This is the cover of the 2015-2016 CharmTV sponsorship brochure. CharmTV is a local channel all about Baltimore, which explains why I found out about this via that Skatepark of Baltimore advocate Stephanie Murdock. And here I thought Simon Woodstock was living on the west coast.

Several stills from Skate and Annoy made it into Jeff Grosso’s Love Letters to Skateboarding. I thought I had happened before in another episode but I couldn’t be sure. The footage looked similar to something I shot for Cold War in Hippie Jason’s living room ramp, but it wasn’t the same. A lot of things I post here obviously come from other (credited) places on the Interwebs, but They often get uniquely composited for S&A, with the 1 pixel white border separating different photos. I thought I recognized a few in this episode, but it was hard to tell for sure until I saw part of the Skate and Annoy logo and my floor! It’s great to know that someone in the Nichols and Charnoski camp occasionally trolls Skate and Annoy, and it would be even greater if they weren’t afraid to thank us in the credits with the rest of their sources. Show us some love! As usual, this episode of Love Letters (Rant and Rave) is highly entertaining. I love Grosso’s take on longboarding. He’s all for you riding whatever kind of board however you want, on whatever terrain you choose… unless you’re not tucking your knee.

It’s basically a desk toy, the new millennial equivalent of a Newton Cradle. I saw Neolev hover boards a couple years ago during their first Kickstarter campaign, but I skipped the posting about them because at the time the board part of the toy was just a rectangle that didn’t look anything like a skateboard. Neolev has a new Back to the Future licensing agreement and another Kickstarter. Now your desk toy can look like Marty McFly’s hoverboard, or any one of hoverboards used by Biff’s gang. The boards look cool, and the hovering works, but you’ll need a track to make it work, just like the Lexus version of an actual ridable hoverboard. (Liquid nitrogen is optional.) Neolev’s expensive toys are cool, but the novelty is going to wear out quickly. Back and forth. Back and forth. I’m surprised Tech-Deck hasn’t just licensed the designs as fingerboards.

When I first watched this video I thought was one of those acid tracer scenes where the same sequence is repeated with a start time a few frames later, over and over again, but it’s actually multiple sequences composited together. It’s pretty impressive, and it ought to be considering the spent over 480 man hours on the editing alone, not to mention shooting the original sequences. It’s pretty flawless except for the 47 second mark where a skateboarder (Cory Juneau) appears out of thin air without dropping into the bowl. The behind the scenes video is pretty interesting too, despite the severe levelness of the director’s voiceover. He’s so stiff and awkward, especially when trying to sell the Nokia Lumia 930. It’s almost comical, considering Windows Phone’s faltering performance in the market. True story: I was at a BBQ the summer with a bunch of Microsoft employees. As an Apple fanboy it was interesting to hear the shop talk. When they started talking about the phone platform it was as if someone let all the air out of the conversation. Guys who can basically get Windows phones for free were giving up on them, with no foreseeable relief in the…

If an artist or craftsman also happens to be a skateboarder, chances are they will eventually get around to making a skateboard in their chosen medium, as is the case with Nanda Soderberg. These glass skateboard decks are from an Instagram feed. I believe this is the third glass skateboard deck iteration we’ve posted. (See 1, 2) – thanks to Josh Rodenberg for the tip.

Jeffrey Ballard sent me an email with these pictures of some skate toys he retrieved while visiting his parents house last Christmas. He distinctly remembers getting them when was in 5th grade, which makes him… old, but not as old as me. The guy on top is still being produced in a couple forms. I’ve seen that form in a couple of sizes attached to parachutes. There’s a handstand guy too. On the bottom right there’s the first generation of commercial fingerboards every 80’s skater remembers. Clear plastic enclosing an offset printed board graphic. Super brittle and non functional, but sort of cool at the time. I remember thinking they could have done a better job the first time I saw one of these, but they were just toys. Tech Decks with $75 truck replacements were decades away. I think they made this type of fingerboards well into the new millennium, so maybe Jeffrey isn’t as old as I think. Then again that is a Dan Wilkes graphic on a Tracker board…

Aldens was a mail order catalog based out of Chicago from 1899 (not a typo) to some time shortly after 1982. This is a page from their 1978 Christmas calendar with three skateboards. I can’t ever remember seeing an Alden’s catalog despite living in the Chicago suburbs during their last gasp. Two of the models are familiar plastic boards, the Free Former (forerunner of the bidirectional popsicle stick!) and the GT Coyote II. There’s got to be thousands of Free Formers in landfills across the country. The Spinner is made from oak or kapoer [sic] which might actually be kapur. Good luck finding anything about Spinner Skateboards on google.

Andrew sent me a picture of this box some two years ago, but it was pretty blurry so I resolved to try and find one in a store, but never did. In the meantime I found some good scans online via Mr Breakfast and Flickr user Jason B. This is a limited edition box of “Rockin’ Xtreme Colors!” Fruity Pebbles with “amped up fruity take!” On the back you get a full color illustration of the Bedrock Extreme Skate Park. – Thanks to Andrew Wahl for the tip

Based on the name I would have thought this 70’s skateboard patch was French, but the emphasis is LEO-motif and not Le Motif. Turns out it was made in Leeds, England. This guy looks like a hastily drawn villain in the background of a Speed Racer cartoon. Speed must join forces with the Skate Acrobatic Team to sneak onto the Mammoth Car and retrieve the GRX engine! It’s either that, or some sort of disco football player illustration grafted onto a skateboard. Grandpa, is that you? – Thanks to David ODK for the tip.

This Frog House ad marks the last of the adverts from the Summer 1975 issue of Skateboarder Magazine, billed as Volume 2, Number 1. This was the first issue after Skateboarder took a few years off when the industry lumped in the late 60’s. There were only 38 ads in that issue, but V2 #2 would see a sizable jump in number of pages. I’m about 2/3 of the way through posting all the ads in the December 1986 issue of Transworld Skateboarding. After that I think I’m going to tackle a 90’s issue of Thrasher.