September 2008. The economy is really starting to contract. The housing market has been sucking for ages, and now banks are failing and the economy is streaking towards recession. Skateboard prices are not immune. They are starting on a downward trend, which will continue for sometime I would imagine. It’s a really good time to buy, not so good if you are a seller.

Read eBay Watch: September 2008

OK, the last of our 2008 Oregon Trifecta coverage has finally come straggling in. That’s Bacon’s Tim Johnson in the shot above. Check it out.

I just added another 30 pictures from the Tigard stop of the 2008 Oregon Trifecta.

(Oops! fixed the link.) Check it out.

eBay is like a yoyo. Prices were high in April, way down in May, but they completely rebounded in June. In a very big way. So let’s see. Tax rebates in April, nothing in May, Government Stimulus Checks in June. Is it really that obvious? Apparently yes. So if my reckoning is right, prices will tank again in July. Note to self, next year sell stuff in April.

Check out: eBay Watch - June 2008

Well, March was good, but April was even better! I feature 49 items, of which 14 went for over $1,000. There were no $3000+ decks this month, but still, lots of good stuff changing hands. There was a lot of cash being thrown around. Maybe tax refunds being spent? And just wait until the stimulus checks hit!

Check out: eBay Watch - April 2008

Main I’ve been remiss with this one because it happened before Christmas!

Big news! We have a new champion! The $6,000 Hawk is no longer the high price champ! On December 18 2007 a Caster Chris Strople was won at auction for $6,099. It’s a flat deck with 2 layers of fiberglass between the plies. It’s been set up and ridden, and has a Woody space plate on the tail.

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The Back Athlete Sports Network (Yeah, I’m a subscriber) has an article titled Extreme Sportsman Carving His Own Way Through Life. I love the title “Extreme Sportsman.” It makes him sound so gentlemanly and brings to mind some old English guy dressed up for a safari with a pith helmet, pipe and Elephant gun. Blacula, I mean Blaxtreme sportsman Christopher “Crib” Butler’s interview is not very extreme. We do learn that in the 80’s his black friends accused him of trying to be white by skateboarding. Flying in the faces of stereotypes, he actually had to go to the ghetto to buy his first real skateboard! What was it? A Vision Kele Rosecrans. That makes him even more of a minority! Oh stop it, you’re killing me! Crib still skates, surfs and snowboards. Since 2007 he’s been shaping some nicely crafted longboards reminiscent of old surfboards under the name Malu Longoboards. For a brief time in the early nineties some of my friends and I thought we were “______.” I leave that term blank because “Extreme Sports” hadn’t been coined in 1992. We were skateboarding, bungie jumping, mountain biking, skydiving and motorcycle riding, etc. We called it “Live by the sword.” Thank god I got over that identity crisis. Then I found out what we were… a Demographic!

So a couple of weekends ago Dave Vieira, Pete Panagakos, Jeff Fryer, and myself set out for a little 3 day weekend trip to beautiful Brookings, Oregon. Our plan was to skate, drink some beer, and for me to shoot a machine gun in Eugene.

Check out: Brookings Weekend

Skate and Annoy’s pro contest coverage of the rained out Battle Ground Washington leg of the Oregon Trifecta that was moved to Tobin’s backyard bowl in Portland (Whew!) comes from Shawn Reinert. I don’t think Tobin envisioned this when he built his bowl. Talk about stoked! These two pics are some of Shawn’s longer exposures that picked up flashes from the other multiple cameras present, and the results are strange. Old expanding sponge head on the left is Donovan Rice. The lien-to-tail on the six wheeled skateboard is Josh Sandoval. More weird shit and conventional pictures as well in the feature.

Check out: 2007 Oregon Trifecta - Tobin’s Bowl

Aside from Vancouver, there was another skatepark opening of sorts in Washington last week. Bellingham Washington got some new Dreamland additions to an existing craptacular skatepark. We’ve shown you some pictures of the progress before thanks to John Aguilar, and he has come through again with a bunch more. They are strictly non-action photos though. There’s also a couple on Sleestak. Dan Hughes from Northwest Skater actually got in a session before the rain, as soon as his pics go live I’ll link them up.