I don’t know what the title of The Chrome Ball Incident refers to. Calls to mind pinball for me. This site picks up exactly where I stopped paying attention to the major skate mags. Even as someone who doesn’t really feel a connection with the popular culture of skateboarding during that time period, I still find these old archives interesting, sometimes even fascinating. It’s all about the hindsight and knowing how it all shook down in the end. Through all the cat fights and temper tantrums in the industry, there was still some great skating going down. One post I enjoyed reading was an interview with Matt Hensley as he was fading out from the public eye of skateboarding. HE was working at the Chicago Sessions shop, who was actually a client of the silkscreen company I was a partner in. He came in with the Sessions dude (Scott?) and we worked up the art for a Sessions T-shirt that looked like a “tribute” to the first Specials album. I remember I vaguely knew who he was, but totally didn’t recognize him. I only mention it (becauee I want you to love me) because in the interview Matt briefly talks about kids coming into Sessions and giving him attitude, sometimes poorly feigning not to know who he was to get a reaction. Matt, if you are reading this, I really didn’t know who you were. Check out The Chrome Ball Incident for a full dose of 90’s era skateboarding. The cool thing is, the pages are uploaded a higher resolution, so you can actually read the whole thing. Thrasher should take a cue from this.

The first comic I submitted to Thrasher appeared in the February 1982 issue. That must have been my birthday present. I turned 21 that month. Thrasher Magazine has posted all of the issues from their second year on their website.

This week’s Shot of the Week comes from Chris Eggers and his web site sk8boarding4life. It’s bilingual (German and English) and features skate photos from his archives over the years. This shot is a Lance Mountain frontside invert over the channel at the Swedish skateboard summer camp in 1986. Check out this week’s Shot of the Week.

Believe it or not, one of the more heavily travelled post on this site is the one about Simon Woodstock. Well, Skatebook.tv has a couple entries (one –two) on their blog and a couple videos on YouTube. He was in the Skatebook Paul Sharpe edition. In any case, the new Skatebook is out and it’s the Mike Vallely issue. I wonder what Mike V’s take on Simon… Watch the Skatebook vids on Simon Woodstock after the jump.

[Source: Happyfeet]

When he’s not getting accolades from the skateboarding industry in the form of honorary pro models, Grant Brittain is getting props from “the worldwide leader in sports” aka ESPN, who has posted an online gallery of JGB photos. That’s Neil Blender skating the Seylynn skatepark snake run in Vancouver, BC up top.

Hugh Holland shot a lot of skate photos in the 70’s. There are some great shots online at Lifelounge. The best part was is that they aren’t a subset of the same photos of the era that have been making the rounds for the past decade. Holland came to shoot skaters after already being a photographer. So, aside from the skate photos, a lot of Holland’s shots are taken from more of a photojournalist’s perspective. The Lifelounge post is over a year old. Hugh’s had some exhibits and possibly a catalog from the show published. I can’t find an active official web site for Hugh, and everyone seems to point back to the Lifelounge collection. It’s good stuff. Check it out.

January 2009. The economy might be in the toilet, but you wouldn’t know it on eBay. There were some BIG auctions that went off this month, and a lot of cash thrown around. Maybe it was early tax refunds; maybe it was just a case of right place, right time, but whatever the case, it was an exciting month.

Let me just say something though, something that is really starting to bug me. Sellers, please do a modicum of research before you set your prices. I’m really getting tired of seeing the same decks up, month in month out with the same ridiculous prices. Hello, McFly, your Lance Mountain “family” deck is not going to sell for $200, it doesn’t matter how many times you keep putting it up there. If you did 5 minutes of research you’d see that about 5 family decks went off in the last 2 weeks, all selling in the $50 range. So why you think people are going to pony up 4 times what it’s worth is a freaking mystery. Also, if I see that red Chris Miller “dog” at $500 again I’ll scream. It’s been up for like 3 months. Nobody is going to pay that! To keep putting it up month after month at the same price is plain silly. And another thing while I’m ranting. Can the guy that’s cutting up old magazines and auctioning them off, 1 page at a time kindly stop? Nobody is interested in your piece of crap $9 auctions. We could buy the magazines for that. Just stop. And enough with the deck shaped stickers too. Just stop that shit already.

True story. I heard SnA got a mention in “On Board Trash” so I went to pick one up at a local “board shop” here in Sarasota Fl, where I’m staying for a few days. I walk in to this huge store full of skateboards, surfboards, skimboards and god knows what else. I glance around at the counter and see nothing. I ask the guy behind the counter

“Do you have Thrasher?”
“No, I don’t”
“Whaaaa????”
“I know…”

So I turned around and walked out. the whole thing took less than a minute. I don’t subscribe to Thrasher, but I fully expect any self respecting skateboard shop to carry it. Who is that kook in the picture? It’s Eddie Albert playing Oliver on Green Acres but dressed up as Jethro Clampett. Seriously. I know there’s a couple of real skate shops here. I’m going to search one out.

The ASU Libraries (Part of Arizona State University, don’t ya know…) has an archive of old photographs from the school newspaper that includes this one titled Student demonstrates a new craze – the skateboard. Sweet. I guess there was a time when short boards were the college craze.

This week’s Shot of the Week came from Dan Hughes Northwest Skater. He’s got three pages related to his old friend Mark Holt. There’s one full page of shots from the old Olympic Skate Park in Olympia, Washington, probably from the last couple of years it was open. It closed in 1982. There’s some great shots in there, some probably better than the one I chose, but I decided on this one despite the obvious out of frame flaw. It’s still rad, and I like the guy in the background. The next page is dedicated to various ramps that Mark had, some without any flat bottom. The last page is assorted skate shots in the street, skateparks and a pool. Check ’em out. (1 – 2 –3)