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1 Short Leg?
(World) You ever seen a Hip Hop video, or a crew on the street walk with one trouser leg rolled up? Maybe you've even caught glimpses of David Beckham in the papers with one of his trouser legs half rolled up to the knee too? The more you look around the more you see it. Its subliminally right in front of so many peoples faces, I'm sure its seen as one daft fashion that only the super confident would dare to wear out.
i'm also certain most of these people have no-idea where this trend comes from. They might think they know, but I really doubt it. Why? well because it all started in about 1992 with skateboarders.
Skateboarding tricks exploded around that time with the invention of 'switch'. This is the equivilent of riding the skateboard the wrong way round, and therefore multiplying the difficulty level massively. Think about if it all a sudden it became popular to write with your other hand? Then you'll start to understand the level of technicality it brought to the 'street sport'.
Well where does the trouser leg fit in you're asking? It began to be used in competitions, because 'old school' skate judges had no idea what they were looking at when judging competitions… riders would show off a 'switch' trick and the judges wouldn't notice and mark them accordingly (just as if the move was done the regular way). It didn't take long for the skaters to realise that unless they made it obvious to everyone competing and judging them, that they were riding the other way round, then they were never going to get the points needed to win a competition.
This is where the trouser leg got introduced, and the simple 'semi-rolled' trouser leg played a huge part in giving the talented skaters the credibility they deserved. It was now obvious to everyone which way round the skaters were riding.
So it wasn't some 'gangster' thing, or even a 'catwalk experiment' by some random Joe designer… nope, it was actually born from a practical necessity.
Simple really, once you think about it :-)
Contributed by Mark.
Filed by DK on February 20 2006
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