Slek Skateboards (pronounced “sleek”) is an American company owned by the golf company Ping. Based on the front page of their web site you’d probably assume they made standard park/street skateboards but the majority of their lineup is actually longboard and cruiser oriented. The reason they’re here on S&A is because of the Float-Tec funky truck assembly that is designed to let users roll over cracks and bumps without eating it. It’s a strange niche because beginners who aren’t skilled enough to negotiate those, obstacles are likely not going to justify the expense, and you can’t buy the trucks separately. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this kind of setup before, but I may in fact be thinking of the Stair Board from back in 2012. One thing I find annoying, for the life of me I can’t replicate the “e” character with the line over the top that they use in their website and logo. Our character sets are both utf-8 and I cant find it in any character table.
[Source: MyGolfSpy]
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Check out this Ken Park (AKA Krapnek) model on Kryptonics skateboards. It’s the first pro model he ever had and is so rare that at this time he himself does not even possess one.
– Thanks to Jason Lorin for the photos.
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Day 7 (!) of 7 Days of Jughead! I made it! This is volume 2, issue #34 of Jughead published in June of 1992. It has a couple of stories with skateboarding, I Was a Teenage Jughead and Lessons in Skateboarding. Even Jughead himself asks, is this a joke?
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Day 6 of 7 Days of Jughead features Jughead v2 #32 from April of 1992. Introducing the impossibly cool sounding “J-Head Brigade” and the story “Weird Cats.”
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I’m taking it easy a little bit for Day 5 of 7 days of Jughead. Jughead #30, #31, #33, and #38 don’t have much (or any) skateboarding content at all beyond their covers, so they are all mashed together in one post. Although the content is a little thin, we do get to see the introduction of the character “Sassy Thrasher” who might have been based on my ideal girlfriend in the 80’s.
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It’s day 4 of 7 days of Jughead, and Jughead v2 #29 from 1992 is a big one. The thrust of the main story is the adage don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Major Spoiler Alert: Grandma Jones is friends with some skate punks who buy groceries for her and in return she lets them have band practice in her garage. Meanwhile Jughead is completely out of the loop. Spend some time with your Grandma Jughead, you never know how those punks will take advantage of her kindness… but it turns out the punks are tired of being misunderstood. They give (!) Jughead an extra skateboard, and Grandma Jones’ guitar teacher (wild!) encourages Jughead to be his own person, so Jughead reinvents himself as a skate punk! It turns out this short-lived character transformation was not well received by the Archie community… Yes, there is an Archie community. In any case, there’s a lot to unpack in my favorite episode of Freaks and Geeks… errr… uhm, Jughead.
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It’s day 3 of 7 days of Jughead! This is Jughead Volume 2 #28 from December of 1991. The first thing you might notice is the corner box illustration which hints at radicalness as well as an announcement declaring the inside pages are made from recycled pages, which is a change from the recycled stories usually featured in Archie titles. This is actually kind of a crazy cover for this imprint, but it was the 90’s and you have to assume they were trying to stay hip.
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You know my love for the Surf Punks. Futurismo is adding a rerelease of Locals Only to compliment the My Beach reissue. Unlike the My Beach reissue, Locals Only has two bonus tracks, and I’ve never heard them before. This is exciting to me, and at least one other person I’m sure. Be happy for me. Then take a moment to reflect on the fact that a band like the Surf Punks could not have crawled out of the primordial slime in any other time and place than late 70’s Southern California, and yet you have the import these masterful reissues from the UK.
Day two of 7 Days of Jughead features the story “Skateboard Fever” from issue 272 of Jughead, published in 1978. I don’ know why I didn’t go chronologically and post this one first, but I’m already posting Archie comics, so all taste and logic has gone by the wayside. This story is once again set in the hallways of Riverdale High. Poor Principal Weatherbee, or “the Bee” as Jughead refers to him, spent decades either purposefully or accidentally trying to learn how to skateboard, but he never gets the hang of it. Highlights include Veronica calling the guys “bean bags,” and Betty acting like a Karen – “It’s against the rules to skateboard in school!”
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