A burnout (a peel out or power brake) happen when you keep your car stationary and try to spin its wheels. Because of the friction tires heat up and produce smoke, which is quite an impressive sight. Sometimes tire are not able to get over the spinning race and blow up. Here’s the first clip that will give you the idea.

At first burnouts were a must at the drag racing: if the drag racing tires had high temperature it enhanced the performance of the car. So right before the start of the race participants did burnouts in order to raise the temperature. It probably looked so cool that very soon burnout itself became a form of competition that attracted many spectators that act as the judges of the competition that pay attention to the style and quality of burnouts and point out the best one. Australia is the most famous country were burnout competitions are held, they also take place in North America. Burnouts are also an indispensable part of informal street racing.

Nevertheless burnouts in public places are illegal in many countries, though the punishments differ from paying a fine up to confiscating the car for a period of time. It happens very often that parents get their cars confiscated because their children were caught while doing burnouts. They get fined up to $500 and also have to pay a storage fee around $15-20 a day.

But burnouts also have another happy aspect: sometimes winners of NASCAR races perform outstanding burnouts to mark their victory.

It all began in the 1950s with the first skateboard ‘Roller Derby’ – a straight board on wheels, which actually had nothing common with the modern skates. Kids and teenagers loved the thing though they used it as a means of transport that required minimum skills of balancing and avoiding the obstacles on your way. But Larry Stevenson took it more seriously and displayed skateboarding as a new sport.

In the 1960s skateboarders organized into teams and fist skateboarding competitions took place. Some skateboarders performed great stunts and the skateboard went through great improvements that made performing the stunts easier and even more diverse. Nowadays the skate is not just a deck with truck and wheels; there are a lot of optional components that make skating more exciting: rails, slip tape, lappers and so on.

What considers the skateboarding tricks – they are numerous: riding on two wheels (“wheelie”), high jumping over a bar and landing on the board again (”hippie jump”), no-hands aerial (“ollie”), kickflips – almost anything you can imagine, up to jumping over a moving car like in this video.

Professional skateboarders invented their tricks and opened special skateboarding schools. In 1995 Extreme Games were opened and since that time skateboarding began to gain its popularity all over the world
The attitude towards skateboarding culture nowadays is very discrepant. Some people picture it as rebellious, non-conforming and highly dangerous; others think it to be the way of life of urban teens, which has nothing to do with drugs and crime.