Our pal Steve Grover turned 40 yesterday. Happy Birthday dude!

So Here it is the long lost version of “My Great Movie” assembled in late 04 early 05. Its an epic saga of a group skaters that had only 2 parks to ride with in an hours drive, not like today where we have 5 parks with in twenty minuets of my house. and 10 with in an hour thank gawd. Bonus film “Washed Up Old Vert Skaters.” A title bestowed by some street skater trying to ollie to tail at the old beaverton ramp while I was in the middle of a run. – GVK Off!

The 70’s was a funny time in skateboarding. At times, the industry and the public at large tended to view it almost as a carnival ride or amusement park attraction. Case in point, Skateball. I received a couple old pictures of a Skateball installation at the Olympic Skatepark in Crystal Lake Illinois a few years back when SnA was being updated on a very infrequent basis. Seeing the Radical post reminded me of them, so I dug them up. Fortunately, I was still able to contact Jeff Hottle for some larger scans, and he obliged with a few bonus shots as well. Skateball was basically pinball on a halfpipe, where the skater simulated the ball. It’s one of those things you hear rumors about but don’t quite give them credit unless you actually see it. Five pictures and a little history after the jump.

Hip hop skateboarders? Now I’ve seen everything. No seriously, I think this guy does a better job than most singing about skateboarding without making it sound silly.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? What if there is a better way to do something? The now ubiquitous Independent Trucks were an innovation – the result of two different explorations of the idea of independent suspension in a skateboard truck. So good for slalom that some considered it cheating to use them – but not what most skaters wanted. Somehow they managed to straighten out the axle and improve the turning and the rest is history, or is it mathematics? Metallurgy?

Maputo city in Mozambique has a little scene going there with their own web site called Maputo Skate. I don’t know diddly about Mozambique, but the Wikipedia primer says Mozambique was a former colony of Portugal that gained independence in 1975 after years of war and a Military coup. A one party state aligned with the Soviet bloc was formed and a long civil war followed. Since 1990 they’ve had democratic elections. I can’t make heads or tails of African politics, it can be one messed up place. The point of this sub-par history lesson is to point out that even with all the economic and political strife, skateboarding somehow found its way to Mozambique. Not only that, but the tricks are the same. Maputo Skate has photos and video, and while the equipment is not all to notch (like that sketchy grind rail in the photo above) the fun looks like any other group of kids you might find in the Midwest somewhere, posting pictures and video to MySpace.

According to the The Post Tribune article Doctor: Skateboarding can be fatal: A taste for adventure can be fatal for skateboarders who practice their stunts without a helmet or hang onto the bumper of a car. In a study of skateboarding injuries, one out of every five kids who were hospitalized needed help with feeding after they were released. “Sometimes, these injuries can have long-lasting consequences. Not being able to feed yourself is not that cool,” said Dr. Kyran Quinlan at the University of Chicago. In response to these findings, one local research group has funded further research. Results after the jump.