Skateboarding Tricktionary - S
Sal Flip
A 360° palm flip.
Salad Grind
A combination of a 5-0 grind and a bluntslide - a grind/slide with both the back truck and tail of the skateboard on the obstacle. Think of it as a 'crooked 5-0'.
Saran Wrap
A freestyle trick done while in a 50-50 truckstand or pogo, where the front (or top) foot traces a circle around the nose. Usually, the aim is to pull off multiple saran wraps in a row without loosing balance.
Scarewalk
When done very well, a scarewalk should look like a split kick (see airwalk), but grabbed with the back hand with the board between the legs - right below your crotch, hence the name.
Seatbelt Air
A grab trick where the front hand extends across the front of the body and grips the tail of the board on the toeside. Looks like the action of putting a seatbelt on.
Semi Flip
A quarter kickflip followed by a late backfoot frontside varial one and a quarter heelflip. So the board flips two ways (1/4 kickflip, then 1 1/4 heelflip) and also does a varial. It's called a semi flip because the flip is split up into two halves.
You need to break it down into bits and put it together in your mind bit by bit, but I promise it makes sense eventually...
Sergio Slide
A downhill slide much like the Coleman slide but with the back hand planted on the road instead of the front one.
Sex Change
A kickflip with a body varial. I discuss how to do sex changes in this article on kickflips and kickflip variations.
Shifty
The act of tweaking an air trick by turning your hips so that the skateboard rotates in midair before rotating back again to a normal position. To execute this trick the hands must not interfere; a shifty is achieved solely by rotating the hips and controlling the skateboard with the feet. Backside or frontside shiftys are possible.
As with all tweaks, the purpose of a shifty is to inject extra flair into a trick. In this case, shifty airs out of ramps and shifty ollies are appreciated because they demonstrate fine control of the skateboard which is especially difficult in midair without using the hands, and because they look really stylish.
Shuvit
A simple trick where the board does one or more varial rotations. Can be done backside, frontside and in any increment of degrees from 180° to 720° (a 900° shuvit has, to the best of my knowledge, never been accomplished).
'Shuvit' on its own is invariably a 180° shuvit. A shuvit is not popped and generally spins on the front or rear wheels or just above the ground.
See also Pop shuvit and this article on shuvits.
Shuvit Shuffle
Although many people do them as a bank trick, some people have started doing a wide range of shuvit shuffles on flat. It basically is a shuvit (generally done without popping) caught to a pivot that rotates in the opposite direction to the shuvit. On a bank, this would commonly mean a backside shuvit off the nose to a frontside pivot on the tail. They can also be done with a 360° shuvit to a pivot, but I am not sure if anyone has done either a bigger shuvit (540°, 720° etc) or landed to a bigger spin (continuing the pivot to spin round 360° or more) in a shuvit shuffle.
Sideride
You know when you start skating and you tilt the board to do a wheelie on two side wheels? That is called a sideride.
Sidewinder
A sidewinder is a specific type of truck-to-truck trick where you throw the nose of the board down towards the floor as you jump, catch the tail with your back hand, and land with your front foot on the front truck in a switch 50-50.Sidewinders can also be done into a switch or nose casper, or by reaching down to grab the back truck and merely dropping the nose down.
Skateboard
Developed originally in the 70's as 'sidewalk surfboards' and little more than a plank with roller boot wheels on, the skateboard has developed today into the highly tuned instrument we all know and love. A skateboard is made up of a deck with griptape on it, attached by the bolts to the trucks on which are mounted the wheels.
Skid Plate
A skid plate (or sometimes just called a "skid" is a lump of plastic often found on bolted to the underside of the tails of freestyle boards. People use them to protect the ends of their boards from the beatings freestyle gives to the tails.
Skitching
Hitching a ride by holding onto the back of a bike or vehicle while riding a skateboard in true Back To The Future style. Non interesting fact - the term 'skitching' actually predates skateboarding in it's reference to being pulled about on ice by a vehicle.
Slalom
Like freestyle, this was very popular in the 70's, and although thought to be dead and gone, is currently becoming steadily more popular. Basically, slalom involves weaving in and out of cones at high speed to beat your opponent's time. It may sound lame, but those guys go really damn fast, and it can be pretty fun to do.
Slappy Grind
The lazy mans trick - any grind that is performed without ollying. You just ride into the grind on an appropriately sloped object, such as a rail that slopes into the ground, or the sloping bits of kerb edges. Although a slappy slide could theoretically be done with some difficulty, the constraints of having to ride into it mean that slappy versions of nosegrinds, 5-0 grinds, 50-50 grinds and smith/feeble grinds are the most common slappy grinds.
Slide
The act of riding along on an obstacle - usually a kerb, rail or ledge - on the deck of the skateboard. Similar in nature to a grind, a slide is usually faster due to the smooth nature of the underside of a deck, and generally harder to balance than a grind. Some common slides are the boardslide, noseslide and tailslide.
Slob Air
This is a vert trick that, like quite a few, is dependant on the direction of the air. A slob air is just a frontside mute grab, as mutes on vert are strictly backside.
Smith Grind
A grind performed on the back trucks with the front wheels pointing down towards the ground on the left hand side of the obstacle if your left foot is forward, or the right hand side of the obstacle if your right foot is forward. This places the front wheels next to the obstacle rather than on top of it, and the deck itself will often slide along the obstacle as well as the back trucks because of the positioning.
Spacewalk
A spacewalk is a wheelie where the nose swings from side to side. Kinda like doing tictacs in a wheelie.
Stalefish
A difficult grab trick requiring plenty of flexibility; the back hand grips the heelside of the skateboard roughly in the middle, and both knees are bent and pointed towards the nose of the skateboard.
Stall
A trick with positioning the same as a grind or slide of some sort but without moving. The name of a stall is usually derived from the grind or slide it is based on, as in bluntstall, but may also have a completely different name as in disaster.
Stelmasky
Almost unheard of now, a Stelmasky is a melon grab where you grab the heelside rail between the legs instead of taking your arm around the front leg.
Street Plants
Back in the 80s, when street skating was still evolving, street plants became all the rage as a way of imitating the inverts done in vert skating. People would hold the board in one hand, take a couple of steps, plant the other hand on the floor and kick into a one handed handstand. Once inverted, people would flip the board in their hands, put it to their feet and tweak out grabs, or maybe go to a Ho-Ho plant.
Needless to say, these are barely done anymore. Mike Vallely still does them, but like many non-ollie tricks, most people see them as a bit of a joke. They can be quite fun, though.
Street Skating
The name given to the style of skateboarding that has developed from skateboarders tricking off of every day objects found in the urban environment - kerbs, benches, ledges, banks etc etc... Street parks are specially constructed to replicate this environment.
Sugarcane
Like a hurricane, only the skater spins in the other direction during the 180° so that the back wheels of the board go over the obstacle first.
Suski Grind
This grind was named for the pro skater Aaron Suski, although he wasn't the first person to do the trick. It's a 'crooked' backside 5-0 grind, where the tail also slides along the obstacle as well as the rear truck. Aaron Suski stated in an interview "that's just the way I did my backside five-0s quite honestly; it was just a good lock".
Swedish Wheelie
This is a nose wheelie following the same concept as the Danish and English wheelies. You position the front foot off the nose and behind the front truck, then use the toes of the back foot to pull the tail up.
Sweeper
A frontside footplant on ramps where the back foot is planted, the nose is grabbed with the front hand, and the tail is "swept" across the coping. Note that a good sweeper should have the front foot touching the grip at all times.
Switch
The most difficult stance to ride and trick in. Switch is whichever stance is opposite to your natural stance. If you prefer to ride with your right foot forward then you are in switch if your left foot is forward, and vice versa.
Note that this is different to fakie because even though in fakie your off-foot is technically 'forwards', you are still in your most comfortable stance, just travelling backwards, and your legs do everything the same as in your natural stance. In switch, everything feels very odd indeed, and your legs perform the opposite role to those they normally do.
Switch Flip
A kickflip performed in switch.
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