Skaters for Portland Skateparks held what I hope is the first of many Skateboard Swap Meets on Monday. It was free to enter, and setting up a table only cost a very modest $10 with a 10% of sales set as a suggested donation towards the Powell Blvd Skate Spot. The picture above was taken early on in the event, and it did get quite busy. As most other vendors there, I didn’t know what to expect, but I ended up really enjoying it. I hope they make this a monthly or semi-monthly thing. I expect it become popular and quickly outgrow the space we were in at Luck Labrador Brewing. Minors were allowed, either because the event was in a separate room or maybe because it is also a restaurant. I unloaded a bunch of potential landfill from my basement. There was some interesting stuff there including boards from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, stacks of old VHS tapes, art, and shirts. Game Stolz had some of his own Oregon-pressed Chupakabruh Skateboards as well as these Vitamin Water-branded promo skateboard wheels that were from about 5-7 years ago. That stuff belongs right here on Skate and Annoy. Bonus:…

The July 1996 edition of High Times features the pot smoker’s dude to un-Olympic sports, with New York City’s Ryan Hickey getting “high” air on the cover. I do not own this issue, so I don’t know what they had to say about skateboarding. Now that skateboarding is going to be an olympic sport, will they print a retraction?

These 2 safety-themed activity books were given out as part of a sack of goodies during a park district organized neighborhood bicycle riding event. The only activity these things experienced was a brief stop in the scanner before being tossed in the recycling bin. My spidey sense warned me that there was skateboarding content about to go undocumented. If a tree falls in a forest to make a book that nobody reads, can anyone hear it?

You know what your den or office needs? Why, it’s a lamp with LED lights that projects a faux 3D image of a skateboard. Wouldn’t it be cool if the skateboard changed colors, and even flashed? Sure it would. For $60 (on sale!) you too can project the image of being a high tech, radical and successful dude. At 9 x 7 inches, it’s smaller than it appears, but that’s not important, is it? It’s not like you’re trying to overcompensate for anything.

A glimpse of our trumped future from Paisley Skates, Real and Consolidated. WTF America???

Bones pumpkin carving by Fabio Issa.

The image on the top right was scoured from my hard drive, saved in 2006. It’s a model/figure called Extreme Zombie “Sparks” that is approx 18cm tall. When searching for a better picture not he inter webs, all I could find were these Extreme Zombie posters from Poster Lounge.

Here’s a Halloween graphic form Beer City Skates / Records. Why? Why not? Maybe go buy some of their stuff.

This is the Skate Boarding Coloring Book illustrated by Magnus Fredriksen and published in 2011 by Dokument Press in Sweden. Note that the word “skateboarding” is broken into two words by the publisher. Of the 60 illustrations, a few of them come from recognizable source material. – Thanks to Matthijs for the pics.

Hard drive cleaning time:  Freeing makes PVC anime figures and accessories, mostly scantily clad stuff in the vein of your typical Hook-Ups graphic. Even when they aren’t scantily clad, they still look like Sorayama robots. These must sell like gangbusters. I mean, who wouldn’t want a highly posable figure of a sensuous, big breasted mannequin riding a skateboard or a scooter? The skateboards all come with snowboard bindings, which is unfortunate. I’m not sure what the purpose of these is. It’s possible they are the plastic anime-centric equivalent of those small wooden manikins used for figure drawing.