I went to art school. Best five years of my life… But none of this silliness. No sirree. It was all business. Not like Matt Cheney, action artist. He makes art while doing things like skateboarding and skydiving. He’s even used his skateboard as a brush. Now that’s putting your parents’ tuition money to good use! [Source: John Bakos]

Give thanks you don’t live in Fort Walton Beach Florida, where the city golf course will remain open on Thanksgiving day but other facilities, including the skatepark will be closed in observance of the Thanksgiving Holidays. My guess is that a golf course is more expensive to leave open than a skate park, so someone at city hall must want to get in a few rounds before they gorge themselves. Up here in Portland? well if the weather cooperates, all public skateparks will be open and free of charge.

If you give a monkey a typewriter and an infinite amount of time, it will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. It looks like someone is looking to hire a blog monkey to write about skateboarding: I am seeking someone to write 35 unique 200-250 word Blog Articles related to skateboarding (art of skateboarding, current famous boarders, the skateboard itself and/or its parts). Your bid should be for writing ALL 30 Articles, not a per Article price. Writers must have complete command of the English language, including sentence structure, spelling, grammar, and must be able to write from a North American perspective. Having used a skateboard and/or at least familiar with the skateboard “lingo” is a must. As the articles are to be used to achieve high rankings in search engines, we require unique, high quality, well-written, keyword-rich, spider-friendly Articles. Keyword density should hover around the 5% mark. I can’t wait to see the web site this these articles get used for. I’m sure those high search engine rankings are going to be used for the love of skateboarding and not to try and sell us some crap. Are you applying for this job? The Minneapolis Star Tribune promises…

This weeks shot is from an Arizona pool party that Old Man Army recently threw, complete with live honky tonk on the deck. Russell proves you can rock and roll to honky tonk. You can see it larger over at the Shot of the Week.

The Royal Hawaiian Pool Service has a page documenting the Poi Bowl that is right up our obsessive compulsive alley. It’s a famous pool that aside from being skated, also had the honor of appearing in several episodes of Hawaii Five-O. RHPS has some pics from magazine appearances, a skateboard graphic tribute, and a little video footage from TV as well.

Just a reminder, there is still a war going on in Iraq, and there are still guys skating over there too. This pic is from Mr M’s World.

Larry Pescatore sent in some more progress shots of the Wormhoudt park in San Jose: It looks all but finished: the concrete and bowls all look done and the perimeter fence has been built. The testament to monolithic artsy skatable landmarks is complete. The bathrooms have been built. All that seems left is the parking lot and/or outer landscaping. They even built a walkway up but it’s all fenced off. It looks more like a nuclear power plant than a skatepark in the shot above. More after the jump.

Or as Pete Lewis likes to call it: Old fatties skating terribly small skatepark features. Bigger after the jump. Sorry Egbert, you didn’t make the cut.

Design Within Reach is a catalog and store that sells “modern” furniture and household doodads that look cool and are often kind of expensive, but less so than typical modern furniture that you don’t buy from Ikea. Bottega Montana has produced an edition of 57 boards in collaboration with Design Within Reach. As far as I can tell, the collaboration consists of wood burning the DWR logo on the deck. If the name Bottega Montana sounds familiar, it might be because we covered another collaboration they did last year. These decks will actually be available for purchase in select Design Within Reach stores. What will they cost? Get ready to spend at least $400, judging by their current catalog. Think of them as family heirloom skateboards. They also reportedly have a Shepard Farey short board collaboration in the works. Update: Available online and priced at a whopping $798, down from $1000! See DWR

The New York times has a thing for putting skateboarding in the fashion section lately. I was going to blow of this article titled “Skateboarding Rolls Out of the Suburbs,” but the skateboarding and hip hop blogs are hyping it and you know we follow the trends around here. There’s not much to it besides the fact that black kids can now skate without being harassed by their peers. You get to see a photo of Pharrell Williams doing a street plant as well as read this choice quote from him: “I was rapping and it was getting me nowhere, so I went back to my roots… …When I’m with rappers in the studio, they say, ‘I used to skate, too,’” Mr. Williams said. “I can only just say I was one of the ones that was willing to speak up about it.” Wow man, that took a lot of courage to come out as a skateboarder in public in hopes of jump starting a failing rap career. He’s a regular Rosa Parks. On the plus side, they also briefly quote Stevie Williams and Steven Snyder, the former Alva rider and long time Chicago favorite now working at Uprise. Sift…