No that’s not a still from the first Bones brigade video, it’s 20 years later and Lance is hitting that spot for Elwood clothing’s 1st and Hope video, which came out some time last year I believe. Has anyone seen this? It looked like a good concept for a video, instead of the usual scattergun barrage of tricks planned and practiced and over and over to make it for the video (shot on 16mm film), it features a group of friends skating together in various spots, meeting people along the way. There are a few old distinguished names in there like Eric Dressen, Lance Mountain, Matt Hensley, Ray Barbee and Salman Agah. EXPN has a nice write up with more background and some production stills. So yeah, this is old news by a year. The second hope is Athletes for Hope, which is an organization of some of the more famous names in sports whose purpose is to “educate, encourage and assist athletes in their efforts to contribute to community and charitable causes, to increase public awareness of those efforts, and to inspire others to do the same.” Basically, it’s a bunch of famous athletes trying to get other professional…

People are always hitting me up for my sticker collection, which isn’t for sale. Some people have actually gotten bent out of shape about the sticker gallery, saying that it makes it easy for people to flood the eBay market with counterfeit stickers. I have no empathy for that, stickers are just little pieces of colored vinyl. They don’t need to be kept behind glass in a museum – No photos please! Every once and a while I get some scans of stickers via email to add to the gallery. A few kind souls have even mailed me the actual stickers. (I swear I’ll get them posted!) Sometimes people just want to trade, like Flickr user theoneholyghost, who has an extensive collection of doubles that ranges from 80’s to the 90’s. He’s got 50 photos with at at least 10 stickers to a photo, and these are the doubles in his collection! Then there’s Mobb Skates. You may have seen their logo, which looks like but is unaffiliated with the old Christian Hosoi line. I just got an unsolicited envelope full of stickers from Mobb and no explanation. I guess they are trying to save me.

N.F.P. Zine #1 was published (1985?) out of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan by Andy Rogers, Greg Fadell and John Shock, with photos by Davo or Dave-O. Issue number one is short and simple, and never actually explains what the “N.F.P.” stands for! Pictured skaters: Mark Gonzales, Ralph Rogers, Chris “O.P.” Moore, Greg Fadell, Bill Danforth, Bill Tocco, Steve Caballero, Todd Bray, Bob “Boarder Patrol” Romero, Neil Blender, Bill Fergusson, Eric Grisham and Squid Dickman. Spots: Surf Ohio mini ramp, Dude ramp, Endless Summer, Middletown, Sarnia Canada, St Louis arch competition, Richard school. Highlights: Interview with Chris “O.P.” Moore. He talks about old skateparks like Surf & Turf in Milwaukee and Apple in Ohio, as well as the MESS and GLSA skate contest series and pros and ams of the day – Ray Underhill. “A look back at 1984”, Eric Grisham’s skatepark ID from Endless Summer skatepark. Mentions Jim Gray’s new board, mentions G&S trucks, but doubts their pros will ride them. Rumors: Will Jyme George (Surf Ohio & Cow Saktes) build a skatepark in Ohio? (In hindsight, the answer is no, but his protégé Rob Dyrdek certainly did..) The Zorlac team all riding for Alva. Check out N.F.P. Zine #1…

Last week we got a mention on a/the Vans Blog, written by a guy in their marketing department named Nikki. I assume Nikki is a he? The only other people I can think of with that name spelling are Nikki Sudden and the dude from Mötley Crüe. I’m not sure if the blog is part of the job or what, but one of the things he pointed out as being noteworthy is our 80’s skate zine archive. After getting the heads up, I told the author that he she had somehow incorrectly identified us as being Texas based, which we aren’t. He She said his her coworkers dug the fact that the zine archives featured actual skate zines instead of music zines. Surely there have to be other archives out there? I got to thinking that it has been a while since I added a new one. So this one goes out to Nikki and the clock punchers at Vans. It’s issue number six of Exotic Pets out of Dallas Texas.

So here we are again. Another month down, and more old decks to talk about. Just a quick reminder, you can click on the small images to enlarge them. Sometimes they show the top and bottom of the deck or some other detail that was cropped out for the sake of display in the article. Most times the enlarged versions are vertically oriented as well. Check out eBay Watch for January of 2008

Worn Free will sell you a reproduction of t-shirts worn by famous rock ‘n’ roll personalities including this rad shirt worn by Joey Ramone The website has notes for each of the shirts which make interesting reading if you are into punk rock trivia. Some of the shirts are cool but forty bucks seems kind of steep. I’m tempted to make my own personal bootleg transfer.

You’re viewing thiss pot from beyond the grave! Oohhh… Spooky! Well, who knows, maybe it’s still active. Joesf Heffner (nweyesk8) sent in this possibly xeroxed copy of an old photo that his buddy Jason Walker took of him in 1992. In Vicksburg, MS there was this old parking lot of actual concrete, not asphalt, that had transition along one edge. The transition went up against the side of this building, but as you can see there was a slight deck still. The main problem was there was a water pipe that leaked from the building and the lot would get completely covered with a thick layer of algae. making it unridable most of the time, except durin the scorching heat of summer. This is a cropped version of the original, you can see the whole thing after the jump. How about it Mississippi readers, is this spot still a go?

It’s not always about the clarity or the technical execution. Sometimes I just like the way a shot looks, as is the case with this shot of Jeff Phillips taken in Houston. I like the blur and all the artifacts. The overall quality of the pic outweighs any faults. Photo by Sonny Robertson, 198… See the uncropped version here.

Some guys are nomads and travel light. Some guys are pack rats. Someone over at Thrasher convinced Lance Mountain to give a little tour of some of the memorabilia he has collected over the years. It looks like Lance has a lot of stuff, most of it relating to other people and not just himself. I hope he’s got a lock and an alarm on that garage. Check it out.

Finally got a decent capture of this old Wonder Woman episode. I’m distilling most of the non-skateboarding parts out of edit. There are bits out there on the Interwebs&trade, but this will be the most complete. Wait for it. It’s worth it.