Some of the guys on Skull and Bones are taking the grayscale Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust Santa Cruz reissues and adding their own color. Some are truly remarkable. Some people use paint pens or markers, while others sand the decks first, then apply color. Amazing craftsmanship. Click here to see a comparison, but you have to see the full size images to fully appreciate them.

I can’t get away from my wasteful lust for old-growth maple veneers. I’ve been skating for too many years and am set in my ways. But my ever aging and growing inner-nerd can’t help but be intrigued by the innovations of using alternative materials to make skateboards. Aluminum boards have been around forever, but boards like Corbus Boards are all together something new. Made to be a functional piece of industrial art, these boards are meant to be ridden claims Corbus. A runaway board could make one of these metal monsters an ankle guillotine. Images via Corbus, link thanks to Make

If you are a regular reader you’ve hopefully noticed a few posts lately with Eric Cherry as the author. I’m actually surprised nobody brought it up. Eric’s been a reader for some time now, he’s submitted some good tips. Independently of MC taking H.O.M.O.S. back to his sandbox, I have been considering trying to add some new voices to Skate and Annoy. It’s hard finding a match, but in the past few weeks I was already appropriating some of the commentary from his tips, so I recruited him with a soft sell. Eric seems to be a reserved in talking about himself (Don’t you wish I was?) so I was struggling for a way to introduce him. Fortunately, his mostly pinup art skateboard collection fits in nicely with Friday T&A. A man’s board collection says a lot about him. Or not. Check it out. Welcome to our little scene.

Here’s a pretty cool animation by a cat named Kevin Elam who must have been at the Vancouver Film School when he made this. – Thanks to Livmo for the tip.

Shoes are an important milestone in our short history as humans. From mobility, protection from the elements and the droppings of dogs. We wouldn’t be where we are without shoes, we owe our shoes for everything. Including the (alleged! – K.Ed) 14 hour work day in sweat shops making Adidas fashion footwear designed by Michael Sieben. I’m a starving artist myself so I give no discredit to Sieben’s capitalism. Michael Sieben has been illustrating in the skate world for some time. From the pages of Thrasher adorning his artwork throughout numerous articles to the whimsical bottoms of Bueno skateboards (the gods of the interweb currently are smiting their website). Probably the most bizarre bit of advertising video can be found here. Image curtsey of Adidas.

Three pages of skateboard-related tattoos. BME zine tattoo gallery. Over a year ago Kilwag called for submissions or a SnA tattoo gallery. What ever became of that?

I don’t know why MC hasn’t really publicized this, but he’s had a little side project going on for quite a while called The Skate Comics Depository. It’s a collection of his own H.O.M.O.S. work as well as highlights of other items related to skate comics. Even though I hate to encourage outside web authoring interests for our “staff” because it makes them uppity, you should check out SkateComics.com. I think I would have gone with the Skate Comics Suppository instead. In a related note, guess who just registered SkateZines.com?

Depressing the clutch for a smooth shift into highbrow gear before we drop the tranny into lowbrow tomorrow for Friday T&A. Female skateboarder and artist Lia Hollaran has an exhibition  in New York City’s DCKT gallery titled, “Dark Skate”. Long exposure sessions in the dark of night capturing flowing traces of light. That or photographic evidence of neutrally buoyant luminescent Silly String. A video interview with Lia and more photos can be found at Huck. Thanks to Huck Magazine

The Baltimore Art Examiner reports that city workers “accidentally” destroyed a skate ramp known as the “Pants Ramp” that was part of a year long outdoor art exhibit called “Outdoor Lounge.” The City’s story might be more believable if it weren’t for the fact that the demolition took place at 3 am in the morning, and it was apparently the only part of the exhibit that was harmed. No word on if Baltimore favorite skater hater and golf cart driving police officer was somehow involved. Get the full scoop. If you can put aside the skate harassment angle for a second, it’s intersting that the Pants Ramp was designed as a prototype first hole of a putt-putt golf course where each hole would be skateable. Yes today is mix an match skateboarding with (slightly more) mainstream sports. – Thanks to Stephanie Murdock from S.O.B. for the tip.

There are a lot of charity board auctions these days, and they tend to get lost in the shuffle. I checked out some of the offerings for Good Wood and found several that I liked, not all limited to the one I chose for this post. Winner for the “Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?” category is Jeff Mullin’s Back to the Future deck. Hello McFly! Check out the Good Wood. It’s called Good Wood 2008 – “Give Back”, an auction-cum-party presented by Aww Sweet & Alldaybuffet at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn. 50 artists will be auctioning off one-of-a-kind custom skate decks to support Stoked, an organization that mentors kids through action sports. On Saturday, July 26th from 7 to 12 pm, bid on a custom deck (all priced below $500), dance to beats by Brion ISAACS (33Hz and ShindigNYC) and help prove that “one teen at a time, counterculture WILL change the world.” Full flyer and info after the jump.