In the States, skateboards are decks with wheels that you can use to kickflip or ollie over picnic tables. In Mumbai, people use them to do cool tricks like that, but also to create hand-carved works of art.

German artist Tobias Megerle’s reverence for traditional Indian woodwork and appreciation for Mumbai’s popular skater subculture helped him spawn an idea to fuse the two together.

A dozen local woodcarvers carried out his vision and created an impressive handcrafted fleet that added a new-school flare to an old-school activity.

While the boards are no doubt cool to look at — they were part of an exhibit at a Mumbai museum for a time — the safety of the boards as riding vessels is questionable at best. Try to go all Tony Hawk on a halfpipe with one and you’re likely to bust your ass after the board busts into twigs.