Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Kent’s the chairman of the longboard
SKATEBOARDING represents freedom, says Kent Lingeveldt, skater and creator behind Alpha Longboards in Woodstock. Lingeveldt has been shaping longboards for the past 16 years and it has been an experience filled with challenges.
This year one of his boards has been nominated as a candidate for Design Indaba’s most beautiful Object in South Africa (MBOISA). Each year, 10 items are nominated by influential cultural commentators.
The items present new ways in thinking about beauty, with past nominations including street art, buildings, furniture and film. This year these objects have been part of a travelling exhibition starting in Joburg, moving to Durban and now at the V&A Waterfront until February 22.
From an early age Lingeveldt was inspired to customise boards. He moved around a lot while growing up and at the age of 13 was living in Hanover Park.
Lingeveldt loved watching his skater cousin and started putting a board together himself.
“Skateboarding made sense to me because I didn’t need a lot of people around me to do it,” he said. He started skating in 1994 and never looked back.
Lingeveldt moved to Woodstock and found people to skate with and streets in which to do so. Now he is a sponsored skateboarder and travels to other countries to skate.
His first longboard creation came about because he started doing a lot of downhill skating. He found he needed a longer board to do this with. He couldn’t afford any of the international brands, so his first longboard started out with freestyling and going to a hardware store to buy wood in early 2000 to make his own board.
Over time he received advice from boat builders in Kalk Bay about learning how to bend wood for the boards.
He gathered information after doing research and created his own boards in a process of trial and error.
“I started out making boards for myself, but soon other people who couldn’t afford to buy expensive boards approached me to make some for them.”
Longboarding wasn’t as popular as it is now and the early days required a lot of hustling to find clients. After a few years, longboarding became trendy and Lingeveldt found a tiny studio space at the Woodstock Exchange and founded Alpha Longboards.
Lingeveldt collaborates with visual artists. He creates the boards and the artists create artworks for them. Artists he has worked with include Khaya Witbooi, Atang Tshikare, Nardstar and Mr Fuzzy Slippers.
Lingeveldt also brings together kids from his community. He has spent several years getting to know the kids around Woodstock and spent many evenings skating with them.
The board nominated for Design Indaba is a throwback to a classic design and pays homage to old-school skateboarding.
● Voting for MBOISA closes on February 19. Voting can be done online or by SMS. See www.alphalongboards.com.