Alan Gelfand

Alan Gelfand (born 1963, New York) is the inventor of the ollie, a skateboarding trick. Gelfand moved from New York to Hollywood, Florida with his family in 1968. Alan "Ollie" Gelfand started skateboarding in 1974 after his father bought him his first skateboard. In 1976 he won the South Florida Skateboard Championships. This was the year skateboard parks started to appear with the very first one opening up in Port Orange, Florida in early 1976. ... more

Alan Gelfand (born 1963, New York) is the inventor of the ollie, a skateboarding trick. Gelfand moved from New York to Hollywood, Florida with his family in 1968. Alan "Ollie" Gelfand started skateboarding in 1974 after his father bought him his first skateboard. In 1976 he won the South Florida Skateboard Championships. This was the year skateboard parks started to appear with the very first one opening up in Port Orange, Florida in early 1976. In 1977 Hollywood would get its own park called Skatepark USA. This park with its imperfect walls was atypical of the first-generation skate parks and it was the over-vertical sections of the big bowl which played a significant role in Gelfand's 1977 development of the ollie. Gelfand's "no-hands aerial" was dubbed an "ollie" by Scott Goodman using the nickname he and others had given Gelfand months earlier. During the summer of 1977 California skateboarder Stacy Peralta visited the Solid Surf Skate Park in Fort Lauderdale where he met Gelfand... less