I so wish these gay style skateboard toys were real. I’m gay for them. I first watched this video with the sound almost all the way off, cause Mrs Kilwag didn’t want it competing with the Vampire Diaries. I was viewing under the assumption that it was real, but then the drag queen mom made me suspect. With the sound on, it’s more than apparent that it’s a gag, and part of an upcoming Australian TV series (to be aired in the UK and US as well) called Angry Boys. It’s pretty damned funny, but I do have to point out that even if it was real, Tim wouldn’t have been the first openly gay sponsored skater. IMDB sasy this is supposed to air some time in 2011. Catch the gay skateboarding specific part of the trailer and a longer one after the jump. Remember you saw it first at Merde. – Thanks to Sandwich Cookie for the tip.

Cool title for this inspired surf instrumental by the band The Five out of Brisbane, Australia. Miseri Loves Company is from their 2010 ep titled ‘For Five Nights Only’. The video has schoolyard skateboard footage form the 70’s.

Now class, lets start where we left off yesterday. Can someone please tell me where the Kiwifruit comes from and what was it originally called in the West? Yes Bobby, that’s right. It was imported from China to New Zealand in 1906 and colloquially called the Chinese Gooseberry. It was briefly called the mellonette before being changed to Kiwiwfruit in the 1950’s. No Suzie, commercial cultivation didn’t start in the United States unit the 60’s. What’s that Grover? You are correct, from the looks of this hang tag, the first time a Kiwifruit got “radical” must have been some time in the 80’s near Arizona, or possibly the Moon. – Thanks to Andy Wylie for bring this in to Show-and-Tell.

There’s a bunch of guys traveling across different countries on skateboards. Guiness World records for distance must be falling faster than world’s biggest skateboard records. The only reason I’m bringing up Rob Thomson from New Zealand so I can lament over the fact that Flight of the Conchords is not returning for another season. Well that, and the fact that Thomson uses a trailer on his longboard. For some reason, he’s got like five web sites. Follow his exploits on Skatefurther.net as well as 14 degrees off the beaten track. I guess that’s only two web sites. Get the long winded explanation of the trailer on his YouTube channel.

OK, we’ve thoroughly exhausted the topic of Flight of the Conchords, so I’m not even going to bring them up again. (Oops!) Here’s a backyard project in progress on a slab of concrete in Ryan Moore’s backyard (errr.. back slab?) in New Zealand. He’s built a structure out of wood and covered it with corrugated metal in preparation for a 100mm layer (You do the Mathof concrete. I can think of one problem he might have. I can’t figure out how he’s going to keep the concrete from cracking and sliding off the corrugated metal. Seems like he’s still going to need some rebar attached to the frame. Ryan has a question about bending coping, as in, how do you do it? I’ve always wondered how they get that done at skateparks. I’ve done it with electrical conduit, but I imagine it takes some heavy duty equipment to do it with something on the scale of metal skateboard coping. Ryan has some scaffolding tube that he wants to try it out on. Bonus pic after the jump.

I’ve got this mental notion that everyone in New Zealand is sort of nerdy but very interesting. I don’t know if Flight of the Conchords has had a positive or negative effect on the public image of New Zealand, but it’s one of my favorite shows. I’m probably annoying the hell out the guy from New Zealand who sent me these pictures by bringing it up. Then again, Eagle vs. Shark just adds fuel to the fire… Sorry Richard. Check out some DIY action from a crew in Papakura, New Zealand after the jump. I’m not down with the local lingo, so someone will need to fill me in on the definition of “splur.”

Stikboards are a plasticy skateboard deck that can be ridden like a skateboard on slippery substances like grass, snow or even sand. Big deal, right? Somehow the “inventor” came up with the idea of riding these things on garden mesh, a plastic mesh used in landscaping. Whether he engineered it that way or it was a happy accident, these things seem to slide really well on the stuff. My first take on this was that it was just about the lamest skateboard related thing I’d ever seen (in the past week or two at least.) I mean, they actually advocate spreading the mesh out at a skatepark. I ‘d love to be there when someone tried that at Burnside… Then I started poking around and watching the videos and my mind changed a little. They show a backyard skate spot setup with rails and such, launch ramps… set up on grass, but with the approach and landing covered in mesh, which is supposed to be inexpensive. I’ll be damned if it doesn’t appear to work pretty good, although the video is postage stamp sized, circa 1995. It occurred to me that any institutional arguments against “street stikboarding” would be nullified.…

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that the old Australian pro Tony Hallam had a web site that was chock full of images of his massive skateboard history collection, but it was missing some images. It looks like everything is back in place, so this is the official invitation to check out Tony Hallam Skateboarding. The images above are from one of his traveling exhibitions. That Vision vert ramp setup is perfect. I especially like that one mannequin is in mid-bail. Tony’s site is expansive, so be prepared to spend some time there.

Yeah, yeah, old guys still skate. We get it already. Here’s a quite lengthy article from the Columbia News Service about old guys that are still skating in different parts of the country. Somehow or other they missed out on interviewing Mark Conahan, who must have been booked on one of his many media appearances that day. They did interview full-faced helmeted Northwest icon Dan Hughes. The picture on the (top) right is from his web site. Who’s that funny looking old guy on the left? It’s Tommy Guerrero from a short interview in the San Francisco Chronicle, published earlier this year. UPDATE: Here’s another link to a story called “Chairmen of the Boards” (Guffaw! Never heard that one before!) from an Australian publication called The Age. It’s three more pages about old (Australian) guys skating, specifically a crew of guys at Frankston skatepark who routinely bring their own lights to make time to skate in their busy schedules. They have a base of about 60 people who regularly fill out these sessions with 20-30 skaters. Sounds kind of annoying, actually. I hope that’s a big park. That’s a lot of people and the guys in the picture (bottom right)…

A good friend of mine once came to visit with a guy she was dating who turned out the be the Choir Boy Robber. After a quick change of clothes, he would make his getaway on a fancy track bike. The way they caught him was simple really. He had to ditch his bike once cause he got spooked. The bike was a tricked out custom job, not a Trek or Specialized that could be bought anywhere. The fuzz canvassed bike shops and one of them ID’ed him as Tom Justice. So he’s in jail now, gets out in about 4 more years I heard. He was kind of a dick to my friend. On the surface he was personable and interesting to talk to, but something about him always seemed suspect. We thought he was a dealer, actually. There were no bank robberies during his stay with us in Portland. Want to learn more about the Choir Boy Robber? There supposedly was an article written about him in Details magazine, and he’s got a page on Friendster. Holy cow, is Friendster still around? What’s the point of this? Oh yeah, some guys have been robbing banks and making getaways…