Lonnie Toft

Skate boarding Hall of Fame inductee, Lonnie Toft, was born in 1958 in Southern California. Toft was one of the founding fathers of modern skateboarding. He invented the eight-wheeled skateboard and was one of the early skateboarders to insist on riding a much wider board leading to a rapid evolution of performance nationwide especially in empty swimming pools. He was one of the first professional skateboarders to publicly embrace snowboarding and in 1978 his sponsor SIMS released a Lonnie Toft Flying Banana "Skiboard". He appeared skateboarding in the popular 1977 surfing documentary "Free Ride" and in 1978 appeared on the APril issue of Skateboarding Magazine.