Holy @#$%!!! I almost gave up on this web site, but at long last, after almost a year (!) we’re back online. Losing almost 8000 posts and 40,000 comments was a shock at first, but after a the initial dismay it became sort of a blessing, like a weight lifted off my shoulders. About 7 months into it, I was able to recover the raw files, but I wasn’t sure if I was up to the gargantuan task of putting everything back together, and I doubted whether or not there was any point in doing it. Skate and Annoy was seeing infrequent updates at the time it went down. It had been online since 1996. But it didn’t really take off until 2003. Not counting the 80’s print editions, that’s almost 15 years of devoting an unnatural amount of attention to a web site with little to show for it except the occasional free product sent in to review, and a ton of bad CD’s. So I decided to let it die a natural death.

Except I couldn’t quite let it go. I would still get the occasional tip from former readers. I was still saving tv commercials with skateboarding in them. I was still taking pictures of skateboarding in advertising.

Skate and Annoy is back. The server is pokey as hell, and The theme needs to be revamped for modern web delivery, but it’s still here. Updates will continue to be sporadic, but there will be updates. There will be bugs too, while I work on performance upgrades.

My Google page ranks have probably been decimated by a year of 404 errors, so I’m not sure anyone is going to see this, but thank you for returning. Thanks you for being a fan of Skate and Annoy.

Well, it’s been a few years since the original Morfboard, and now the product has pivoted from a health and fitness based system with skateboarding as a small feature to a completely skateboard-centric approach. Gone is the geometric wakeboard-esque oval, as well as the elastic resistance straps and the links. It’s been replaced with a traditional skateboard deck while still retaining the swappable units allowing you to configure the morfboard into a skateboard, scooter, balance board, and pointless bouncy board. They’re even running TV commercials for it, and it’s shown up at local Costcos as wells the Home shopping Network of all places.

I still get your reader mail. I don’t always understand it, but I get it. Maybe time to start updating the site again?

It’s a hamburger riding a a skateboard that I’m pretty sure is a pickle. This drawstring bag was spotted in the cheapo section at Target.

A Johnson & Johnson ad for multiple products, Motrin, Ben Gay and Sudafed. Dad knows how to butt board! If you find this newspaper circular and can send in a more conventional overhead shot or scan, please do, this one has already gone in the recycling bin.

– Thanks to Chris Strople for the pic. (Yes, that Chris Strople…)

Skateboards are prohibited, no matter how snazzy they look. Still having a hard time wrapping my head around why it would be important to ban skateboards in a movie theater. Thanks a lot, one guy who rode down the aisle back in 1981, based on the skateboard depicted.

I couldn’t find any information on the illustrator L. Vernet when I wrote this post (in April of 2016…). Yes, you can find tons of examples of his artwork, mostly on postcards, but nobody seems to know/care who he/she was. The illustrations must have been done in the 60’s or 70’s. Verne briefly flirts with big-eyed children fad Margaret Keane made popular in the late 60’s. This is a rabbit riding a skateboard, as seen on a postcard for sale on the Luxembourg based auction site delcampe.net.

It was this horrible, blurry photo of wrapping paper that I took in 2009, or nothing. If a tree is cut down in a forest to make skateboard ephemera and it isn’t documented on Skate and Annoy, does it make a noise?

Surely somewhere, someone cares.

A promenade in Velenje, Slovenia designed by the architecture firm ENOTA.

– Thanks to MC for the tip.

[Source: Dezeen]

( P.S. Are you freaking out right now? 2 posts in one week? Are we back??? )