Here at Skate and Annoy we hate to reinforce stereotypes, like say, I don’t know, picking one at random, Australia is not a backwards country where the skateparks are made out of stone (literally) and you have to watch out for marauding fruit bats, kangaroos and other, uh, nightlife. Oh wait… But seriously folks, tip your cocktail waitresses… Negative Ion has a massive photo essay and travel journal of a trip Australia. Aside from the naturally occurring rock skateparks, there is also the more commercial fare of Wold Cup contest at Bondi Beach with lots of names you’ll recognize. As with the rest of the Negative Ion site, the journey is half the fun of getting there. Pay attention to your scroll bars and be prepared to do more than a little exploring. It can be easy to get lost in there. If you come to the end of the line tweak those scroll bars a little, there might be something hiding nearby. Give yourself at least 45 minutes. Now go there.

Sure, the skateboarding community at large doesn’t have any respect for longboarders, for whatever short-sighted reason, but the longboarders are probably ambivalent to the rest of us right? It’s all good, and karma bro, right? Check out Five Reasons Why Skateboards Stink and Longboards Rock over at New Zealand’s Skurfboards.com. Really? In New Zealand? Is there a big enough scene down there where they can afford to discriminate against each other? People, please try to refrain yourselves from neanderthal comments on this, either here or that site. I don’t care what size board you ride anymore than I care what shoes you prefer, unless you wear Keds™, cause then you’re a complete kook and I don’t want you reading this web site. And to think I used your photo as our 5th ever Shot of the Week, and this is how you repay me? I have no one-time email acquaintance in New Zealand, you’re dead to me! Speaking of New Zealand, you should watch Flight of the Conchords on HBO.

According to Info Link, some sportos in Australia were bugged by the apparent loudness emanating from an adjacent skating facility in a sports complex. The noise problem tackled by Pyrotek was caused not only by 100A durometer hard wheels dropping from a great height onto toughened floor and ramps but also by the loud music enjoyed by the young patrons using the 1000 square metre street course and several vertical ramps of international competition standard… So what type of traditionally quiet sports were they impeding? Golf, tennis or maybe even billiards? Nope. Turns out they were annoying the soccer and volley ball players. Really? Too loud for soccer and volleyball? King Missle has a great song that applies to this situation.

Police in Bournemouth England raided a garage and confiscated an illegal motorized skateboard offshoot. From the Timesonline (UK) article titled The skateboard that can top 45mph – and is illegal The G-Wheel is widely advertised on the internet for about £499, but its sale is illegal in the UK. Tests on the seized machine revealed 15 serious faults, including an ineffective rear brake. Trading Standards officers say that the exhaust pipe can become dangerously hot and the plastic petrol tank leaks fuel over the pavement. As the sour looking Sheila in middle can attest, the Wheelboard first appeared in Australia a few years back, and now can be found in Brazil and a host of other places importing them from China. I’ve even seen one on the outskirts of our local skatepark a few times, but the guy never had the stones to take onto the tranny, like his Brazilian brother at the top did.

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.

Intercooler is either a heat exchange device used on turbocharged internal combustion engines to improve their volumetric efficiency, or an Australian band. Take your pick. This music video (or is it a commercial for Element?) for Intercooler’s You’re Not Gonna Hurt Us Again features two people I’ve never heard of: Australian pro skateboarder Corbin Harris and director Michael Ebner. That’s OK, I don’t live in Australia, but I’m making up for it with Australia day on SnA. The production company that made this video is also shooting “Bondi 3000: The Making Of.” which covers “the schizoid, snail-paced production of a futuristic English epic, about how in the year 3000 the British will reclaim Bondi from Australia.” It must be skatepark envy. And yes, Lorem Ipsum is my favorite perfume. What am I talking about? Watch the video, a heartbreaking story of a hot chick who dumps her boyfriend because he won’t stop skating a miniature mashed potato half pipe with his sausage. I kid you not. (Insert fingerboard joke here.)

Oh man, he’s killing it! Oh wait… Just in case snakeboards aren’t wacky enough for you, you can always add snowboarding bindings. The most interesting thing about this video is the fact that it was shot with an adapter that lets you stick 35mm lenses on a regular old camcorder, for all kinds of artsy-fartsy depth of field effects. Oh yeah, I’ts shot at Australia’s Bondi Beach. Look for the guy on the regular old fashioned skateboard falling down. What a sucker, huh? Thanks to John Aguilar for the tip.

An Australian man got a ticket for drunken skateboarding: Australia: 22-year-old Carey Mitchell Symes has been fined $300 after pleading guilty to drink-driving. Symes had been weaving across lanes at speed and going through traffic lights on a skateboard while holding a can of rum. When police stopped him his blood-alcohol content was .095. He reportedly told officers he was riding a skateboard because he was too drunk to drive. The magistrate recorded a conviction but did not suspend his licence. If this had happened in the states, I would have used Barney Gumble to illustrate it, but as it happened in Australia, Andy Capp was the closest geographical lovable drunk figure I could come up with. You may have seen his pub snacks too. While searching for an appropriately buzzed picture of Andy, I came across a Vitners Chips bag with a skateboarding mascot. Visible after the jump. [Source: Short News]

Cooky Cucumber is no kook. She’s on a skateboard, but her friend Katie Carrot on the balance board… well, we can’t vouch for her. Actually, these gals may not even know each other, I think Mr Potato Head is playing the field a little bit. “Hey baby, nobody said we were exclusive!” 2025 Update: At the time of the original post there weren’t many images of this anywhere. Today there are all kinds of images available, so I’ve updated some of the low res pics. It’s funny because if you do an image search a lot of them are from this original post.

Australia’s Herald Sun has an article titled Skaters shun parks for concrete jungle that talks about how kids still don’t want to be confined to skateparks. While Melbourne is upping it’s skateboard deterrent budget to $50,000 a year, the city of Boroondara has an annual budget of $100,000 a year for skatepark development. 100k Australian is only about $86,000 in US dollars, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at. One of the popular street skating spots that kids keep barging is called Docklands, which near as I can tell is a redeveloped waterfront plaza that used to be, well, docks. The article mentions YouTube videos of Docklands, so I did a cursory search. There appears to be a nicely finished pedestrian park as well as a bunch of more industrial areas that appear to be abandoned or in disuse. You can watch a couple vids after the jump.