Lays Deep Ridge potato chips has a commercial running in the Netherlands featuring an ant dropping into some spud vert, attempting some sort of body varial (it’s hard to see exactly what’s going on) and then bailing with a parachute à la Bob Burnquist in the Grand Canyon. (Should that be “à le” for a masculine Bob Burnquist?) – Thanks to Matthijs for the tip. (He says he still can’t get S&A to come up where he lives… Anyone in the Netherlands reading this?)

Avril Lavigne skateboards in a Chinese advertisement for Nong Fu Spring iced tea. [Source: Slate.com] – Thanks to Eric Pitt for the tip.

You may remember the Element series of skateboard flavored iPhone cases. Well it turns out that Element (no relation) sort of lost interest in the project, so the original developers, including Billy Ruff, Stuf mag founder Skot Werner-Longo decided to go off and do it on their own. The result is the Ruff Case. The really nice but exorbitantly priced machined aluminum version has been replaced with a more moderately priced composite version. The back plate graphics are reversible these days, and way more reasonably priced than they were with Element. Also interesting, Jim Gray’s inkgenda is involved in printing some of these back plates, so this whole arrangement can’t get much skatier. Yes that is a word. Skatier. I am declaring it now. Jim must be really, really busy making those back plates, because he’s M.I.A. here on S&A. So what about Billy Ruff? There’s a short piece on him in Huck magazine that ends as it starts to get good. I don’t know what he’s been up to, but with a name like Ruff Case, it’s a safe bet he’s bankrolling a good chunk of this. Billy, where are you? Right now you’ll need an iPhone 5 to…

From the comic strip Biss, by Harry Bliss. See it in color here. Tommy looks like a middle aged man. – Thanks to Mrs Kilwag’s mom for the tip.

Fashion spread with Chanel skateboard for a magazine called Grazia, Spain, with help from La General Surfera. Source: Visual Optimism

Thanks to Mrs Kilwag for the photo. She did not happen to catch the price on this sculpture of a frog on a skateboard.

“Camera Skate Dolly” as seen on Monoprice.

Be sure to have some extra Euros with you when skating in the wrong places in Barcelona, Spain.

When Burger restaurants try to teach you how to skateboard … seen in France

For all the talk of patents, squares and radical new design, when you look at this wheel in profile, it’s still a circle. So essentially, the only thing different about this wheel is that the grooves are zigzagged. Grooves in a wheel, even on a skateboard, are nothing new. The wave pattern may be new on a skateboard, but look at your car tires and you’ll see a more intricate version of the same thing. The main advantage they can claim is more speed from a reduced contact patch, but then again any grooved skateboard wheel already has that. However, just like a car tire, these grooves should provide better traction in rain and dirt. So they look different, but at their core, they really aren’t very different at all from traditional grooved rain wheels. Let the science fight begin! The inventors of the Shark Wheel have been pouring their own prototypes in a garage, which is pretty cool, but of course there’s a Kickstarter project to fund mass production. Even if mass produced, these wheels will probably have to be offered at a premium because the molding and finishing process is going to involve more labor than the old…