Lopez first got the idea of using reclaimed wood for skateboards when he was working for an architecture firm in Richmond, Va. He was working with a guy who had gotten his hands on piles of old hardwood flooring from a factory in Georgia. He wanted Lopez and the firm to do something with it, but after they had made a desk and a few other pieces of furniture, Lopez had another idea.
Glide Skateboards
Brian Lopez and his company, Glide Skateboards, have been reusing wood from old basketball courts as skateboards.
"Usually, this guy said, he would have just thrown it away, but it was just too nice, so he bundled it up," Lopez told AOL News. "It already had really nice grain in it. And it's strong enough to withstand all the pressure from being a skateboard."
It certainly makes more sense than the regular system. According to Lopez, most other skateboards are made out of maple cut in Canada or the United States and then shipped to China to be fabricated into a skateboard that is shipped back to the U.S. or wherever else it's going.
Lopez wants to keep it a little more local. He kicked off Glide skateboards at a show in October, with 25 decks painted by local artists and a few more left barren. Business picked up, and now he's looking to source more wood.
Skateboards aren't the only use for reclaimed wood. Companies across the country make a good business taking the old wood from factories, mills, houses and other buildings and repurposing it for new construction.
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Glide skateboards are a little smaller than most other skateboards, and they don't have kicks on them for doing tricks. For Lopez, his design is about translating his love of surfing into a terrestrial experience. They're not about tricks or jumps, just cruising and cutting through the street as if it were the ocean."You can ride them hard. I just basically ride them like surfboards, let the wheels release and kind of slide on the concrete and going downhill or something," he said. "Move on the terrain like it was a wave, dodging people and cracks, making turns inside of curves and up curves."
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