Digitally printed grip tape in bulk. This is the first time I’ve seen this service advertised before. The product looks good, but I’d have to ride it to tell if it functions well. It’s from a random merchandising company called Brandsick that is not skateboard specific, but they also offer skateboard wheels. I really have to wonder about the quality of those considering they don’t offer any details other than an Orangatang Wheels image that looks like it was poached from somewhere else. A sheet cost you less than $5 but the catch is you have to order at least 50.

Hey, did you hear? Skateboarding is/was in the Olympics! This made some people really happy, and an equal amount really cranky, if not downright mad. Here at Skate and Annoy it made us feel ambivalent because, let’s face it, the counterculture era of skateboarding died circa 2005. OK, I take that back there is definitley a healthy DIY counterculture, especially when it comes to rconcrete, but that’s got nothing to do with the Olympics, or 75% of the skateboarders out there. Of course, this post is 100% not what the title says it is, but man, think of those SEO hits we’d be getting. Too bad we don’t have any cost per click advertising… This is instead, some little Olympic themed skateboarding tchotches mostly brought you by friend of the S&A Josh Baker, AKA @beachpartyattitude.

Seriously, it brings me joy that in the year 2021 I can still make the occasional Gratuitous Tony Hawk post. These rubber rings from Groove Life feature two “new” designs, which means the other two must have been around for a while. I’m pretty sure Ive seen these before today, the images must be languishing in one of many “Save for future posts” folders on my hard drive. The construction of these makes sense if you want to wear a ring and your day to day circumstances make that a potentially dangerous proposition. The thing that doesn’t make a lot of sense is making them so explicitly Tony Hawk themed. I feel like if I wore one it would signify some sort of personal commitment to Tony, like those teenagers who give and wear rings as a promise to abstain from sex. At the rate Tony is going through wives, maybe mass production made more sense… Sorry Tony, that was a cheap shot. I don’t have a distinguished career as a professional skateboarder to fall back on. All I got is the low hanging fruit….

Companies in China will rip off anything. Check out this 12 shot block from Ox Fireworks featuring a very well known Bones logo. I’ve seen a guy blow off the tips of his fingers with fireworks. He had a bloody pulp of a hand with what looked like sticks of chalk poking out. It was gnarly. He recovered well enough to become a doctor, so give him a hand. True story. Ox made videos of what their fireworks look like, which is a pretty good sales tool. Don’t be a tool, be safe this 4th of July.

Way back in 2014 I saw one of these things on eBay and couldn’t figure out what it was, or even if it was skateboard related. I looked like it might have possibly been made for rollerskating rinks, I couldn’t tell. Fast forward 8 years and turns the this thing was the “Sit Skate,” and it is a skateboarding alternative that is/was “the wave of the future” for people who can’t be bothered to learn how to stand up on a skateboard. If anything, this device looks like its would be harder to maneuver than if you just sat on a regular skateboard. In any case, mystery solved. This advert is from the October 1981 edition of Action Now. The kid in the ad is wearing a t-shirt with the manufacturers logo on it, a lo and behold Mark 10 Industries is still around. They make an odd and small assortment of automotive related products these days, and I’ve contacted them asking for more info on the Sit Skate. If you want see pictures of the Sit-Skate, check out This is a thing. What is this thing?- Thanks to Darren Haugen for the tip.

Sure… why not? Someone must be buying these because the wheels are being advertised as a re-stock.

I randomly found an old message with link to a bendy Gabriel toys figure of Horshack riding a skateboard. I’ve got the Donald Duck version from the same company somewhere buried in a box, and I’ve posted on the Goofy version before. “What the hell is a Sweathog?” you may be asking yourself if you did not watch TV from 1975-1979. The Sweathogs were the gang of high school kids that were the man supporting characters in the show Welcome Back Kotter, the same sho that made John Travolta famous before Saturday Nigh Fever, Scientology, and arguably his finest work on celluloid, Face/Off…. But I digress.. In doing my due diligence looking for the best pictures I could find I discovered this post had obviously already been done better by Beach Party Attitude. I should have known better, but hey, that’s the online world of skateboarding toys from 1977 for ya… – Thanks to Tim Jamison for the vintage tip.

Yves Saint Laurent is selling a marble skateboard for £ 3,465, or about $4,800, and yes trucks and wheels are sold separately. This is an honest to Glob skateboard deck carved out of marble. If you absolutely must own a skateboard carved out of stone that you can’t really ride, I’d suggest you go this route instead. Would it really kill them to include the trucks and wheels? I mean, they probably should have had their own YSL wheels made and then they could have charged… you know…$5000 at least… Is the shipping free? Who is buying these? I guess the price is acceptable for a hand crafted piece of rideable art made by the world renown Italian marble… what? Oh… Just like most decks these days, it’s made in the People’s Republic of China. – Thanks to Nick Mattison for the tip.

I revived the Vintage Skate Sticker Gallery, a feature that hasn’t been live on this site in almost 2 decades after we switched from static HTML to Wordpress. Unfortunately, most of my old scans were similarly in 1999 resolutions so I had to rescan them. So far I’ve got 80 up there, with another 80 that have been scanned but not separated yet. In a strange turn of events, consumer scanner technology has changed to LED backlighting which doesnt play nice with neon stickers. They look like they’ve been in the sun for 2 decades. So I’ve got about 90 additional stickers to scan once I get my hands on a vintage scanner with CFL backlighting. While digging through old hard drives I found about 50 sticker scans from various contributors. On top of that, While cleaning my basement this weekend I found a CD-rom that someone mailed to me (when???) that has about 130 mostly high quality scans of stickers from the late 70’s and some “official dealer” stickers that are rare. so thats’ what… 350 more stickers to add! Until then, check it out.

Sure, $148 might seem like a lot for Spam brand skateboard, but it’s more than it seems. It may look like a generic retro plastic skateboard, but the deck is in fact made out of recycled aircraft aluminum by Alluminati Skateboards. Where does recycled aircraft aluminum come from? Maybe they scour the countryside for airplane wrecks. In any case they have figured out a way to digitally print graphics on aluminum decks, most of which have a different appearance than this cruiser style. The Spam site does a horrible job of selling these decks, there are no alternate views or enlargeable photos. – Thanks to Adam Jih for the tip.