Today is the day I retread all of yesterday’s posts. This is Concrete Surf at a place called Villa Spica in Japan. 1000 Yen will get you a full day of skating. As of Today that was about $9.56. There aren’t many photos on the official web site. I got these from Black Flys Japan, where you can find more. Looks like there’s a sort of combi bowl in the raised platform and left handed kidney at ground level, and of course the crazy amorphous snake run oozing off the platform. It has “Wooden Toy” embedded a few times in the coping. Anyone know what that’s about, besides the whole Useless Wooden Toys reference? There are three more (blah) pics on Volcom Japan, but it’s worth checking out becasue one of the shots shows the scale and is from a different angle than all the overviews. I have to say, from halfway across the globe, and without ever riding it, I’m a fan. Wacky snake run and all. I like the fact that the lip is raised and spills over onto the flat. I think it needs a bank around the whole perimeter though. japanese readers, send in some pics!…

Earlier there was some discussion about whether or not anything good ever comes from the X Games. I brought up the fact that they sometimes leave their ramps behind, and John Aguilar pointed out that such is the case in Mexico City. Mexican skate rag ReSkate reports that last year’s X Games vert and street ramps are being set up as a public skatepark in a few weeks. I can’t read Spanish, so I’ll have to take his word for that. And speaking of countries battling US skateboard manufacturers and extreme sports, the AST Dew Tour is opening in China this month as well. I guess there’s already a lot of skateboards there, so why not? Along with the usual contenders, Chinese athletes will be allowed to compete as well. How Extreme!™ is China? This 2005 article in the Christian Science Monitor (!?) talks about how Chinese officials promote certain cultural imports from Western countries, but most fade from popularity after the propaganda stops. That was three years ago, so maybe it’s not a fad in China. It probably helps that so many American companies are having skateboards made in China. I wonder if the top Chinese skaters ride skateboards…

CBSC does not embroil itself in the China vs. USA or Europe manufacturing debate. Simply we are American Skaters living in China, for almost a decade, that have pain-stakingly established quality manufacturing supply channels that allow us to 100% always control quality on-site. From the regular stream of business opportunities that come to our inbox. Cali Board Sports sure sounds and looks like an American operation, down to the soundtrack on the website. Draw your own conclusions. Skateboard quality? Who knows, but they make great babies. Congrats to occasional SnA contributor Egbert on his extremely recent adoption from the mainland, Mercy.

This week’s Shot of the Week is one from Nathan Gray. He took it last year in Bangalore India. If Nathan’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he is involved in the Sour video project we covered recently that documented a historical cultural skate session with skaters from Jordan and Israel that was filmed during the Israeli, Lebanon war/incursion/police action/violation of sovereignty, or whatever you want to call it, of 2006. See the full size version.

Just because Tony Hawk has financial stake in ShredorDie.com doesn’t mean he has turn over every embarrassing bit of memorabilia, but it looks like he has to some extent. I was sent to Japan to be on a show called “Incredible Kids” (or something like that) when I was 14. They asked me to demonstrate tricks, but to change some of the names to be “Japanese friendly.” I was just excited to be overseas on my own, so I went along with it. Tony says he was 14 at the time but he looks more like a 12 year old Macaulay Culkin in some of these shots. It’s pretty entertaining stuff. Part of the show has Tony attempting a few launch ramp gap jumps over an increasingly large number of audience members. No, the distance doesn’t get any greater, they just stuff more people in between. It’s pretty crazy how young he looks. It’s even crazier that these people think helmets will help them if Tony comes up short. Tony even grabs for the jumps. Nowadays he’d ollie it or 360 air over it. Check out the takeoff ramp. It looks like one of those old Firestone metal frame and…

Dear Sir, We surf on your web site and find out you sell the skateboard and skateboard accessory. Our company also export these product over the world for more than 12 years. We can provide the best product and service to your company. I can offer the best price to you. You also can surf our web site. There are many product on our web site. Yes there are, and if I ever need a Foldable Sledge I’ll know where to look.

Dear Sirs We are one exporter of landwing in Shandong,China. The landwing is new wind sport way. It can help the player of ln-line skating and snow skating to move by wind power on the land. We have two size Landwing as follow: Effective Area Size 2.8m2 297cm*140cm 3.9m2 340cm*155cm If you are interest this products. Please contact us freely. We can send some pictures for your reference. Hope your early reply. Best Regards Jinsheng Qu Weifang Ruifeng Artex Co.,Ltd. Weifang,Shandong,China Turns out by “snowskating” they mean skiing. Sure, the product is called “landwing” but the web site is Landsail.com.cn. It’s all in Chinese and I can’t read it anyway. Sometimes I feel sorry for these guys. This gentleman emailed me a bunch of rollerblade pictures unsolicited, and then took the trouble to send skateboarding shots when I asked if he had any. All for naught.

Thrasher Magazine was hacked this weekend by a group or individual called Indonesian Hacker, who first apologized and then really gave those right wing imperialistic fascist heathens at Thrasher a piece of his mind. Yeah, makes no sense to me either. Anyway, the site is back up. Antigravity Press got hacked last week. I’m going to back up Skate and Annoy tonight. – Thanks to Rayn Hass for the tip.

Korea.net has an article titled “Financial crisis knocked Koreans down, lifted them.” One of the featured success stories is Kang Sin-ki, who is now the CEO of Slovie, Inc, and the guy who actually invented those wacky toy skateboards: Homeless, he slept near Seoul Station and picked up day labor when he could get it, sending any extra money back to his family. In his free time, Kang thought about a way to escape his lot and came up with a great idea — a wholly new skateboard. Mastering the design was less difficult than securing the means to produce, promote and sell the product. He pitched his idea everywhere looking for venture capital. Finally, through a whopping 1.5 billion won government-backed KIBO Technology Fund loan, Kang was back in business. 1.5 billion won loan? Talk about a government bail-out. But how much is a won worth and how much money could he be making on such a piece of crap? The article says he’s sold 10 billion won worth of Essboards in the US and Europe, which as of this writing, translates to $10.8 million.

One of the things on my long list of “eventuallys” for this site is a gallery of dead skateboard magazines. I have a milk crate in my basement with some old skate rags, and I thought I had a few gems that would surprise people. Well I don’t have anything compared to Vintage Skateboard Magazines. It’s a work in progress without a lot of bells and whistles. What it does have are covers of skateboarding magazines from the 60’s to the 80’s from the US, UK, France, Australia and Japan. Some of the UK issues have scans of inside pages as well. There’s a lot of interesting documentation there, my only beef is that the scans aren’t larger. If it were up to me, every page would be available, but then again maybe it’s a good thing it isn’t up to me since our gallery isn’t even up yet. Check out the varied and often wacky past of skateboard magazine publishing at Vintage Skateboard Magazines.