Who knows how long this mural has been up? I just noticed it, and it’s in my own damned neighborhood. I am a hermit. The best part of this is the crazed looking squirrel that someone decided was in need of a little nut sack. You can view the entirety of this yet unreleased Asia album cover after the jump.

Travel Portland commissioned and published a series of “zines” for use in their campaign to entice people to travel to Portland and spend money. Included in the series is FSBS (For Skaters By Skaters) which is a guide to Portland skate spots, shops, parks, etc… We all know skate-tourism attracts scrounges who tend keep their wallets closed as much as possible, excepting trips to the beer aisle. Still packaging it as a “zine” (in quotes again for a reason) does make Portland seem hip. I’m starting my own zine to discourage people moving here from California to buy newly built houses on lots where cool, old buildings with character recently stood.

You could hope for such a thing, but this isn’t really a Grace Jones action figure. It’s a crappy Chinese-made toy. This ninja on a skateboard dates from 1989, courtesy of Stumblebaum.

I added four more vintage skateboard advertisements to the Skateboard Scene magazine gallery. Included are some Ace-Flyer Chuck Taylor knock offs, Alta Sports skateboards with a “fantastic set of safety equipment,” the Great British Skateboard from Beadle, and a subscription plug for Skateboard Scene magazine, “the radical read for radical riders.” Enjoy.

Activity Pyramid sounds like something a playground equipment manufacturer would try to sell you in a prefab skatepark, but It’s part of University of Missouri Extension health and exercise teaching aid. In cleaning out my hard drive I found a craptacular cellphone snap of this banner that I took in 2010, but I found better versions online. There are adult and kids versions of the Activity Pyramid. Sadly, the skateboard is not present on the adult version, so stop riding your skateboard if you’re not a kid anymore.

Kevin found this in the wilderness of Canada’s home improvement centers. It looks like ancient stock unearthed in a garage sale, but it’s actually a product you can still buy in a few different sizes. I contacted the one company I thought manufactured this (Perma Products) for bigger photos but they claim it’s a coincidence of names. Strange considering both PermaStik products are available in Australia and New Zealand. Nice nose bone on that death trap. – Thanks to Kevin Live for the pic.

What do you call a kid who can skate like that? You call that kid a Cracker Jack. I totally forgot about this jingle until I watched the commercial, and it all came back to me. I never saw this particular Cracker Jack commercial, but I remember others with the same song. This series of commercials aired around 1978. Assuming the kid skating is the same one they use in the closeup, someone ought to be able to identify him. – Thanks to Wes for the tip.

Adam Crofts sent me a beat up copy of the Keane Brothers debut album from 1977 because it had skateboard on the cover. I listened to it, hoping that the song Keep On Rollin’ was skateboard related, but it wasn’t. The album is a truly awful mix of 70’s disco, soul, rock, country and bubblegum. It’s a freaking awesome train wreck. I noticed the producer also had the last name Keane, so I figured this was a showbiz father trying to get rich off his kids, and that this was probably the last time anyone ever heard of the Keane Brothers, if anyone ever heard of them at all. Of course I was wrong. The Keane Brothers had one of those variety shows that were all over the 70’s like flies on shitty music, and they appeared on the Tonight Show and the Mike Douglas Show. On top of that, the opening sequence of their variety show prominently features the Keane brothers on skateboards.

California Sunday Magazine has an interesting piece on Jake Phelps that seems to have en done with some degree of cooperation from the Phelper. Some of the best parts are the sort of snide, deconstructive observations on the spectacle of skateboarding, such as observations that Thrasher is more like Vogue for degenerates than the skateboarder’s bible, and skateboarding has more in common with pornography than professional sports. “Skateboarding probably has more in common with pornography: Talented people are paid to be filmed doing something they’re good at, or at least insane enough to try.” There’s even a brief mention of Schwing! magazine as if their readers would know what that was. It’s long, and a bit nihilistic, and you’ll earn more about SOTY than you’ll care too, but even if you hate Phelps, it’s a good read. Check it out in California Sunday Magazine.

Which came first, the egg, or the toy inside the egg? Technically not an Easter-specific toy, but it’s an egg riding a skateboard. This is a hard plastic version representing the actual chocolate egg which would contain a toy inside it. So it’s a self-referencing toy. In case this makes zero sense to you, Kinder Surprises are chocolate eggs with a tiny plastic toy inside. I thought this was a generic term, but apparently it’s a trade name, like Kleenex or Xerox. I thought it was vintage, but it dates to 2014 according to the seller.