There’s a big vert ramp with Jane’s Addiction playing over the loudspeakers, and guys like Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, Chris Miller, Tony Hawk, Duane Peters, Tony Magnussen, Lester Kasai and Steve Steadham are skating. Is this 1987? No, it’s the “Legends of Vert” demo that Steve Steadham organized at the Summer X Games. The real tip off that it’s not 1987 is the almost total indifference registered by the crowd. Brian Baade tipped us off to some video he took from the judges stand.

back in the 70’s there was a different approach to skateboard company logos. A lot of times they were treated as car racing graphics, like say the Super Bee. Jim Phillips made a career out of the cartoonish design style for skateboard product logos. Nowadays a more distressed look and hip hop styles are in vogue. Other companies have maintained the cartoon like art direction, but I don’t think they are as memorable as some of the old 70’s stuff. In the mid 80’s I received a well worn stack of old Skateboarder and Action Now magazines. I never actually saw any of the old Alligator wheels, but the logo was burned into my mind as an archetypal 70’s skateboarding graphic. Bennett Truks has resurrected the Alligator Wheels product name, but curiously enough, doesn’t have them on their sparsely populated web site. They are the same color and rough shape as the old ones appear to be, although it’s hard to tell. I had some of Madrid’s reborn Cadillac Wheels and found them to be good for completing a nice vintage look, but not very useful for riding, even as a cruiser. It seemed to be a fault of the old design stlye. Although still not center set, these new Alligator’s seem to be more useful for some types of riding. They are being billed as longboard and park riders.
[Source: Tail Tap]

While browsing through coverage of The Mags We Read from the previous post, I noticed a skateboard on the cover of an old French “gentleman’s magazine” called Lui that, err, uhm, intrigued me. A little research on the internet pulled down not one, but two covers of Lui from 1977 and 1978 that featured skateboards as props.

Skateboard Fieber had another Made for Skate shoe exhibition, this time in London. More interesting that that, however, is The Mags We Read exhibit on skateboarding magazine. The top image above from the flyer is appropriated from an old Transworld Skateboarding Magazine subscription card. The guy in the car is Per Welinder, and I swear the kid in the nut huggers standing with the totally awesome girls is Anthony Michael Hall. The Mags We Read looks like an interesting exhibit. One cool thing is that they have color copies of some of the old magazines on display so you can flip through them. There are a lot of the usual suspects as well as some of the obscure Europe only publications from days gone by. Poweredge is noticeably absent from the photos of the exhibit. If you guys needed one all you had to do was ask… Then again maybe it just wasn’t shown in the pictures. I wish these exhibits would come to the states. Check out Faux Ami’s coverage of The Mags We Read.

For those keeping track, and I’m guessing that’s about three other people, I’ve resurrected the Broken Kingpins column name in Skate and Annoy. This time around, instead of covering all the roster hopping and product release junk like we used to in our ancient print issues, I’m using it for all the miscellaneous links that don’t merit their own post. Besides, there are about a million other web sites that can tell you who has new shoe models and who got kicked off of what tour. [Photo: Denver Post / Andy Cross]

Untold True Story has an interview with Grant Brittian, former photo king of Transworld and present king of The Skateboard Mag. The interview is over a year old, but it’s still an interesting read. Afterwards you can head on over to Grant’s site to check out some of his work, both skateboarding related and otherwise.

Are you in Holland? Do you care that before Deathbox was a dying Tumyeto brand, it was a U.K. company in the late 80’s that morphed into Flip? If so, go to the Deathbox 20th Anniversary Show at VIP International Art Gallery in Rotterdam, Holland. It’s probably going on right now as I type this. [Source: The Skateboard Mag]

They look like the picture above, plus one. Some people collect, and then some people really collect. Head on over to Wheelbite to check out the biggest Zorlac collection this side of Jeff Newton. Some of them are just minor color variations, but even so, there is a lot of Zorlac history there. They range from the early Texas time period through to the California days, but curiously no current Zorlac offerings. I’ve got a basement full of decks as it is, but I’m still hankering for a Craig Johnson reissue. If you can’t afford to pony up on eBay for the originals, you can order a near life sized print of some of the decks for $70. There are only a few available now, with more to be added.

Jungleland Skates has a tribute page to a spot called the Tea Bowls that was sessioned intermittently from the 70s through the 90s. Like the rest of Jungleland (don’t look you’ll spoil a future post!) it is well thought out and has a slight museum-like air to it. There are videos, video grabs, still shots and a surprising history of the spot. Turns out some richies built an elaborate estate for tea parties and social events in the 1920’s. Part of this estate are these huge reservoir type bowls and a series of aqueducts that must have taken an absurd amount of water to fill. Make sure to watch the video clips. I know you are thinking “Well, that’s going to be some boring ditch footage,” but the clips are short and the action is interesting. One of the bowls is gnarly and deep. The surface is broken up and there are massive piles of dirt to be navigated around. The whole thing is very surreal. It’s hard to imagine why they built such deep pools that were more suitable for scuba diving or holding the Loch Ness Monster than swimming. Also of note are a couple of the amusing “lifestyle” photos. Explore Jungleland Skates Tea Bowls Tribute page.

[Source: Random Press]

Somebody is a Jim Phillips (and Jason Jesse) fan in Germany. Either that, or Jim’s been traveling. Graffiti at Rheinaue skatepark in Bonn is a Flickr post uploaded by fraktalisman.