I originally saw this gal in a 2006 Time Magazine photo essay on skateboarding titled Hot Wheels. The caption said “Groovy: Singer Joyce Blair strikes a pose with her board in Hyde Park, London, in 1965.” I guess Joyce was a singer, dancer and actress. She even appeared on the Benny Hill Show. I couldn’t find any information about this publicity shoot, although I did find two images on a site that shows you images that are for looking at but not using, which is the vague way they are trying to get around the fact that these are from the Getty Images collection. So, yeah, that’s my reasoning too. Look at these images but don’t actually use them. For some reason they changed the location (and name) on the watermark. I just happened to have the old ones saved so I was able to piece together a clean one without the photoshop clone stamp.

That’s right, we’ve got a 20+ year old beef and we’re calling out Jeff Kendall. Sure, he’s probably got a life and has moved on, but we haven’t, obviously. I would say we’re tryng to embarass him with these old pictures, but there isn’t really anything embarrassing about them, considering he was 14 years old when these were taken by friend Bob Pribble Swamp:

Kendall is 14 years old in those pictures. The year is 1981 and he’s riding my old Losi Variflex deck on some ACS trucks and Kanoa Rollout wheels. Why do I remember all this useless information? The Roxbury Ramp was located at Chip Jones house in Indianapolis, IN.

Check them out after the jump.

At first glance this looks like your run of the mill, cheap plastic skateboard, but in fact the Skuda is a fiberglass composite that was probably priced out of range of your typical youngster. I’ll admit that I know nothing about the Skuda. A Google image search turned up nothing, but we have another variation called the “Supa Skuda” catalogued on SnA somewhere. Remember Captain Radical? These old boards have super clean lines. They remind me of old Corvette Stingrays. Everyone should have one in their garage for taking a spin on every other odd weekend. This one belongs to Graeme Wicks. He bought it off eBay a few years back so he could actually ride it.

San Jose’s Skate Ripper (Also called San Jose Skate Ripper) #1 comes to us from the collection of, (drumroll please…) John Drummond. There’s no physical date on it but there are some clues. Bob Denike is listed as 20 years old in his interview, and there’s a CASL contest at Del Mar where Lester, Gator (Mark Rogowski) and Tony Hawk are in the 3A division. Hawk wins it. It’s got to be be pretty damned early. Also, there’s an order form for Back issues of Thrasher magazine that doesn’t list any years, just months, so that would put it at late 1981 or early ’82. Another clue, already in publication are the zines known as Skate Fate, Skate Punk and Skate Scene (San Jose), not to be confused with Skatin’ Scene AKA Rad rat from Hazelton Iowa of all places. SJSR was put out by Craig S. Ramsay. SJSR was copied on legal size paper even though the content seems like it would have fit entirely on letter sized sheets. Consequently, there are quite large borders on the sides of the pages. The text was all typewritten an shrunk to a small size. I had to leave these scans at a larger size to make them legible.

This week’s Shot of the Week comes from the archives of our own Mark Conahan:

We were at a permission pool in Montebello, California. I drove. Eric (Dressen) used to hang out with us before he was discovered by Tony Alva.

Check out the full frame Shot of the Week

Talk of Jeff Kendall been in our comments lately so I thought this was a good time to spotlight this Chinese counterfeit Jeff, excuse me, Jess Kendall deck and mention that House of Neil is compiling some more counterfeits as well as working on the April eBay Watch. What’s next? Les Mountain, Bob Roskopp or Jane Lucero? You’ll have to wait and see.

One of the most visited areas on this site is House of Neil’s eBay Watch. You might say it’s beloved, actually. There are two main types of people who read his column; Those who just like seeing all the old and obscure boards, and those that use it as a tool for finding out how much something is worth. A few months back some people in “the collector’s community” got upset with Neil because he reported how much a board sold for at an auction, but the buyer never actually paid for it. Some people felt Neil was practicing irresponsible journalism that would somehow influence the outcome of future auctions. You can probably guess which forum that discussion took place on. As part of an ongoing campaign to keep people from getting their panties in a bunch, Neil does not comment on the value of skateboards that are currently in auction or otherwise for sale, or thinking about being sold. That means you should not ask us how much you think a particular board is worth. We won’t tell you. Not because we are elitist snobs or dicks, (well…) we just can’t do it without pissing someone off. And besides, Neil has a life, you know. There are already two good resources for this, Art of Skateboarding and Skull and Bones Skateboards. Of course you might have to put forth a little effort by signing up as members.

That being said, check out these old Variflex boards that someone asked us to appraise. Nice stash.

We mentioned Tom Fain in a piece about the defunct Skatepark Magazine since he was on the cover posing with his eight wheeled skateboard under the caption “Why every community could use a Tom Fain.” and I made the joke “Really? Every community could use a guy who is seemingly completely out of touch with skateboarding culture?” because he was on an 8 wheeler, and most kids can’t relate to a board that is wider than 8 inches, let alone an eight wheeler from the 70’s. Well Tom eventually saw the post and wrote to me. He’s got a good sense of humor and wasn’t annoyed by the post at all. He sent in a bunch of pictures of him not being out of touch with skateboarding culture, as well as some scans of the article about him in Skatepark magazine. Tom has a web site devoted to his ministry and skateboarding called SAP Skateboards if you are interested.

Once more from the collection of John Drummond, I give you Convert zine #7 from Indianapolis, Indiana. Strangely, for a zine based out of Indiana, most of their coverage was from other states. Although this is the “street issue,” it features mostly ramp skating, aside from a page of Chuck Treece from McRad on a bank, and a ditch contest. The same contest features “Kendall’s mom” who brings everyone White Castle sliders. This issue came out in 83 or 84, so I don’t know if Jeff Kendall was still a local or not. There’s an interview with Paul “Gramps” Hugasian or Heugeson, they spell it two different ways. An interesting note, “Gramps” was only 23 years old, something that would not raise an eyebrow now. The accompanying photos document the highest ever air witnessed on an Uncle Wiggly argyle deck, one that we in the Skate and Annoy circles used to fondly call “The Lead Sled.” Convert #7 is one of those full, letter size zines where the pages are stacked up and stapled on the side with no folding. This was the easiest way to go, and although I scoffed at the unprofessionalism of this style zine, I always secretly admired those who went for the large format without all the headaches of tabloid size printing and layout. Convert #7 has multiple colored pages too. In a move to cover more aspects of skating besided vert, this would be the last issue titled as ConVERT. Social Contortion was to be the title of the next issue, although I can’t say if it ever came out. These guys were close enough to Skate and Annoy headquarters in central Illinois, but our first issue didn’t come out until ’86, and I had never heard of this zine until I got it from John this year.

Featuring: Milwaukee Extravaganza, Marty and Bob Beaudoin, Paul Heugeson- who might be the same person as Paul “Gramps” Hugaisan, Oz, Chuck Treece, Sean West, Sean Long, Jim Charters, Mike Orfait, Andy Egger, Shawn from Arizona, Dump Contest, Corn Head, Kendall (Jeff?) and his mom. Hoop, Rob Roskopp.

Spots: The Turf, Vatolands BC, The Ditch in Carmel, Oak Ridge Ramp

Check out Convert #7

UPDATE: Comments closed here, but you can comment directly in this gallery now.

Technology is amazing. We live in exciting times! I have a new invention I’m working on. I’d like to somehow combine these old skatebikes (left) with the new bikeboards that are all the rage. I really feel like there’s the potential for something incredibly fun. If I could just figure out how to take the best aspects of both inventions… and call it the bikeless skatebikeboard!