Laurens Groenveld 566 consecutive kickflips beats the old world record of 563 held by someone who has already been long forgotten. He did the last 26 on a borrowed board after breaking a kingpin. All this while just trying to qualify for the Dutch leg of the Krux Kickflip Challenge. So says the guys in charge of the Norwegian skate site Tackyworld. I guess Laurens will be the heavy favorite at the Dutch Championships on the 9th of December in Amsterdam. Do you care? We would care more if NHS would send us some product. Right now it just looks like we’re on the Press Release Flow Team. Hey, that’s a great name for a skateboarding industry news site. I guess I meant to say Press Release Flow Team™.com

First off, this is not commentary on the quality of the teams listed on the graphic, so cool your jets. I got an email update about the 4th annual Ellensburg contest and demo on October 6th. It included a flyer with a picture of the Ellensburg, Washington skatepark. I glossed over it at first but for some reason I took a second look and thought, “Man, what a bummer it would be if that was what I had to look forward to skating on.” The contest has a ton of sponsors with more than one skate shop involved, so there must be a vibrant scene. The moral of this story is that you make your own fun. It’s something to keep in mind. If we have any readers in the Ellensburg area, send in some pics from the event and we’ll put them up – poor photography or not. The full version of the flyer is after the jump. I believe I found out about this from a Skateboard Mag email.

Ignition TV has recent (I assume) footage from the grand opening of the Mission Valley YMCA’s new (to them) vert ramp. A bunch of vert dogs were there, Bucky Elastic, Bony Hawk, the French Canadians… There were other people present on deck but they didn’t make the cut, perhaps due to space limitations. Although posted on Metacafe, the clip’s producer is Ignition TV, who is the, uh, leader in action sports fro you mobile phone. You can chose by sport and brand on their web site, so you know that’s Extreme™! Mission Valley’s vert ramp was donated to them by the X-Games. We had one of those X-Games retired ramps in a suburb of Portland for a while, where it mostly sat as a platform for kids to practice flip tricks off of the flat bottom onto the cement. There was a small community of vert riders who would session a couple times of week and chase the kids off the flat. Ask MC about it. They banded together to meet and talk with the park district to ensure and volunteer upkeep, but the district wasn’t interested. As more and more concrete parks opened out here, the already underutilized vert…

If you are bummed out about skateboarding not making it to the olympics, you can still get your roller-jollies from the the International Federation of Roller Sports. FIRS is planning on holding the first Skateboarding World Championship at an undisclosed location on an undisclosed date in 2008. Must be top secret. Here’s how they define skateboarding: This is a show of the emerging roller disciplines which are day by day reaching the same importance of the “historical” official roller disciplines. Much appreciated by young people, these sports are stylish, aggressive, acrobatic, in a word: modern sports for young people. SKATEBOARDING: Acrobatics on half pipes or specific skateparks on the renowned four wheeled platform. Recognised different styles: Freestyle – Aerials – Flip tricks – Slides and Lip Tricks. First FIRS world skating Championship is scheduled in 2008 Hmmm… I can hear the controversy now. Do we want our renowned four wheeled platform acrobatics performed in unspecific or specific skateparks? Thank god we are approaching the same historical significance as the other official roller disciplines. No word yet on who is on Team USA for skateboarding, but I hope they are as balanced as a certain Team USA figure skater who has…

Are you sick of Oregon Trifecta coverage? You’d think we would be. After I made a flippant comment (Who, me?) about the conglomerated Extreme™! sports nature of the Banquet web site, I heard back from the site’s content manager Cody Whitman: We started banquet as a resource for filmmakers and photographers (we sell downloads of DVD’s and are in the process of helping photogs sell stock photos) and this is why there are a variety of sports on our site. It is true that “conglomerate” sites don’t make sense in a lot of ways within action sports (or whatever the hell you want to call them), but in some respects they do. We are all filmmakers, photographers and writers as well as participants in our respective sports and whether you are shooting skating or skiing there are commonalities. We understand the differences between the cultures, clearly there is no such thing as a shared lifestyle across these sports or even within them for that matter. But the truth of the matter is skating is a three man sport, the skater, the photog and the filmer…. Maybe there aren’t similarities between a skater and someone riding motocross but there are between…

Looking for something to do in the Salt Lake City Utah area this weekend that doesn’t involve the Dew Tour? Check out the informal invitational Bomb the Beehive contest and BBQ on Friday September 21st at the South Jordan Skatepark, about 20 mins south of downtown Salt Lake. The Dew has prelims on Thursday and Street/park finals on Sat night and vert on Sunday, so not only is it a second chance for the guys who don’t make it but two days before finals for any of the vert guys who want to make it down. Been getting a good response including Benji G and Mike Peterson both who said they’ll be around for it. It going to be more of a fun event, an old style BBQ jam with a self judged format. Way its going to work is a BBQ and bowl session starting around 5pm then there will be a determined “judged session” from probably 7:15-8 where after wards everyone skating is given a ballot with all the names on it and circle the three names who skated the best with one being a tie breaker. Whoever gets the most votes wins, speaking of which its not…

I saw a nicely put together video highlight of the Pier Park leg of the Oregon Trifecta on YouTube. I thought it had a fresh approach so I decided to check out the “director’s” link only to be surprised that it was one of those action sports conglomeration sites called Banquet or Banqt.com. Aside from skating, surfing, and snowboarding, they also cover BMX, FMX (Freestyle Motocross?), mountain biking, wakeboarding, skiing (!!) and something they refer to as lifestyle. Yuck. The Trifecta video is still fun to watch. Hey, that’s even MC up there on the top right. You can watch two Banquet Trifecta videos after the jump. If it’s still pictures that are more to your taste, check out Earth Patrol Media’s recent Lincoln City coverage. Thanks to JF for the video tip

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.

Check out the fancy video camera that guy is holding at the edge of the pipe. Who needs expensive prosumer electronics gear when a point and shoot still camera can give you glorious 160 x 120 pixel imagery at 15 fps? Not our friend Troy Sliter. Check out his moving picture footage of Rune Glifberg going over the mouse hole at Portland’s Pier Park during the 2007 Oregon Trifecta after the jump. [Update: More reader video added in comments]

Earth Patrol Media shows us what happens when second (and third) string skateboard company moguls get in to the Dew Tour. Unfortunately, they were unable to abscond with the effigy of Ryan Sheckler, or burn it. Can you believe they want to sell you Dew Tour skateboards for $80? These are not completes mind you, just the deck. It’s ironic that the graphic on the deck is a bunch of robots. Maybe they’ll make one with lemmings next time. Check it out.