What is fingerboarding?
A fingerboard is a small-scale working replica of a real skateboard.
The tiny sidewalk surfboard allows riders to recreate and reproduce skateboarding's core tricks and maneuvers by using their middle and index fingers.
A fingerboard features everything a standard size skateboard has. There's the grip tape, the wooden, plastic, or paper deck, bushings, and interchangeable wheels and trucks.
In most cases, fingerboards are 3.9 inches (100 millimeters) long and between 1-to-1.3 inches (26-to-34 millimeters) wide.
The scale ratio between a real skateboard and a fingerboard is approximately 1:8.
There are several books published about the art of fingerboarding.
The History of the Fingerboard
According to historians, the scaled-down version of the modern skateboard was invented and first played by Lance Mountain.
The Bones Brigade skateboarder presented the fingerboard to the world in Powell Peralta's 1985 video "Future Primitive."
In the video's chapter four, Mountain trains his contest runs while skating a fingerboard in a metal double-bin sink surrounded by impressed friends.
The first skate toy was made from cardboard, coffee stirrers, and Hot Wheels axles.
Despite the immediate impact of the toy's entertaining potential, the commercialization of the first mass-produced models only really began a decade later.
In the late 1990s, Spin Master, a Canadian toy company, launched Tech Deck, a label that would explore skate brand logos' marketing potential in small skateboards.
Tech Deck quickly became a synonym for fingerboards and fingerboarding.
In the late 1990s, one brand sold over 20 million finger skateboards.
With the turn of the millennium, new labels stepped in - Super Mini Boards, Deluxe Finger Banger Boards, Buckledown, Berzerk, and Pro Precision are only a few examples.
The fingerboard fever quickly crossed the skateboard market's border.
Nevertheless, it is fair to say that Lance Mountain's use of miniature skateboards was inspired by 1960s homemade fingerboards before being widely sold as keychains in skate and gift shops.
The truth is that fingerboards brought many Generation X and Millennial kids into skateboarding and fueled the skater's passion for the sport. 
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