I’m on the road with the family for the holiday. That’s why you’re not seeing the regular amount of activity here. For our readers outside of the States, we’re celebrating the memory of the white man spreading small pox to the indigenous population of North America, otherwise known as Thanksgiving. We cook and eat turkeys to commemorate it. Here’s what I came up with, old photos of an Emerica tour in Turkey from Skateboard Europe. If you want something more up to date, check out Skateboarding Turkey. I couldn’t find pictures of a turkey on a skateboard, there’s a video of a chicken on a skateboard after the jump. I know, it’s not the same thing. I’ll be back in time to se the Hanson Brothers.

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I keep thinking this is a fake article, like something you’d find on the Onion, but it seems like it’s real. When I reported on it in June, it seemed like a bad idea, destined to go nowhere, but it popped up again in Denver’s Westworld News. Regardless of the plan to open a skatepark within an amusement park, I have to give him (Llewellyn Werner, the man behind the company) a little credit for advancing the sport. They are building four smaller “neighborhood” skateparks in Baghdad out of Freshpark Freshpark portable ramps to introduce kids to skateboarding free of charge. Is it working?

The first park was finally installed on September 8. But since September also marks the Muslim holiday of Ramadan and daytime temperatures regularly reach into the 110s, no one has yet used the skatepark. So the official opening is planned for the second week of October. The mayor of Baghdad and Iraq’s Minister of Youth and Sport are expected to be in attendance.

How did the the venture capital company come up with the idea? Jeff Wilson who is the “head of sport” has some sort of relationship with Grind King. It will be interesting to see if anyone shows up for the grand opening. I’m still not confident that the whole thing is legit, mostly because the only source is obscure and the images are super tiny. Something about it seems off.

[Source: Sublimited]

Not exactly. The Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience is being designed by the by the firm that developed Disneyland. Err.. wouldn’t that be Walt Disney? Sort of. Exporting American style amusement parks like Euro Disney have been about as successful as the Iraq War, and these are in countries we didn’t invade.

From the Times Online:

A $1 million skateboard park, the first phase of the development, will open in July. Parts for 200,000 skateboards and materials to build ramps will be shipped from America to Iraq for assembly at state-owned factories and distributed free to Iraqi children along with helmets and knee pads.

Shipping materials to build ramps? Is this going to be a $1 million prefab park? Do they want to make Iraq’s youth hate the U.S. even more? Does Haliburton own a piece of SkateWave? We don’t want to actually help the people of Iraq, we just want to make them love America. (Warning: Crackpot alert on that previous link.) This is not going to be a state owned Iraqi public park. The company developing the park is leasing the land for 50 years, so they’ll need to charge money. Are they going to give away skateboards and then charge kids ride the park? This amusement park will provide much needed jobs for anyone qualified to pick up trash on roller skates. And more good news, the suicide bomb bus ride will be an E ticket.

Photos: Background - AP photo by Hadi Mizban - A 4-year-old Iraqi child cries as older boys stage a mock execution Monday in Baghdad, Iraq. Children’s games are under a heavy influence of ongoing violence in the country. [Source: News-Record] Does that bum you out? How can you be bummed out when Mickey Mouse wants to skate vert with you? Happy soma skating with Mickey Mouse!

- Thanks to Doug Williams for the tip.

Welsh Pete via Sleestak found this video of some Arab skateboarding action that complements some of the stuff we’ve posted lately. Rather than reinterpret, I’ll poach use his own words:

So between the ages of 10 and 17 I lived in Bahrain. The only kids that really skated were us Brits and Yanks. Not many Bahrainis skated. So its good to see them getting into it. One of my friend’s was just out there and he sent me this vid of the locs trying to kill themselves…. Thats right you can have all these preconceived ideas about Muslims and Arabs but some like skateboarding, fucking about and heavy metal just like you….

Well, I don’t like heavy metal, (except Dethklok and the Darkness) but I like skateboarding. This is the kind of thing Pete should be posting on Skate and Annoy instead of making be poach it from him.

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I heard the President of my country on the radio lying this morning. He must have been lying because he was talking. Anyway, mentioned something about the recent escalation in violence in Iraq, which is a great excuse to post this retread of a retread story about skateboarding during the time of operation Desert Storm. The story has resurfaced on a sketchy website called Skateboarding Magazine. I say sketchy because it is brand new and is mostly populated with generic articles that seem like they are more designed to drive traffic for Google Ad Words than they are to actually express a point of view about something. Kind of like what you might hire a room full of monkeys for. Originally this story was associated with a web property called sk8shop.com, and was circulated in an email from Louie Bar. I got two of them back in ‘03 and ‘04. Right now sk8shop.com is dedicated to selling you photos of pro skaters taken at different public events. It’s Louie Baur’s story, so maybe he’s behind the Skateboarding Magazine. It’s titled “Skateboarding in Desert Storm” but that’s actually a little misleading since all the skateboarding action takes place in Turkey, well away from the front lines. In any case, it’s still interesting to anyone who remembers skating with guys in the military at that time. In central Illinois there was an Air Force base in Rantoul that was about a half hour away from where I was dropping out of school. We always got a few mostly cool skaters that would be session with us when they were able to get off the base. I was in touch with a guy who was skating in Iraq a few years ago. He was going to send some pictures in but never did. Maybe he didn’t like our political leanings. Then again, maybe he fell victim to an I.E.D.. Don’t forget to vote!

Boards, bikinis, bombs and boneheads is the working title for this post, but I don’t want people to get the wrong idea. I’ve got a mish mash of skateboarding action from Dubai and Israel. Some of it has more serious overtones, and some of it is stupidity. The rest falls in between.

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This spot is called Yad Lebanim, and it’s in Jerusalem, Israel. It’s a memorial for soldiers killed in the IDF, or Israeli Defense Force. Something tells me that any skateboarding on the premises would be met with a swift response. Something more forceful than what happens when dipshits in the U.S. decide to skate on war memorials, no matter where they might have gotten the inspiration. Seth Levy sent in these pictures after seeing the Yad Kennedy spot check. I guess “yad” means “memorial” in Hebrew then.

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Dave Tobin sent me a picture to tie in with the Israeli energy bar commercial that has skateboarding in it. It’s some very skateable architecture by David Resnick designed as a memorial for John F. Kennedy outside of Jerusalem, Israel. I had a hard time finding pictures of the “Jerusalem Kennedy Memorial” online, but if you type in “Yad Kennedy” you get better results. Must be hebrew. Still, there’s not a whole lot of information available on this site. The monument was built in 1966 with funds donated by Jewish communities in the USA. Would this be called street skating even though it has tranny?

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What about all the skateboarding Jews? We just don’t see Hanukka skateboarding marketing tie ins like we do with Christmas. Jew, Gentile, regular, goofy… it’s all the same. I don’t even know when Hanukkah is, it’s probably over already. Here’s an Israeli TV commercial for what looks like an exploding energy bar that blatantly rips off the Girl Yeah Right! video. Who knows, Maybe Spike Jonze directed this one too.

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