This week’s Shot of the Week comes from Greg Baller, who was actually in a Shot of the Week last year. Greg was a partner in Burly Caps, a company that made… burly recaps for knee pads during the late 80’s and early 90’s. Burly Caps are back again, and the web site has a lot of pictures of vert riding in the Great White North from the same era. Burly Caps are made from UHMW plastic. What? Glad you asked: Ultra High Molecular Weight, much denser than you garden variety caps. Burly Caps, Right? This is Neil Blender in Vancouver BC, as shot by Greg. Neil Blender used to have a web site selling his art online, but he’s since moved his operation to an eBay store. There is still a few hours left to bid on his original painting (alternate version) for cover of the Best of Dinosaur Jr. See the full frame Shot of the Week.

Peter DiAntoni has a show opening tomorrow in Milwaukee (I assume) titled Salad Days: Turf 30th Anniversary. It’s all photos of Milwaukee’s Turf skatepark that also has an earlier run as Surf & Turf, before taking a brief rest while serving as a strip club. I guess they build wooden platforms covering the bowls. Sadly, it’s been permanently destroyed now. Pete D. was the proprietor of Clueless Zine, of which I have a couple issues, but haven’t yet added to the 80’s zine archives. Dang, I need to get on that. If you skated in the midwest in the 80’s you went to the Turf at least once. A lot of people travelled there from other parts of the country. It also appeared in some Santa Cruz and Gullwing videos, possibly others as well. For some it was a travel destination, for others it was more like a home. Mr. DiAntoni will be screening Turf shirts on site at the opening, and if you have your old park ID you can get one for 1/2 price. I wonder if that works via mail order? – Thanks to Matt Grasser for the tip.

April 10th 7-10pm
Vetter Denk Building 161 s. 1st (corner of 1st & Pittsburgh) Milwaukee, WI

[Source: WiSkate]

Chad Jackson had skateboard company in the late 80’s and early 90’s called Small Beating. Actually, before that he ran a company called Swindle Skateboards. Chad was an am for Blockhead, Santa Cruz and Zorlac before becoming an early employee/friend of Foundation. Does that logo look familiar? He later had some bad blood with Swank (See Big Brother, September 1998) and he went out on his own again. We all know how good the 90’s were to vert skaters, so you can guess how that turned out. Time heals all wounds, or at least leaves an ugly scar. Chad has resurrected Small Beating Skateboards with some new product and a web site filled with Small Beating nostalgia, and nostalgia for an age yet to come. The blazing Michael Goetz photo at the top right is Chad atomizing the hand poured coping on the crazy Small Beating indoor ramp. You can see more of those shots over at The Skateboard Archives.

– Thanks to Sea Cliff Vert Ramp for the tip.

We’ve posted about this ABC footage before, but the short clip has since been pulled from YouTube. This instance from Google Video is almost a half hour long, and still doesn’t include the other footage. The actual footage is kind of hard to sit through, but the real gem is the audio track. When you get bored watching it, just leave it running in the background so you can listen to the commentary. It’s interesting to note that most of the “champions” are 12-14 years old. There really isn’t any way to tell from the Google page who uploaded this footage, although there are a lot of Burning Flag Press clips on there from the same user, which would lead me to believe it was either Friedman, or a big fan.

– Thanks to K.C. for the tip.

We’re checking in again on the status of the revival of the Capitola Classic. The idea has gained some momentum, but with the tanking of the economy, organizers aren’t sure how well the event would be attended, or even of what type of event to hold. It looks like the city is tentatively on board though. The Capitola Classic was be one of the premier downhill events of the 70’s and late 80’s, probably second only to Signal Hill. (Ok, I have to cop to pure speculation here, having never attended either event…) The Capitola Classic also has the recognition of being one of the first “streetsyle” contests.

I have to guess the event would be well attended. Economy woes? Those downhill and slalom guys live in their own bubble anyway. I guess Maryhill is the Capitola Classic of today, but I think the downhill community would get behind the event at least once. And who knows, maybe even Thrasher would get behind it once more for Fausto’s sake. The image at top is from the October 1981 issue of Thrasher.

You can get Capitola Classic updates on Twitter. While we’re doing downhill, you can listen to/read this NPR story on downhill racing: Malibu To Outlaw Skateboarding Daredevilry [Source: The Skateboarder’s Journal]

– Thanks to Judi Oyama for the tip.

This is a closeup of a bootleg Powell Peralta deck with a Per Welinder themed graphic on the bottom. If that’s not enough, it has a Tony Hawk graphic on the top. It’s from an old 80’s Brazilian skateboard magazine sent in by Luciano Fleck Peixoto. It’s funny that the bootleggers thought they had to improve on the originals. Thanks to Luciano for sending this in. Check out his new skateboard company called Yerbah.

Matt Kline tipped me off that the Godoy brothers venture once known as Iron Cross Skateboards lives again. If I had to guess, it would be a safe bet to say these decks were being manufactured by Factory 13. In case you were wondering what happened to the old Iron Cross, you can read a 2001 interview we did with Art and Steve Godoy that we didn’t get around publishing until 2003. I guess I’ll have to add a postscript or two to the Story of Iron Cross Skateboards. ( Updated link ) If you’d prefer not to dwell on the past, check out their new web site.

In high school I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle. I still do, but I used wake up on school days an hour earlier than I had to, just so I could watch reruns of a cartoon that was already almost 20 years old. The show ran in various formats on network TV from 1959-1973, even though the production stopped in 1964. Syndication followed later. The General Mills corporation was the main sponsor, so it’s no surprise that they used Rocky and Bullwinkle in some advertising. This is from a full page ad from an unnamed comic book that allegedly ran in 1966.

What’s wit these companies that start with “V?” After posting about the first ever symmetrical board that was made by Vision, I came across this post on Vert is Dead about the evolution of the new truck hole pattern. Ocean Howell may have been the first guy to drill his own baseplates, and Venture was apparently the first truck company to offer it as a stock option. I guess everyone else just copied them. Does anyone know who the first board company was to offer the new, smaller mounting pattern? One thing I’d like to know is how did the industry standardize on the first pattern? If you’ve never seen some old trucks from the early 70’s, they all had their own mounting patterns. Boards came undrilled, and you could buy special guide to help drill them straight. Was there some sort of round table meeting with the big truck companies, or did the board manufacturers drive that decision. Were there arguments and hold outs? Some of the plastic boards had multiple mounting holes molded into them, as if they wanted to be be able to mount trucks from different manufacturers in case a supplier had problems.

SKATECULTURA is from Brazil, and it documents vintage skateboarding through multiple decades, from a Brazilian perspective. There’s also a little of the current scene sprinkled in there, with an emphasis on Brasil’s most famous skateboarding export, Bob Burnquist. It looks like there was a slew Brazilian skate magazines at one time, some of them looked pretty sophisticated. Clockwise from the top left: A special Tony Hawk poster edition of Overall. Revista Yeah #1, Overall#15, Yeah Skarte #1, and Overall #13. There other magazines like Tribo with adverts for skate shoes you’ve never heard of like Qix, and skateboard companies like Torlay.