Reposting this because I can relate to the story of starting a skateboard company out of a garage. I can relate to all of it, except the part where the company is successful… From Blockhead Dave: Wow! Has it really been 40 years since I screen-printed my very first batch of skateboards in my parents’ garage?  It was late spring 1985, I was fresh from a screen printing class at Sierra College, and had never printed more than 1 or 2 of anything.  I had 60 red Streetstyle boards manufactured by Uncle Wiggley and I was nervous as hell, but no choice but to just go for it. I pulled the squeegee over and over again, honing my skills as I went along, then I laid each board in the driveway to dry, since I hadn’t built any racks yet. Well, I made it happen, and there were 60 skateboards with my art and my company name on them and just like that I was in business!  You can get on elf the limited Streetstyles in old school or the new school hole patterns starting Wednesday (9/24) at noon PST

It’s time for another installment of crap Commodore 64 skateboarding games, and this time I’m showing Skatin’ USA, a 1990 release by Atlantis Software, a UK company that would go out of business in 1992 after an 8 year stint. It looks like the premise of the game is an American kid on a skateboard battling English Punks. Seems like those two parties ought be be natural allies and not enemies!

The Thrasher edition is undeniably the coolest Polaroid camera I’ve seen. This is no easy feat as their cameras already had an appealing, iconic design. No two are exactly the same because the graphics are manually applied through hydro dipping. Despite that hand touch they are priced the same as their standard Gen 3 cameras. You might be thinking that you can’t really take skate photos with a Polaroid camera, but there’s sort of a workaround for that.

Blik is selling self-adehesive vinyl wall art with Keith Haring’s skateboard drawing. You would be forgiven if you thought this was just art done in his style and approved by his estate, but he did indeed draw this when he was still alive. This version has been cleaned up and given a different color way. Turns out now there are several color waysand line variations of this artwork being sold in various types of prints in “open editions” now.

Yes those are two different eras in the post title, but it totally makes sense. For $479 you can buy a skateboard with some 3D printed plastic panels glued onto it and then spray painted in what counts as “over 12 hours of 3D printing and meticulous hand-finishing.” Yes, that face is the face you should be making if someone tries to convince you this is worth almost $500, but you can get yours from Gimme Hoop in one of 3 finishes. If you buy one, friends will ask where you found it and admire your taste.

The orange-faced turd with a combover that sits in the Whitehouse thinks Portland is “Like living in hell” and has hinted he may send the National Guard here. Meanwhile, Portland does not give a toss what that jackass thinks, and we all remember what happened the last time he sent unmarked, masked police to randomly kidnap people off the streets. That truly was like living in a dystopian hell. Get bent Donny. This “Portland is what me make it” sign is in the window at Crafty Wonderland in their Alberta Street location, and has been for a few years. It’s kind of a reverse Portlandia episode, instead of “Put a bird on it” it’s “Put a skateboard on it.”

One of the actors/operators of the E.T. suit is Matthew De Merrit who was 12 years old at the time the movie was filmed. He was born with no legs and still uses a skateboard to get around, although it looks like he may have graduated to electric version these days. The photo above right is from the L.A. 40th anniversary screening in 2022.

Camp Snap 8 is the latest in the category of digital products designed to mimic old analog media. I was prepared to write this off as unnecessary and probably overpriced but after some cursory investigation I have to admit this thing look s pretty cool. It’s moderately priced at $150 and seems to deliver super-8 style video footage in a really cool form factor. Sure, you could take video with any digital camera and post process it to achieve the same look but this all-in-one approach is cheap enough to be worth buying if it fits the aesthetic you want to achieve. There are a couple different settings but it’s pretty basic in operation. The only thing I could see making this better would be if you could affix some aftermarket lens adapters like a fisheye. Who knows, maybe you can jerry rig something up to it. The cam is not primarily marketed towards skateboarders but they do feature in the product page. Hey Camp Snap, You guys know where to send the review unit!

I can’t make a simple post to save my life. This was going to a bundle about handful of crappy vintage computer games that weren’t interesting enough merit their own post. Curiosity killed my free time, and so here we are. In 1988 a 16 year old kid named James Closs programmed a crappy skateboard computer game for the Sinclair Spectrum called Skateboard Joust. He sold it to a publisher and made enough money to buy a car and have some cash during college. James had never stepped foot on a skateboard at the time, or actually played the game Joust. By his own admission the game wasn’t very good, and that always bothered him. 32 years later he released the sequel, Jetboard Joust on the Steam platform in 2020.

The Adventures of Willy Beamish is a classic point and click game developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra On-Line in 1991. From the game box, advertisements and splash screen you might think that skateboarding figures heavily in the storyline. I’ve scrubbed through hours of gameplay and I only found a few sequences. The frog is more important to the storyline, but that didn’t stop me from wasting a good chunk of time on this post. Besides, it’s been a while since I’ve made a vintage video game post.