Tony Hawk as a spokesperson for Cancerguard is gratuitous Tony Hawk that I can get behind, especially since Tony lost his father to cancer. Cancer sucks. My only complaint is that I live in country that claims to be the leader of the free world and yet we don’t have universal healthcare. Health insurance and hospital bills can be impossible to navigate here in the USA. You have to double, and triple check everything because they gouge you wherever they can. What I can’t get behind is the fact that this test costs $689! (!!!) which is insane. Also, these two videos have embedding turned off… so this company sucks. Yeah they have to make money for the investors, but in the immortal words of Laszlo Cravensworth, “Get fucked.”

While digging around looking for Lucky Charms images a couple days ago, I spied this Hot Wheels Skate Tony Hawk Cereal Skate Bowl fingerboard set. I ignored it initially, but it did trigger a memory something I had flagged when scanning vintage skateboard magazine ads. Volume 2, number 5 of Skateboarder Magazine had a photo a near the end showing a fiberglass wave that Skitch Hitchcock had built and was carrying around in the back of a rental truck.

TLDR: high powered magnets and some posts in bearings to keep the two platforms aligned and provide friction for turning. There have been at least two real-ish hoverboards already, the Hendo version from 2014, and the Lexus version in 2021, three if you count an independent French version from 2011 that Lexus basically made look fancy. That’s probably s far as the technolgy is going to go because of, you know, the laws of physics. That hasn’t stopped Colin Furze from trying to replicate the feeling for mere mortals, or those who don’t have a car company or university to fund them. Well… closer to mere mortal wallet capacity but still expensive I’m sure. Bonus: Colin is not just some kook, he actually skates. – Thanks to old timey friend of the site and contributor to the original 80’s print zine Karl Kingery for the tip!

I spaced on today being St. Patrick’s day, so good thing I’m sitting at home while wearing almost all red (no red hats for sure though….) So happy coincidence or dare I say lucky that I have a post full of lucky charms items for you today. Either that or I failed to read any of the text on Weird Paul’s post today. Regardless, I ended up down a rabbit hole again. Here’s some wholesome, sugar blasted goodness from Lucky Charms cereal, and a couple of other St. Patrick’s themed leprechaun bonus items as well.

Michiel Walrave, either his illustrations or his skateboard company Meltdown. He’s got probably the largest collection of Skate Zombies known to mankind. He also collects toy store skateboards, or gateway skateboards as he calls them “Gateway Skateboards.” This book is. catalog for show of part of his collection back in 2025. He’s not selling it directly anymore but you can still find it online. You can read the review or just take my word and just get a copy.

Skateboard Construction System was released for the Sinclair Spectrum in 1988 by a company called Players Software in the Uk. Players had a reputation for low budget software. This game cost £1.99 with is roughly $10 today, adjusted for inflation and the pounds to dollars exchange in 1988. It must have been a flop, because you can’t find any video footage of gameplay, and people will play anything.

Vector Lab brings you the Skate Shop Collection, a set a templates with editable text that lets you customize (sort of) designs for your skate shop or zine or whatever. The offerings in this collection range from “they sort of get it” to “I ran out of time, here’s some clip art.” I feel sorry for your shop (or brand) if they can’t come up with their own designs. I would like to point out heat the Vector Lab does offer some pretty useful tools for adding effects and textures to existing designs. I’ve even bought from them before. If you see any of these designs in the real world please send pics!

I scoured Target and Walgreens to look for skateboarding themed Valentines Day cards and came up empty handed this year. The Portland Mercury ran a gag with fake Valentines cards that included this one. I have to say I didn’t even know what a polycule was, so I had to look it up. Bowl of keys is all you need to know. – Thanks to MC for the pic.

Skateboarding is officially dead at Target. It’s just basketballs in the skateboard aisle at the Jantzen Beach location in Portland. I couldn’t find any skateboards, not even misplaced in another location. The upside is that there weren’t any scoters or inline skates either.

Time for another PDX airport post. This poster is in one of the revolving doors at departures, maybe others too. Shop local, at the airport I guess.