This week’s Shot of the Week features Mark Conahan in a photo that he says he’s embarrassed of, but shouldn’t be. When is two and a half feet below the coping still an admirable feat? When there’s another 8 feet below you and the transition is ridiculously tight. This is the horizontal crop of the pic so it would fit in the post reasonably. Check out the vertical frame Shot of the Week and then follow the rest of this post to get an idea of how deep that deep end is. This pool was demolished this morning, so everyone who feels obligated to comment on how it looks like a piece of crap can just save your breath. Someone has to skate the crap so the super cool tough guys can get all the glory. Thanks again to the guy who gave us the opportunity to skate this very short lived pool. Much appreciated.

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This week’s Shot of the Week is the Q-Bert pool in Happy Valley, Oregon that everyone loves to hate. You don’t have to worry about how much it sucks anymore because it is recently deceased. This is Mark Conahan, obviously. If you think this pool is only good for “spending all day trying to get over the light,” I suggest you see the extra pic after the jump.

Check out the Shot of the Week

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This week’s Shot Of The Week is Marek Litinski at Burnside as shot by his fellow countryman Martin Lucuk. You don’t see a lot of Burnside shots on Skate and Annoy (Yes, yes, it’s because we’re posers…) so why not. Marek’s friend came over from Czechoslovakia the Czech Republic for a Northwest skate session and so there you have it. Check out the Shot Of The Week or see some more Lucuk shots at Cold War Skateboards.

This week’s Shot of the Week is Lewis “Iowask8er” Brundige skating a demo on a quarterpipe at the 1982 Iowa State Fair. There are so many small things that add up to make this a great shot. There’s the combination of the Van Halen t-shirt and Joan Jett sticker on the bottom of the board juxtaposed with “Disneyland” on the tail. Then there’s the quarter pipe demo. Lewis must have had to push his ass off to get that high up. It’s a nice size air, as you can see by the shadow of the photographer and ramp on the asphalt. Lewis is still skating, and has a page full of skate video info as well as a collection of mostly vintage photos. Check out this week’s Shot of the Week.

I realized I forgot to put up a Shot of the Week, so I decided to continue today’s theme of skateboarders of color. This is Ron Allen back in 1988 at an N.S.A. contest called the Bluegrass Aggression Session, held in an almost empty arena in the city of Louisville, Kentucky. (GBJ was there.) If I remember correctly, Ron was very accommodating for this photograph during a warm up session. This was a massive flatground ollie with a kick out. Most may remember Ron from his days at H-Street, but did you know he’s still skating and riding for a company called Creation Skateboards? Check out this week’s Shot of the Week.

This week’s Shot of the Week is Mark Conahan at the nearly finished Gabriel Park skatepark. When it actually opens for business pleasure is unknown for sure. There’s still a pour or two and a lot of landscaping to go. The crew was on site yesterday and gave Mark Conahan the opportunity to air off the extension. Check out the full size Shot of the Week

I can’t believe I’m actually getting this one up in time, but this week’s Shot of the Week also marks the start of the second year of actually updating the shots once a week. Before that there was just the showcase gallery that would sometimes (OK, usually) stay unchanged for over a month.

This week’s Shot of the Week is a Xeno photo of Fritz Mead. I originally wanted to use a photo I found on the Saturday Skateboards web site, but Xeno pointed it out that it was pretty old and had already run in Focus. I don’t care about that so much, but I did like this photo a lot. It’s a 2008 shot from a place called Attleboro, which I’m guessing is in Massachusetts. This photo is actually a little misleading in terms of the scale of the skate structure. There’s a shot after the jump that will put it into perspective.

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This week’s Shot of the Week is a spot in the Boston area that was known as the Black Hole ditch back in 1986 when the photo was taken. If I recall correctly, the reason it had that name had something to do with the temperature of the asphalt ditch in the hot summer sun. Nothing fancy, just one of those nostalgia shots. This is on my Boston trip negatives, but for all my lack of geographic knowledge of the area and memory loss, this might have been in the outlying burbs. Check it out.

This week’s Shot of the Week comes from Carl Warren and features Ben Krahn ollieing the gap to transition. You should check out the full frame version to get the whole picture.

This weeks Shot of the Week is from an Urbana, Illinois parking garage street skating session circa 1988. The skater has since changed his name, and would probably prefer not to be identified, but we can call him Karl. Notice he has ollied on to the hood of this car via a nice cheat where you place your hand on top of the object and scoop the board up and over as you ollie and once your weight has transferred onto your hand. For those of us who weren’t Natas, that’s how you had to do it back then. No that car doesn’t belong to either myself or Karl. This was a pure dick move that I encouraged Karl to do, and he did it well. The brashness of youth.

Check out the full size Shot of the Week.