Alvie might be the original skateboarding dog. It predates Lance’s nemesis in the Powell vid and Tyson by a long shot. This photo of Alvie is from 1980, and I found it on the photo page of the 30 year reunion of Olympic Skatepark in Olympia, Washington, over at Northwest Skater. Olympic is long gone, so the reunion was held at Lower Woodland in Seattle.

Remember all those ripping skaters who came out of southern Oregon? Well I’m guessing we can expect a new crop in the near future. Matt Kline sent us some snaps of a couple of projects currently underway: Shoey’s Coos Bay, Oregon and Grindline in Myrtle Creek, Oregon. Dreamland’s Winston, Oregon project is also rumored to break ground in the near future. More shots after the turn.

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Another milestone has been reached. The Wasatch County Skatepark in Heber City, Utah is 300th skatepark to open that has received a donation form the Tony Hawk Foundation. You can read the press release after the jump, or head on over to Skate Utah to see pics of the actual park. It sure looks inviting from the shot above.

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This week’s Shot of the Week is a Kevin Porterfield shot of Gabe Stoltz taken at the Dallas, Oregon skatepark last week. I didn’t know Dallas had a skatepark, but SkateOregon did. Yes, he landed it. Although yesteryear’s toy skateboards were cheap plastic toys, they still rolled better on those loose bearings than the equivalent wooden toy boards you find at Target or WalMart today. There’s a bonus shot after the jump, or skip to the full frame version of the Shot of the Week.

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Newline Skateparks and California Skateparks have some concrete poured at Ed Benedict Skate Plaza in southeast Portland, Oregon. I hadn’t been out there for over a month so I was excited to see some concrete. The sign says it’s supposed to open early fall 2008. Looks like there is still a lot of work to be done. More phone snaps after the turn.

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Sessions presents the 10th annual Tim Brauch Memorial Contest is being held this weekend at Lake Cunningham Regional Skate park in San Jose. We might even have some photos coming to us. I wonder how the documentary is coming.

Spohnranch has a new street plaza opening in the Inglewood neighborhood of Wilmington California. It’s replacing some prefab ramps with prefab concrete. They actually placed the whole park on the existing slab, traced it, and then cut out the concrete and laid the new pieces in place. They predict a lot of communities will be replacing metal and wood prefab parks this way as it allows them to avoid the expense of re-pouring all the flat. Seems like it would work fine for a street plaza. This one was co-designed by Paul Rodriguez Jr. and features replicas of LA spots including the DWP granite benches, Fairfield ledges and LA High banks. They have a Flickr stream of the installation and a short video that you can watch after the jump. Not much to it really. The park is located at 325 Neptune Ave, Wilmington, CA 90744. Opening ceremony is September 27

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This week’s Shot of the Week is courtesy of Dylan Davies. It’s a nice 4×5 camera shot of Grant from New Zealand at the Bonsor skatepark full pipe in British Columbia, Canada. Every time I see pictures of this park it makes me think it’s some old relic, but I guess it’s actually from this millennium. You gotta admire the skate photographer who uses a 4×5 view camera. You need to lug the camera to the location, load the film in a true dark room,none of that red light cheating, do your metering, focus on the ground glass and pop the film back onto the camera. Then you slide the slidey thing out (it’s been a while) and hit the shutter release. Then slide it back in, take the film back off and bring it to a dark room to develop, one negative at a time. That’s a lot of hassle to get a decent shot. Not something you’d want to try on a kickflip variation that might be a bust on the first 20 tries.

Check out the full frame version.

Cannon Beach is a sleepy little beach town that is just about 10 minutes south of Seaside, Oregon. Cannon Beach’s new park opened in May of 2008. Placed to Ride built a new concrete park on the site of the old one which was essentially just a steep “E” shaped asphalt banks on a flat spot. It was the kind of spot that would be fun if it occurred “naturally,” but was pretty disappointing as something purpose built for skateboarding. (Sam, don’t take down those old pictures!) The new park is very small in both square footage and height, but it’s packed full of skateable terrain including pool coping, ledges and bank variations. I don’t know if money was the object or what, but it there sure is a lot of adjacent space that looks like it could have been used. In any case, it’s has the potential for a lot of fun. If I had to say something critical it would be that I thought I noticed a spot or two where the transition was a little wonky, which is highly unusual for PTR. I really didn’t ride it much. My body was wrecked from the day before and tired from trudging around on the beach. You can see some park overview shots after the jump.

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Team Pain is about halfway done in Colorado Springs. Catch three pictures of the bowls after the jump. What’s next? The street area, of course. Thanks to Tito for the pics. How are those inverts coming?

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