This is an ad for a Kramer Floyd Rose Sustainer Guitar that ran in a 1989 issue of an unnamed music magazine. I only know this because I have poor impulse control. This guy is at the height of 80’s fashion, ho-ho street plant and neon yellow shirt with the sleeves and sides cut off. Totally bitchin. Thanks for nothing Kvon!

A while back I was periodically updating the archive of periodicals, aka the 80’s Skate Zine Gallery. I’ve been lagging and sorely sagging. meanwhile, there’s Local Chaos out of Ann Arbor, Michigan whose print issues span 1984 to the present day, with a short period of abstinence. LC has more zines scanned in their archives (from all over) than I probably have in my whole collection. Time to get back on the horse.

Sure, his boards have been reissued in life size and on fingerboards, and they are always very active on eBay, but you don’t hear about Rob Roskopp the person anymore. I had heard that he was heading up the mountain bike division of Santa Cruz, but had never actually read anything confirming it. Leave it to a mountain bike site inexplicably named Pinkbike.com to tie it all together. Find out which old pros are hitting him up for mountain bikes, what exactly is the connection between the companies, and exactly how much crack Rob was on when he chose his graphics – that’s an actual question from the interview. Biggest shock? Roskopp used to look like the epitome what the rest of the world thought California surfers looked like. He’s still fit, but those golden locks have moved on. What about the body jars? Check it out. Interesting aside, I’m fairly confident one of the images used in the post is from an old eBay Watch, and yes I realize we lifted it from eBay…

Peanuts. Not a coloring book, but a book to color, from the famous comic strip created by Charles M. Schulz. Authorized edition no less. Copyright MCMLXV, which is 1965. I had to look it up. Pretty formal for a bunch of little funny looking squished head kids. This is my favorite era of Peanuts. Everyone looks like doughboys left out in the sun for a little too long. There are no skateboards inside the “book to color.” Snoopy looks cool as usual.

The folks (volks) at Made for Skate recently had a display in The Skateboard Museum called Metal Battle in celebration of a Nike SB collab styled after the oldest school Roller Derby skateboards. Dig the inserts on these. The design for the show flyer was lifted from this poster, which was also on display. It’s a vintage 60’s silkscreened poster advertisement for a body shop. I’d place it at 1965-66 if I had to guess. So why was the the show called the Metal Battle? To celebrate they brought out some vintage steel wheeled death traps and had a session. Video after the jump.

Sure they are crappy, but they are so bad that they’re… still bad. Even more so now that they’ve seen an updated, craptacular re-imagining of the graphic. As if there there is a pent up, unrealized nostalgia for the worst boards any given skater has ever owned at any point in their skateboarding life. Blind’s Danny Way Nuke Baby was a brilliant, but these are just as bad, if not worse than the original, especially the most famous of all bad 80’s Nash boards, the Executioner. They did have some cool graphics in the 60’s. It’s ironic that they haven’t tried to cash in on those graphics, even more so because they apparently own the Hobie name. Way to massively miss any sort of reissue connection. Oh well, all the better for someone else. I can’t recall if there was ever a Nash “Blaster” model, but I included it anyway because it’s a confusing mix of 70’s imagery on an 80’s shape that came out some time in the… dammit! What the hell are we calling this decade? The tens? Crap. Nash makes skateboards again. I guess they finally recovered from the fire.

Oh my glob, that is so unsafe! Clearly that elephant should be wearing a helmet… Jim Goodrich found this image somewhere on Facebook. Original context remains a mystery. Anyone?

There’s a Frankie Hill interview of sorts over at Whatit.be. The ESL grammar is a bit distracting at times, but if you dig/dug Frankie Hill this is the latest bit out there, unless you head to Legion Skateboards.

[Board Graphic: Vaskateboards.com]

I ran across you site through a google search for Fogtown skateboards; landing on your 2007 eBay post. I thought it funny that you mentioned seeing the ads in Thrasher and not knowing anyone who owned one. The attached shot is me (and friends) from around 1987 holding my Beast. I didn’t know at the time how scarce they were, nor did I know anyone else with one. Unfortunately, it went the way of so many decks; snapped on a bad landing while ollie-ing off the back of my brother’s ’77 Suburban.

Love the shirt on the guy in the middle. – Thanks to Darrell for writing in.

Saturday Starrs! It’s been a while, becuase Scott Starr keeps getting kicked off of Youtube, and I forget to search him out again. I found this by accident, a TV clip from 1976 with Tom Sims and tow Sims riders named Steve Monohan and Edie Robertson. Edie does a nice gorilla grip, by the way. I don’t recall ever seeing a female gorilla grip practitioner before. No word of what TV show this is from, probably to keep it from getting pulled. Maybe Scott will let us know. Check it out after the jump.