A comment in yesterday’s post about the Skate-Ball ramps got me thinking about an eBay auction I saw a few years back. The parts for a complete fiberglass skatepark were listed with a $30,000 opening bid, and as I recall, nobody bid the minimum. I saved the images because I thought they were interesting. These were relics of the 70’s rotting away in a desert somewhere, and for some reason I find that stuff fascinating. Someone spent the time and money necessary to make the molds for these giant prefab pieces, and maybe sold a few and then lost a bunch of money. Fiberglass seems like it would be not quite the best surface for a skate park. A little web investigation reveals the park in these pictures was likely Thrasher Land park in Glendale Arizona. At some point in time they tried to incorporate modern street skating elements into the park, and the end result makes Frankenstein look suave. The domain name (thrasherland.com) is parked at a hosting company and the phone number has been reassigned. A web forum reports that the whole facility has recently been razed. It’s amazing that they weren’t demolished in previous decades. So what do you do for the sake of history? Sk8parklist.com appears to be the only skatepark directory with actual pictures of the park, but even then, they barely show the telltale blue ramps. Concrete Disciples has a listing with no pictures. How can you not take pictures of giant prefab blue fiberglass ramps? It’s not like you run across them all the time, or even, ever.

I’ve scoured the web for more examples of Skateball (or Skate-Ball – they can’t make up their mind). The only thing that turns up besides our previous post is another actual pinball game. (More on that later.) Jeff Hottle had this old low-res image of a Skate-Ball flyer he got off the web ages ago, but the original source remains shrouded in mystery.

A full retail business including skateboarding accessories, roller skating and other youth oriented products. Skateball is made up of 4 different ramps, bowls, runs and moguls each with their own scoreboard and timing device. Can be located in strip stores, shopping centers and free standing buildings. Minimum cash investment $25,000.

You can see the whole flyer after the jump. UPDATE 2021: 14 years later… Secured a high-res scan in the Vintage Adverts gallery.

Hello, my name is Mark and I’m a recovering mongo pusher. I read Chris Yandall’s exhortation to Cut the Jive and Jog when it appeared in the June 1976 issue of Skateboarder magazine and it made sense to me. On a long distance push it helps to switch up. I push both ways to this day. Turns out he’s still er, pushing the idea with his Skogging! website. I figured I would add a personal confession to the Skateboarding Sucks parade of ridicule.

Tony Alva had a birthday last week. Photos cropped from Glen E. Friedman (left) and Eric Staniford from the Alva Skates website Still ripping at 50!

Skate Daily has info about a birthday party event.

The 70’s was a funny time in skateboarding. At times, the industry and the public at large tended to view it almost as a carnival ride or amusement park attraction. Case in point, Skateball. I received a couple old pictures of a Skateball installation at the Olympic Skatepark in Crystal Lake Illinois a few years back when SnA was being updated on a very infrequent basis. Seeing the Radical post reminded me of them, so I dug them up. Fortunately, I was still able to contact Jeff Hottle for some larger scans, and he obliged with a few bonus shots as well. Skateball was basically pinball on a halfpipe, where the skater simulated the ball. It’s one of those things you hear rumors about but don’t quite give them credit unless you actually see it. Five pictures and a little history after the jump.

From Skull Skates comes word of the 22nd Annual Jaks contest at China Creek on Saturday, September 8, 2007 from 12:00pm – 6:00pm. China Creek skatepark is located at Broadway and Clark in Vancouver BC. Skull Skates has video of some past China Creek events on their JAKS page, as well as a few recently added new decks.

Nobody has been able to successfully incorporate skateboarding into a fictional movie as a major plot device without making it corny. The 1978 movie Skateboard was probably the first attempt. It stars teen heartthrob Leif Garret in his pre coke binge and DUI days and also features Tony Alva as Tony Bluetile. Here’s a short clip of the archetypal sketchy outsider trying to hustle some teenage kids to form a skateboard team and make a quick buck. It’s very amusing, more so if you imagine our own Grover from GVK as the lead. The last time he tried to talk some teenagers into his van to go skateboarding he had to register his name with the neighborhood as an “offender.” Watch the clip after the jump.

Yeah that’s the legendary Natas Kaupas hawking those incredibly crappy looking plastic sunglasses. Head on over to the Skateboard Archives and check out the, uh, print media archives. It’s a very loose collection of old skateboard magazine covers and assorted pages within those magazines. The real treasure is the funky old advertisements for long defunct or soon to be huge companies. There are lots of shots of pro skaters in questionable poses, a ton of vert riding with pads and helmets, obscure hard goods manufacturers (Rannalli Trucks anyone?) and all kinds of good stuff mostly centered on the 80’s and early 90’s. Also interesting are all the mail order shops with completes going for $99 and up. On the downside, the archives are not well organized or very consistent. The detail pages are not quite big enough to read everything, but it’s still a fascinating trip in the Way Back machine. Right, Sherman? Check out The Skateboard Archives.

Cooky Cucumber is no kook. She’s on a skateboard, but her friend Katie Carrot on the balance board… well, we can’t vouch for her. Actually, these gals may not even know each other, I think Mr Potato Head is playing the field a little bit. “Hey baby, nobody said we were exclusive!” 2025 Update: At the time of the original post there weren’t many images of this anywhere. Today there are all kinds of images available, so I’ve updated some of the low res pics. It’s funny because if you do an image search a lot of them are from this original post.

I have no big statements to make this month. Just an apology for being late with this. Weekends are always super busy, especially now that the weather is decent in Chicago. Saturday is skating, and Sunday is doing stuff with my daughter. So this gets pushed back. And back. And back. Oh well.

This month is brought to you by “Secondhand Daylight” by Magazine. iTunes has the entire Magazine collection, a lot of it remastered. I’d forgotten how good their early stuff was.

Check out: eBay Watch: July 2007