I tried to stoke House Of Neil to write this one, since it falls in his area of expertise, but he’s not typing another word until he gets eBay Watch stickers and T-shirts. In the late 80’s and early 90’s there was a group of tag team wrestlers called the Dynamic Dudes. The Dynamic Dudes wore a lot of neon, made the hang loose hand sign and carried skateboards as props. Progressive Boink voted them the 9th Gayest Tag Team in their top 20 Gayest. I don’t think PB was taking into account the Lucha Libra Exoticos. Of the two guys in the team, the only one anyone seems to care about anymore is Shane Douglas. We’ve got a few pics as well as an incredibly blurry video of the Dynamic Dudes picking out skateboards at a skateshop after the jump. [Source: Relient K]

Flipping through the first few pages of Concussion #37 makes it clear that Concussion is new Concrete Wave. Page 13 – Full page advert for Foundation re-issues, no big deal. Page 23 – full page Art and Steve Godoy advert for Bones Wheels. I don’t know what’s more shocking, the Godoys on a Powell brand or the Godoys in any advert. Where was the hype back when I needed it? Actually, I think they’ve always been on good terms, but they didn’t fit the squeaky clean image of Powell back in the day. Those are Factory 13 boards they are sporting. Then on page 26 there’s a full page Circle-A advert. Oh yeah, Full page OJ’s and and a full page Lester Kasai ad for S One Helmets too. And I’m just kidding about that Concrete Wave comparison Davoud. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

In the spirit of today’s zine post, I’ve also added 14 stickers to the sticker archives, courtesy of Gerd from Bailgun Magazine. This brings the G&S total to 27 and the overall total to 310! If you feel uneasy trusting us or the Post Office to return your original stickers, and I don’t blame you on either count, we do accept scans. All I ask is that you send in a large scan (not photos, please) and let me do the resizing and retouching. Here are the submission guidelines. Check out the latest addition to the SnA Sticker Archives – G&S.

Unbelievably, someone sent me a small box of zines from the 80’s to scan (and return) for the 80’s Skate Zine Archives. I’d just like to say… SUCKER!!!!! Ha ha. That someone is John Drummond, and in order to convince him that they aren’t just collecting mold in my basement, I’ve gone ahead and posted the shortest one he sent, which is Rage’N Nor Cal Local #1. There are a couple of gems that he sent, including a couple issues of Steve Cabalero’s Skate Punk and Steve Douglas’ Go For It! I’ve been playing with the document feeder on the scanner at work with mixed results, so it may go faster. (Mac – Yes, I still have your negatives. Please pretend not to notice that.)

Well, March was maybe the best month I’ve seen since I’ve started doing this column. I feature 43 items, of which 13 went for over $1,000. That’s got to be a record, but I’m not going back and looking through all of the old columns to validate. And two decks went for over $3,000. By the way, thanks to everybody who writes in with kind words about the column. I appreciate all of your kind words. The fact that we get so many hits and so much feedback from all over the world is amazing, and it’s what keeps me doing it month after month. Just for Randy, this month’s Baywatch is fueled by Hornsby cider and the rocking punk rock sound of The Carbonas. Have you been missing the Briefs recently? Then give the Carbonas a try. They’ll fix you right up. Their new album is available on iTunes, if you are interested. So let’s get to the meat..

If you’ve ever said to yourself “I wonder what Steve Caballero is up to,” wonder no more. Just go check out his blog Have you seen him? The “him” isn’t capitalized, so I assume it’s a reference to Animal Chin and not the Him. The first real skateboard I ever had was a Steve Caballero dragon on the bearing pig. I also saw The Faction play a show in a garage in suburban Illinois. There was a small half pipe in an adjacent field. Most people were there for the punk rock, but there were some skaters as well. Caballero was very accommodating and encouraging to those who weren’t in his league. It was amazing seeing him at a crappy little ramp in the Midwest. I don’t remember much from that day and I think he only took a handful of runs, but I have a recollection of looking up at him on the deck and thinking what a nice guy he was. He was one of the biggest names in skateboarding at that time, and he showed up with no attitude or sense of entitlement whatsoever. It was like anyone else dropping by for a session, except, well, he…

I heard the President of my country on the radio lying this morning. He must have been lying because he was talking. Anyway, mentioned something about the recent escalation in violence in Iraq, which is a great excuse to post this retread of a retread story about skateboarding during the time of operation Desert Storm. The story has resurfaced on a sketchy website called Skateboarding Magazine. I say sketchy because it is brand new and is mostly populated with generic articles that seem like they are more designed to drive traffic for Google Ad Words than they are to actually express a point of view about something. Kind of like what you might hire a room full of monkeys for. Originally this story was associated with a web property called sk8shop.com, and was circulated in an email from Louie Bar. I got two of them back in ’03 and ’04. Right now sk8shop.com is dedicated to selling you photos of pro skaters taken at different public events. It’s Louie Baur’s story, so maybe he’s behind the Skateboarding Magazine. It’s titled “Skateboarding in Desert Storm” but that’s actually a little misleading since all the skateboarding action takes place in Turkey, well…

After a period of inactivity, followed by a period of me failing to check in, it looks like the official archive of RAD Magazine (see our stickers) is very much alive. I reference Britain’s defunct Read and Destroy every so often here, and for those who have no idea what I’m talking about, or for those that do, you should investigate When We Was Rad. Aside from the colloquial coverage of the UK scene, there’s always a bit of U.S. based interference as well. You know how fond we are of sending advisors and spreading democracy… Above left is Steve Caballero skating South Bank on the cover of the September 1988 issue. On the right is a page featuring Winstan Whitter in 1991. Winstan later direct the U.K.’s answer to the Dogtown documentary, Rollin Through the Decades (reviewed here) which was in many ways superior. Tim Leighton-Boyce was the editor of RAD, and is naturally the person behind When We Was Rad as well. He’s putting up one page scans at a time, accompanied by any related recollections he had, and sometimes transcripts of the text. RAD existed from 1987 to 1993, so he’s go t his work cut out…

In a surprising move, Concrete Wave has made a version of it’s photography retrospective book, “The Legacy of Warren Bolster” available as a free download on Silverfish Longboarding. Warren Bolster was a pioneering skate and surf photographer. The Concrete Wave Edition book had some production and layout issues that mostly disappear as a PDF. Of course, viewing them onscreen is not close to the tactile experience you get when flipping through a heavy book in your hands, but it’s free, and you can’t beat that. I’m not sure what the contractual ramifications were for releasing the book electronically for free. You may want to get it while you can. It’s a curious move to be sure, but one I can appreciate, and you should too. Check out this Steve Cathey photo from 1975. Look at his foot placement and body language. No matter what your age/discipline, you have to be able to respect that. Still available online is an interesting video interview with Warren shot shortly before the publication of his book. Also available are the last two issues of Concrete Wave Magazine, which is nice, but they really should take a page out of Thrasher’s book and release the…

So I finally figured out who uses the A4 paper size. Lot’s of people in the UK, I’m sure, but hey, I never actually realized that until I went to scan in this issue of Sad Mag. The scans were all cut off, so I went back and noticed the pages fit nicely inside the “A4” markings on the scanner. Sad Mag is a zine from Shepshed, Leicestershire England. At least that’s where I think it is from. The mailing address is hard to read and I still don’t understand how the english system of addresses breaks down. This zine is actually a skateboarding and BMX zine! Who knew? I guess the scene over there was not segregated as much as it was/is here. They had Read and Destroy, which was a glossy skate/BMX mag that was actually respectable, especially as the BMX coverage dwindled. I guess we had Homeboy magazine here in the states too. What’s with the guy on the cover? “Is he havin’ a laugh?”