There are a few overpriced “natural” grocery stores in my hood. Someone at this New Seasons keeps putting the Thrasher Magazines up front by the register. The only thing more surprising than the realization that this is still ongoing is the fact that Thrasher is on the shelves here in the first place. What’s next? Alternative music in the aisles?

I’ve been listing to the Hard-ons from afar for decades, ever since I picked up their US debut EP on Bigtime in 1987, purely because the cover had a skateboard on it. I’ve never been able to see these guys live, and the only thing I know about them as humans comes through looking at their artwork and listening to their music. Aside from the skateboard on the cover, the racial makeup of the band portrayed in that crude illustration definitely had an appeal to me. It was unlike anything I was seeing in punk a the time. I assumed they were punk because, you know, 80’s DIY art and a skateboard. The style of the some of the music threw me for a loop at the time as my tiny brain recoiled at anything vaguely-heavy metal. However, their spirit really stuck with me, and I loved the underdog nature of an ethically diverse non-mainstream band from Australia. I kept buying their albums and they really grew on me. Terrible Happy Talks has a long interview with bassist and founding member Ray Ahn. You can listen on THT or wherever else you might find podcasts. This is an atypical band member interview. When asked some of the standard band-type questions, Ray becomes deeply introspective and gives very personal answers. Given their discography and artwork, it was a bit of a surprise (to me at least) to learn that Ray is such a serious fellow. The interview is long, slow placed, and very thoughtful. It may not be for everyone (like their music) but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Bonus fact learned: The Hard-ons toured with the infamous skate rock band The Stupids.

Skateboarder flipping off the man after walking through a barrage of crowd control munitions at an ICE protest. As seen on reddit.

Well maybe… They are pro-diversity, Trump be damned. As for the skateboarding on campus, well It’s an assumption based on this interactive display in the University of Oregon welcome center. It’s a heavy duty book affixed to the counter with heavy vinyl-like pages that are coded to trigger the overhead display to show different images and animation on specific pages. The page for racial and ethnic diversity features a skateboarder on a local (Tactics) shop deck no less. Ironically, if you zoom into those benches they appear to have skate-stoppers built in.

Skateboards pop up in unexpected places like this recurring BBC news segment called “Tech Now.” In this episode they are highlighting a robotic hull scrubber (and sea urchin killer) called Hullbot. About 6 minutes in they show a tech working on one of the robots, and in the background there’s a Natas deck hanging up.

Dutch Bros Coffee is a chain of coffee stands mostly based on the west coast., Apparently they give away stickers once a month or who knows how often. They’ve had a handful fo skateboarding themed designs over the years. I believe these are all legit, and I’ve omitted some that I’ve seen on those print-on-demand shops like Redbubble that appear to be unofficial. I dunno, you tell me.

– Thanks to Don Tidwell for the tip.

Every time one of my suitcase starts to go wonky it’s usually the wheels stop spinning or are otherwise somehow damaged. I’ve often thought to myself why doesn’t someone make these things with skateboard wheels? Well, at long last, Floyd to the rescue. This isn’t a coincidence, the skateboard wheel look is intentional, and they lean into it heavily in the marketing.

Are these bootleg Vision Street Wear shoes selling for less than $14 a pair on Temu? Does it even matter? Established (err… uhm… Make that “Fstablished…”) 1985.

Insert tariff joke.

Yesterday’s Snow Skate post with Archie was so unpopular that I decided to follow it up with more research just to spite you, the reading audience. These snow/ski/skateboard patents started showing up as applications in 1977. Curiously, I couldn’t find anything going back earlier that had a skateboard as the foundation. I would have expected something to show up around 1965 but no dice. We’re focused on snow, leaving ice for a later post. At least two of the patents I found are so similar to the finished products in yesterday’s post that they must have been filed by the inventor or manufacturers of those products. One surprise was finding a 1977 patent for the modern day snow skate, the kind with a skateboard deck attached to one small ski.

The cover of Archie #270 (published in April of 1978) features Archie predicting the invention of the Snow Skate, a product that would first be announced in 1979! I’ve seen ads for the 70’s version snow skates before, and I keep looking for them on my hard drive and online like it’s Groundhog Day. I wasted a good 30 minutes just now doing the same until, hold on, what’s this under a pile of crap on my desk? Oh yes, the February 1978 issue of Skateboarder Magazine, complete with an ad for the Snow Skate. That’s the one in the middle. The black and white version comes from Cal Streets. This post is going to cover some of the snow skates over the ages with the exception of the ones that are just a regular board, and those that have one ski mounted to the bottom.