Recent Nerdsday Thursday Photos Posted Posted at skateparkoftampa.com

Recent Nerdsday Thursday Photos Posted

Nerdsday Thursday

Average Ages of Our Top 50 Skateboarders

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, May 23, 2013

This week on Nerdsday Thursday, I have one chart for you. From last week's data on our top 200 skateboarders here, I pulled a couple more age stats. We know that skateboarding pros are getting older, ams are getting older, and everyone's just kind of getting older, but what about just the skaters that come here almost every day? The top 50? The Ray Ray's, the Alejandro's, and the Chuckies? I thought this number might show the reverse trend since you obviously tend to skate more when you're younger vs being like early 20's when you've likely got a job and bills. However, looks like the same trend for these top 50 as the big picture. I wonder what the top brands are for these kids are? Next week, we'll take a look at that.

Nerdsday Thursday: SQL Queries

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, May 16, 2013

And finally, I'm leaving you with a super nerd bonus, and that's the SQL query used to mine this data. From here, it's pulled into Excel for further analysis and comparison, plus putting it in chart form. Don't be scared of numbers and computers, kids. Learn this stuff now while you're young and you can do almost anything you want when you get older, just don't quit skateboarding.

Nerdsday Thursday: Are Skateboarders Quitting?

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, May 16, 2013

Now, there's a few assumptions, both positive and negative, that you can make about why this data is what it is. So, I dug even deeper. Looking at that list of 200 top skaters in 2006, how many of them do you think skated at least once in the following years, not even being in the top 200, just skated one single time? This chart below shows that and it's alarming. Out of the top 200 skaters in 2006, by 2012, less than half of them have skated here at least once. Is it safe to assume they quit? There's more free parks around here, but damn, wouldn't you at least come one single time a year if you were still skating? Especially since we completely change the course every single year? I think it's safe to assume those kids quit skating. Damn, what are they doing these days? Rapping like Jereme Rogers? Getting old and fat? Who knows, maybe you have different thoughts on these data patterns?

Nerdsday Thursday: Are Skateboarders Quitting?

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, May 16, 2013

After seeing the raw data, I thought I'd dig a little deeper. Out of all those kids that were in our top 200 customers in 2006, how many still remained in the top 200 over the years? You would hope that the majority still skates just as much as they always have. Unfortunately not. The following year in 2007, less then 50% of those top 200 skaters are still in the top 200. By 2012, only 19 of them remain. Good lawd what had happened??? 19? That number is so low I'm going to list all the damn names of you: Jake H, Dirt Weasel, Alex P, Alex U, Andreas G, Jack L, Andrew B, Louis S, Jordan P, Baby Drew, Cameron H (now a SPoT employee!), Vincent A (FSEC member), Khristopher D, Matthew M, Dimitri R, Max M, Sean S, Nicholas B. That's only 18 because the 19th one is "general customer" that we ring up new people under that aren't in the system yet. Thank you all for sticking with skating and being a part of SPoT and skateboarding for more than five years.

Average Age of Skateboarders

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, May 16, 2013

I started with doing an analysis of our top 200 skaters over the years. Of course, the first question is regarding their ages. The steady increase in the average age of our top 200 customers has the same patterns we've found in past Nerdsday Thursdays like pros getting older, man ams getting more man, and general average skateboarder ages over the years.

Nerdsday Thursday: Lakai Performance Over Years

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, May 2, 2013

Fully Flared came out in 2007 where you can see a downward trend was reversed shortly after. A hill bombing started again in 2009. 2009 was the year Koston went from Lakai to Nike SB. Did he bring the shoe sales with him? Who knows, but I'm sure simple teenage minds will react as usual with some combination of comments about not doing it and selling out. I'll save that discussion for another Nerdsday. This month and year, I'd like to think the powersliding slowing down the hill bomb is Lakai's participation in the Spring Roll this weekend. For 2013, we've seen a bounce back in both year to date and month to date Lakai pairs sold so far. Or, maybe this is an industry-wide thing and not just SPoT? I wonder.

Past winners of the last 18 years of Tampa Pro

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Past winners of the last 18 years of Tampa Pro:

Nerdsday Thursday: Pants and Jeans Sales

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, February 14, 2013

I've got a fairly simple Nerdsday Thursday for you this week because I'm a little behind on the job over here. I'll be back in full abacus assault next week. For now, let’s take a look at pants and jeans. If you’ve been skating as long as I have, you might remember the most ridiculous jeans in skateboarding history from the early 90’s: Blind jeans. Glad those went away and never came back. We’ll see how the next decade unfolds, though.

This grid shows the top 10 companies in the Pants/Jeans category. For the last decade, Krew dominated most years. It’s interesting to see eS creep in there before they threw in the towel. Split might look odd to you in there in 2005, but don’t forget they sponsored Tampa Pro that year so of course that directly affects your brand’s performance.

SPoT being on top in recent years is a fluke. We have a huge stockpile of old SPoT jeans we are selling at a huge loss until we run out of them. Levis was new to the list last year in 2012. I wonder how they’re going to do in 2013. New in 2013 so far is Dickies and you can see they’ve made a strong showing. All I can think of with Dickies is the first time like 20 years ago when Ed Templeton first started wearing them all the time. I didn’t get it.

What other trends do you see in here? Are Blind jeans coming back anytime soon?

Top Am Skateboarders Ages Over the Years

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Let me start with a description of the data. We've been doing Damn Am since 2001 when Brian Schaefer decided that the world needed to experience firsthand the vibe and style of Tampa Am. Since then, there have been 5,239 Damn Am contest placings consisting of 1,655 unique skaters. The top five skaters that have the most entries in Damn Am events are:
  1. David Loy
  2. Dylan Perry
  3. Collin Provost
  4. Cody Davis
  5. Curren Caples
Alright, let's get going on how old top am skaters have been over the years. It's actually pretty amazing that the data matches last week's Nerdsday Thursday showing how skaters coming throught the doors at Skatepark of Tampa are getting older. The average age of Damn Am skaters since 2001 has steadily crept up from early 17 to mid-19. Wow, what does that mean?

Statistics on Skateboarder Ages Over The Years

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2013

So I pulled out three years in the above charts to compare, which naturally makes you ask the question of how skate sessions year by year have looked. Once again, I can't give you the total numbers themselves, but I can show you the line graph representing the change. I hope the downward trend is just us and not skateboarding overall. I'd like to think it's all the parks opening up around here being built by local cities. Don't worry about us business-wise, though. We are very diversified with everything we do here, especially with all these events we put on. Plus, when there's more skateboarders in the area, our retail benefits of course, although we have felt the dent from the big chain skate shops I think. Thanks for checking out my nerdy numbers analysis. I'm going to try to do more of these on all kinds of other categories and topics I record data about. Signing off in the words of Jim Thiebaud, "thank you skateboarding."

Statistics on Skateboarder Ages Over The Years

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2013

I don't want to give out specific totals and numbers as far as total sessions, but percentage changes I can discuss. The first thing we're looking at here in this table is the 2008 and 2012 percentage changes in total skate sessions as compared to 2004. Damn, there's been a 34% drop in skate sessions from 2004 to 2012. What happened? All the free concrete parks opening up around here? Less skateboarders overall? Who knows, but look below that and you can see how these numbers changed in various age categories. The number of 10 and under kids skating dropped 25% since 2004. Wow, I would have expected an increase. Why are there less really young skaters coming through our doors? And the next number is even more alarming. A 50% decrease in skaters 19 and under. Wow. Moving on to the older categories, it's amazing to see the number of skaters in their 20's double since 2004 and skaters 40 and up more than double since then. People are definitely skating for life these days and that I cannot be more happy about.

Statistics on Skateboarder Ages Over The Years

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2013

Jumping forward to 2012 is where you can really see a change. The top three ages for total skate sessions are 16, 13, and 21. Wow, older kids are skating or younger kids that started skating have really stuck with it. Either way, great to see. The chart clearly shows the drop off in sessions for each age occurs in the early 20's rather than mid-teens. Is skateboarding becoming more "sticky" where it stays with you as your lifestyle? Hold on before that judgement. We've got more numbers to check.

Statistics on Skateboarder Ages Over The Years

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2013

In 2008, ages 13 and 14 were still the top ages for skate sessions. The distribution isn't too different here, but you can start to see that there are clearly more skaters in the upper teen range.

Statistics on Skateboarder Ages Over The Years

By Rob Meronek, Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2013

It's been way too long since a nerd out on numbers post, so let's dive into some digits. I was interested in how the ages of skaters has looked over the years. What would you guess? Are skaters generally younger these days then ten years ago or are they older or both? Let's take a look starting with 2004. Back then, kids aged 13 and 14 made up the top two ages for total skate sessions. This chart shows total skate sessions by age. As you can see, it starts to drop off pretty sharply after 15.