There’s more than one paleolithic skatepark out there waiting to be re-sessioned. This one near St. Jean de Luz, France might require a mountain board with some 100mm 55a wheels to get rolling. The asphalt looks very pitted. Pretty mild terrain for a skatepark, even by 70’s standard. Maybe the bigger stuff is under the dirt. Check it out on, errrr… FatBMX.

The Sidewalk Shop is an excellent place if you’ve got a fetish for pre-urethane wheeled skateboards and/or crows. I only wish they’d credit the source of the old photos and let you enlarge the images of the old boards. Definitely worth spending your time there.

I was checking out a 7″ cover of the 720 soundtrack released by a band called Metronome the City, trying to track down an original that wasn’t on eBay, and of course I stumbled on a bunch of other time wasting distractions. Ahh… Interwebs™. Let me count the ways that I love you.

MattyCollector.com reports that Mattel is going to release a hoverboard of sorts… Details are slim. It apparently “glides over most surfaces,” whatever that means. So is it just a slippery board or does it have wheels hidden inside it that aren’t visible from the top

Finally! This totally awesome 1:1 replica of the hover board from the BTTF 2 and BTTF 3 films includes multiple whooshing sounds and will glide over most surfaces (does not actually “hover” – check back in 2015 for that feature). We’ll be taking orders for it March 1 – March 20, 2012, and the final product will be shipped around November/December 2012. Because this is such a high-cost item, there will be a minimum number of orders required to go into production. If we don’t receive the minimum orders, won’t go into production and customers will not be charged. The price will be announced later this month. (Note: Hover board does not work on water.)

Also, what’s up with the name Matty Collector? It’s Mattel’s weak attempt at branding a web site aimed at adult collectors. Really? That’s what you came up with. Horrible web site on top of that. Poorly organized. Meh… Photo is from the New York Toy Fair display as seen on ToyArk.com.

[Source: KSL.com] – Thanks to Brian Baade for the tip.

It looks like a cross between classic Duane Peters graphic and a Bob Schmelzer graphic, on a skull skates shape. Tyler picked this up at work one day, but the original owner couldn’t shed any light on in it. The deck itself seems of a higher quality than typical bootlegs of the era. Is it a test print or a misprint that later had unrelated designs screened on it? Enlarged after the jump.

I love watching old footage of skateboarding on TV, and it has nothing to do with the abundance of mustaches. This is almost 20 minutes of an ABC broadcast of the Catalina Classic from 1977, uploaded by someone at NHS who has resurrected the Roadrider brand. The cast of characters in these events is no more cartoonish than you’d find at today’s events, but man the 70’s were corny. Downhill, slalom and freestyle are shown, with a bunch of names you’ll recognize if you follow skateboard history, or even had a subscription to Thrasher in the first few years. The slalom guys had it dialed in, but the downhill guys (I’m going to catch flack for this) look like they would get smoked by today’s downhill crew with all the speed wobbles in evidence. Those guys need sails. Check it out after the jump.

– Thanks to Matthijs for the tip

Youtube user Jopomojo has a couple 8mm transfers of late 70’s footage from the old skatepark in Olympia, Washington. It may look familiar to S&A readers who remember a past SOTW from Dan Hughes. (Hi Dan.) These stills have a nice quality to them. Digitized VHS transfers of 8mm film. Top shot look looks like mars. Hook me up with the red planet. I wanna get my hands on it… On the first day I’ll get some atmosphere. Who gets the noprize? Unrelated: For the record, I firmly believe I’m quoting Mr Cobain and not Miss Love in the title of this post.

[Source: Olympia Time]

Did you know about “National Boneless Day” that was floating around the interwebs a few days ago? There’s a short interview with GSD talking about the boneless one at the Skateboard Mag. I remember taking “BONELESS” stickers form the chicken packages at Value Check on a regular basis.

It’s been around since 1976, skated heavily since then, and it even has a book dedicated to it. When Big O was in danger of being destroyed an expanding soccer stadium, locals banded together to try and save it. So what happened? Probably the most unlikely outcome, they dug it out, picked it up and set it on a trolley to move it out of harm’s way. That’s got to be a pretty satisfactory resolution, right? Now consider the fact that the relocation has already cost $100,000 (American or Canadian?) and it isn’t even in it’s final resting place. Weigh that $100,000+ against what they could have built with that money instead. They probably could have built two identical Big O’s side by side to the exact same specifications. Still, I can imagine the locals being skeptical of any new “skatepark” built on the location of such a historic spot. Imagine the city of Portland suggesting “We need to tear down Burnside under the bridge, but we’ll build you another spot across the street.” Look at the photo of Big O unearthed. There are no rough edges visible from where the concrete meets the dirt and everything looks completely uniform in thickness, almost as if it was precast and put in place. Interesting. For a more local perspective, check out CTV Montreal. UPDATE: Much better photos over at VICE and an interview with the man behind plan to save Big O, Barry Walsh.

[Photo and source: ESPN] – Thanks to Tim Pain and Michel Poulin for the tips.