though studded belts or plaid belts are cool, they are very inconvenient for when you fall on your stomach or your rolled up. This is because when you do fall, the belt buckle will hurt a lot. Because of this, a lot of skaters use the alternative of shoelaces for a belt, like this.

Another convenient thing about shoelace belts are that since skating wears out your shoelaces, when they finally break, there's one very handy at your hip. They don't ultimately replace an actual belt for practical use, even though they do for me, they are helpful in skaters everyday life.

Shoes:

Skate shoes are all very much similar: thick padded, flat soled, abrasion resistant, and full of traction. They will all vary in look, such as sole type, sole pattern, material and how much padding. There are two types of soles, vulcanized and cup sole. The main difference is grip and look. Here's a chart explaining them both.

Vulcanized:

This type of sole has a lot of traction, wears easily, but is flexible while maintaining its structure. Shoes with this build of sole are usually thin in the padding, so hard impact landing tend be very painful. You would ultimately rely on this type of sole for board feel, so you can actually feel the concaves of the board, and traction.

Cup Sole:

This type of sole is very durable, has a lot of padding, and is very effective with hard impact landings. But with this sole, there's not as much board control, because the sole is generally very thick. Depending on the bottom of the sole, it may not have as much traction as a Vulcanized sole. Fortunately though, there are some shoes that do this type of sole and combine with a few characteristics of a Vulcanized sole.

Styles:

This is a very simple section, there are mainly two types of modern day skateboarding: Street and Transition. Some people do both, but for the most part, alot do either one.

Street:

It's as the name implies, street skating is skating in the streets. This type of skating covers obstacles like rails, stairs, banks, hubbas, ledges, step-ups, and walls. This type of skating is not referred to as street skating when a quarter pipe or ramps are involved because that is in another genre of skating.

Transition:

Transition isn't as simple as the title, there are many types of transition skating like bowl, pool, vert, and miniramp. Bowl and pool skating is very similar, the only difference is whether it is an actual pool or not you're skating, if it isn't, it's called bowl, if it is, it's called pool. Vert skating is different because you skate half-pipes that are, for the most part, completely ninety degrees upward, if it's under, it is a miniramp, if it's over, it's over-vert. Then there is miniramp skating, which is like vert skating for street skaters if you want the comparison.

Bowl

Miniramp

Vert

Pool