No that’s not a still from the first Bones brigade video, it’s 20 years later and Lance is hitting that spot for Elwood clothing’s 1st and Hope video, which came out some time last year I believe. Has anyone seen this? It looked like a good concept for a video, instead of the usual scattergun barrage of tricks planned and practiced and over and over to make it for the video (shot on 16mm film), it features a group of friends skating together in various spots, meeting people along the way. There are a few old distinguished names in there like Eric Dressen, Lance Mountain, Matt Hensley, Ray Barbee and Salman Agah. EXPN has a nice write up with more background and some production stills. So yeah, this is old news by a year.

The second hope is Athletes for Hope, which is an organization of some of the more famous names in sports whose purpose is to “educate, encourage and assist athletes in their efforts to contribute to community and charitable causes, to increase public awareness of those efforts, and to inspire others to do the same.” Basically, it’s a bunch of famous athletes trying to get other professional athletes to pull their heads out of their self-centered asses and help out the less fortunate. That’s an admirable goal. Skateboarding’s most famous philanthropist Tony Hawk is one of the founding members, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was involved in Oprah’s Big Give charity/reality show. The trailer shows a brief glimpse of someone spinning a McTwist on a vert ramp. Actually, that’s just a guess since you don’t get to see the full rotation.

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Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with skateboarding, other than a few incidental shots each episode, but as far as mindless entertainment goes, it’s regularly good for a few laughs, so I guess I was wrong about the Rob and Big show. Plus I always liked the theme song from the Courtship of Eddies Father. Or maybe I had a crush on Mrs. Livingston. Hello, Mr Eddie’s father. Let the hate mail commence.

Worn Free will sell you a reproduction of t-shirts worn by famous rock ‘n’ roll personalities including this rad shirt worn by Joey Ramone The website has notes for each of the shirts which make interesting reading if you are into punk rock trivia. Some of the shirts are cool but forty bucks seems kind of steep. I’m tempted to make my own personal bootleg transfer.

You may have heard that actor Heath Ledger died yesterday of an apparent sleeping pill overdose. Everyone loves to remember him as a gay cowboy, but his portrayal of Skip Engblom was pretty much the highlight of The Lords of Dogtown in the dramatic version of Peralta’s Dogtown documentary. Heath not only played a skater in the movies, but played with skateboards in real life too, as seen in the two shots at the bottom right from Hellomagazine.com. The other shots are production stills from Lords.

OK, top picture first. Garage Manufacturing, the makers of Soft Trucks, also makes a wire rack that hangs over a door and holds several boards horizontally, plus one “go-to” board vertically. Not noteworthy except I liked the picture they used in the “natural environment” setting. With those Kiss and Farrah Fawcett posters there ought to be fiberglass GT boards in that quiver intead of modern popsicles. Look closely and you can see Farrah on a skateboard.

Lastly, aside from serving as a location to shoot Bratz commercials, Skatepark franchise Skatelab has teamed up with an artist called ZAZ (never heard of him/her/it) to sell skateboard bookshelves, pictureframes and the like at Target. under the name Skatelab Furniture. I’m not sure how they talked Target into it, considering they used to sell unbranded skateboard curios. Even Pottery Barn Kids used to do it. It’s not like Skatelab has huge brand recognition outside of their two locations and Concrete Disciples. There was a “news item” about it on Kids Today, turns out Skatelab has a few other licensing deals too.

Psst! Hey kid. Wanna see a titillating picture of Farrah Fawcett?

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I kept hearing that Dave Chapelle skated, but I never saw it. Now I have, sort of. Looks like he’s more of a street skater, but someone at RYE Airfield got him on the vert ramp. - Thanks to Chip Jones for the tip.