ABC News has a crush on Vans Shoes. They have a two page spread on the 40th anniversary of Vans Shoes titled Skateboard Style Hits Middle Age. It’s a fluff piece obviously, but it’s got a brief history of the shoe and a gallery of some old ads that are worth checking out for comedy nostalgia, plus they have a Jeff Spicoli reference in the first paragraph. I’ve pulled out the highlights after the jump.

Paul Smith is a UK designer. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t skate. His web site offers a really expensive limited edition skateboard that seems to be identical in every way to the non limited edition model except it costs an extra $300. Paul Smith isn’t the first designer, or the first Paul to get into limited edition skateboards.

I am not making this up. A new study by the nonprofit Rand Corporation finds that girls who live near parks with active facilities like jogging paths, basketball courts, and playgrounds are more likely to be physically active. (Duh!) Sounds good right? Except, Skateboard areas and special-use parks were negatively associated with physical activity in adolescent girls.

Doing business in communist China is easier than in Santa Cruz, said a local surfboard, snowboard and skateboard maker.

Coupled with the first sentence of “Local skateboard maker toys with leaving S.C.,” you’d be left with the impression that Novak is contemplating moving (all) Santa Cruz Skateboards production to China. After all, the over regulation and complaints from gentrifying neighbors are some of the same alleged reasons that Clark Foam, the world’s largest manufacturer of surfboard blanks shut down. However, according to the interviews, Novak is only considering moving to an adjacent town. Do you believe him?

Lots of injured skateboarders making the news, mostly by the hands (or wheels) of others. Also, some unfortunate deaths. There’s a web site called MyDeathSpace that seems to just be a repository of obituaries. It might be in too poor of taste for even us.

He told a Melbourne Supreme Court jury the group were taping themselves picking up a live snake and skateboarding down a steep hill while weaving around traffic. “We were pretty inspired by the movies (Jackass) at that time,” he told the jury.

Unfortunately they also got the idea from the Bumfights video series to light a homeless man on fire, killing him in the process. Please people, if you have an IQ of pile of dung, please take up scooters or something else instead of dragging us down with you like these murderers in Australia did. Most of us can watch movies and TV shows without being prompted to torture people.

It’s crap like this that leads to skateparks getting closed down, insurance rates rising, etc. Morons! Take responsibility for your own actions. Apparently these two geniuses have never seen or heard of an overhead electric powered trolley car, train, or bus, or even bumper cars at the fair because they climbed up onto a train and got too close to the wire, then suffered electrical burns. Then they sued because they thought someone should have held their hand and told them not to. I don’t know who is more retarded, them or the jury that awarded the verdict. My appologies to retards for even placing you in the same category as these half wits.

Klein and Birdwell… …They were skateboarding when they decided they wanted to see the view from the top of the boxcar, according to their lawsuit. Klein was shocked by the catenary wire, which hung 6 feet above the car… …Birdwell was burned while he tried to help his friend.

Read all about it on Delaware Online, and the Eagle World News.

Due to feedback on the column, this month I’m starting a “weird” auctions section, that features some of the more unusual items from the skateboards section of eBay. As always, this stuff is totally random; whatever catches my eye. I may miss some stuff that goes off, but hey, that’s life. If you guys see something good I missed, send it in! And as always, thanks for all of the comments, keep them coming. Now, on to eBay Watch for October 2006.

And a whole lot of corn syrup! Now that I have a kid I have to start paying attention to these so-called fruit snacks, which are usually nothing more than a nominal amount of fruit inside a wad of something slightly less soluble than horse hooves. Mr Jelly Belly Fruit Snacks! Check out the packaging and pointless comments after the jump.

If you’ve ever owned or frequented a backyard ramp you’ve probably seen the attempts to ride the neighborhood gas powered scooter or small cc dirt bike on a half pipe before. It usually ends in a lot of pain or hole in the ramp. Somewhere there’s a guy in a cube getting paid to send emails to sites like this one in hopes of instigating a buzz about a product. It’s called viral marketing and it’s either ingenious or insidious, depending on how you look at it. In any case, it’s kind of fun to imagine the possibility that there are guys out there somewhere taking Extreme!™ to the next level by freestyle car driving on half pipes. Who knows, maybe some day someone will do something like this on a really basic level. Most of the videos are really well done. The screen captures are difficult cause the car is only is barely ever in frame with the ramp, which is why it sometimes works. When it doesn’t work it looks like crap. The official site is still being coy about what they are really advertising. Captain Obvious says it’s an upcoming video game. You guys owe me a copy when it comes out. [Update: This turned out to be viral advertising for the Nissan Qashqai ]