Yes folks, it’s the same people that bring you modern day cannibals, a woman who had 69 babies and the 200 pound tumor. The 9th wonder of the world appears to be something known as the “Urban Jib Park.” Witness the wonder and the horror of The Ripley’s Urban Rail Park - an urban rider’s dream, according to the folks at Polson Pier in Toronto, where it is located. Although open since December 21st, pictures of the actual park appear to be as rare as ostrich-footed Africans. Apparently, they built some rails at the bottom of a pile of snow for the snowboarders and put up a big heated tent with some ramps for the skaters. Things must be bleak in Toronto, because you can even buy a season pass for all this awesomeness:

20ft wide 4 foot mini-ramp
4 stair with hand rail
60 ft wide bank with grind box at the top
5 ft ¼ pipe
6 ft ¼ pipe
Fun box with rail

They will have unspecified rock concerts, pro demos and contests. I predict that this park sucks - BELIEVE IT OR NOT!!

[Source: PR-Inside]

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This was going to be a thread about the trend of municipalities closing down skateparks when they get tagged as an incentive program to stop vandalism. I was going to highlight that a new nearby park in Vancouver Washington is going to experience such closures:

our park maintenance office has decided to handle graffiti removal at the park the same way Battle Ground does at their skate park - by closing the entire park to all users until all the graffiti is removed. Depending on the severity of the graffiti, this could require several days of closure.

I was then going to ramble on about how it was obviously not the real skateboarders doing the vandalism, most likely kids that were on the periphery that might own a skateboard in the same way they would own a bike or a pogo stick if all their friends had one.

Look at the picture above. It seems like a fun place to skate right? It’s sheltered from the elements, and it’s not even illegal. If that was my local spot I’d want to take care of it, but the Creekside Underground locals are pissing it all away.

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Apparently, the Discovery Channel did a short feature on the downhill longboard scene in Canada, more specifically, the Rayne Longboards team and operation. I tried to find out some information on the context of the piece (what show was it on?) but the web site was mum. But they do sell a pintail longboard for some reason. That and those twisty boards. They would also like to recommend a jumping skateboard, or a Flowboard alternative skateboard. Turns out they’ll sell you anything but an actual, regulation length skateboard. Sorry, I got distracted. Watch the video for Discovery Channel’s take on downhill, including some extended Coleman slide action in the rain. Cliff needs to work on that web site. - Oh yeah, thanks to Skategeezer for the tip.

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This week’s shot is Matt Mastrovito on a pivot fakie somewhere in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. Check it out.

Canada’s Much Music had an event on Go Skateboarding Day that featured something called the Hide-n-Skate Ramp. It’s not super ground breaking, but it’s still pretty cool, so you’d think you could find a few pictures of this ramp being set up, in transit or at the very least, being skated, but no, there doesn’t appear to be anything anywhere on the web. WTF? I wonder if the Much Music channel actually plays music videos, unlike any of the MTV channels. Coincidentally, I also recently stumbled across plans for a mini ramp that folds up into a shed(!?) on RampPlans.org. Michael Cheah’s got seven pages of instructions and photos, but amazingly, not one picture of the damn thing folded up into a shed. As weird an pointless as that sounds, I want to see it. Come on people, let’s follow through on the obvious! You could all use some pointers on documentation from Tracy Sigler.

Skateboard Shannon is for sale on the mean streets of Used Calgary. That’s right, she’s used and cheap, but she can still show you some fun. She knows all the tricks and will do whatever you tell her. When your time is up you’d better pay her or else Skateboard Johnny will mess you up, bad.

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From Skull Skates comes word of the 22nd Annual Jaks contest at China Creek on Saturday, September 8, 2007 from 12:00pm - 6:00pm. China Creek skatepark is located at Broadway and Clark in Vancouver BC. Skull Skates has video of some past China Creek events on their JAKS page, as well as a few recently added new decks.

For those keeping track, and I’m guessing that’s about three other people, I’ve resurrected the Broken Kingpins column name in Skate and Annoy. This time around, instead of covering all the roster hopping and product release junk like we used to in our ancient print issues, I’m using it for all the miscellaneous links that don’t merit their own post. Besides, there are about a million other web sites that can tell you who has new shoe models and who got kicked off of what tour. [Photo: Denver Post / Andy Cross]

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The Science Channel’s How it’s Made program featured skateboards as one of the items that they show… how they are made. For some reason they chose the skateboarding segment to include some gratuitous “history of” narration and crappy animation. None of the other products got the extra dog and pony show. The skateboarder in the picture above seems to be caught in some sort of time-space wormhole anomaly where he is forced to dress like the late 70’s but ride a skateboard that looks like it was designed in the 50’s.

Every skateboard manufacturing process seems to vary a little, but the basics are the same. If you’ve never seen this type of thing before it can be interesting. These guys are using the heat transfer process to apply the “decorations” as they call it. The video does not show how the heat transfers are printed (similar to printing t-shirt transfers, colors are printed in reverse order on a flat substrate.) but does show them being applied. The shapes are cut out by hand using an interesting shaping template and what I think is a planer. I’ve never seen it done that way before. Actually, a factory using heat transfers for graphics is probably also using a CNC machine to automate cutting out the shapes. They probably got out the old templates for the camera. Oh yeah, check out the crappy skatepark they show. Classic concrete tranny stuck on top of asphalt flatground. Sweet. If anyone knows where any of this was shot, please leave it in the comments. Watch the video after the jump.

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No, the guy in the bottom left picture is not a rabid Adam Ant fan going through a Prince Charming phase, it’s Toronto skateboarder Ben Davis after he got hit by a car while skateboarding in the street. A security camera caught the whole thing on tape, and City News reported on it. The street is supposed to be one that gets a lot of foot, bicycle and skateboard traffic. It’s not a major artery, and some residents even want it closed to automobile traffic all together. It’s not shocking that Ben got hit by a car, after all, he was in the middle of the street going against traffic. The interesting bit here (aside from gawking at the carnage) is the fact that the car driver got off scott free and Ben is the one who got the ticket. Check it out.
[Source: Altered Skateboarding] Postscript: I had a hard time picking a Prince Charming link to reference, check out this alternative.