Are you pressing your own skateboard blanks with a vacuum press? If you are looking for a little less labor intensive method of constructing a mold, Ted over at Thin Air Press, home of the Roarockit has posted a lengthy set of illustrated instructions on how to make your own custom mold out of foam insulation. While his choice of shape and mold style may not appeal to you, the basic technique is still valuable if you want to make the next step in DIY skateboard construction with vacuum pressed boards. Sure beats the other method if you are still experimenting with your geometry. Check it out. [Source: Ted on SnA comments]

Strongest of the Strange from Pontus Alv, circa 2005. The video was filmed from 2002 to 2005, and is the handy work of Pontus Alv. This is one of my all-time favorite skate videos. It seems like they really put a lot of energy and time into the skating/filming/editing. Its not only long, but its filled with all kinds of terrain and styles of skateboarding. Various skits are thrown in throughout the video, which verge on the comedic art scene. Those of you that are afraid of seeing a penis should probably skip through the first section. We don’t want your fragile little brain to explode. More after the jump.

Look a picture of old skateboard wheels! Internet denizens Mark Freuenfelder and Mr. Jalopy Have teamed up to create a pdf ‘zine called D+R Dispatch. I saw it on BoingBoing where you can get the details and download the two part ‘zine.

Apparently all you have to do is ask. These images are from last weekend. According to our anonymous source, a surf shop gave up the location with only a slight runaround. Come to think about it, that’s the same way I found out about the Nude Bowl as a youth visiting from the Midwest. I went to the nearest skateshop and just asked. But getting back to the Graveside scenery, it looks guh-narly. One tightly cropped panoramic shot after the jump. Don’t ask, we aren’t telling.

This is Cookie phot of BJ is from a Minnesota DIY spot, sent in by William Morrill. Whats up dudes, just contributing a photo of a front hurricane @ a spot me my friends made in Minnesota. Its a fun quarter with some vert and hand made pool cope. You can drink beers and sk8 all day there with no hassles.. Beer? Skateboarding? No hassles? Sounds horrible! William’s got time to send in pictures because that spot is probably under three feet of snow right now. Check out the uncropped version.

I don’t know anything about this project. Mark Scott gave me these photos and said I could post them. It’s a renegade project but it looks like it gets a lot of visitors.

You may have noticed banner ads in rotation for Razorcake magazine here on Skate and Annoy. It’s originally the brainchild of Todd Taylor, author, punk rocker, publisher, skater, drinker and general all around good guy to know. Razorcake is bigger than him now, it’s a non-profit organization for baby Jesus’ sake! Issue #41 has a seven page article, How to fight for a skatepark that has heroes, villains and an epic tale of struggle, much like Homer’s Odyssey – mostly because the villains seem to have the intellect of Homer Simpson. Imagine you are tied to a railroad track in the middle of a dessert, and you can see the smoke from the locomotive approaching over the horizon. You think to yourself, surely someone will find and help me, right up until the point where you can see engine approaching, and feel the rails rumble. Todd Taylor was tied to the tracks just blocks away from his apartment as the Red Tape engineer of the City of L.A., The Cho-Bot, and Teflon were intent on railroading prefab modular skateparks from a playground company down the throats and up the collective asses of his L.A. neighborhood’s skateboarding population. It’s a good…

Another month, another micro-‘zine. Bodyslam 6.2 is available as a 6.3MB download. Check out older BODYSLAM ‘zines here.

And this should be the last construction update from me. Next shots your gonna see is all the locals skating this new “Ego” bowl here in Hood River Oregon. I can assure you that this hard-working crew will have an undisturbed amount of time in the next 3 days, breaking in the coping for everyone to enjoy.

Its going to better than a Charlie Brown Xmas for us skaters in Hood River, Oregon. Today I went down to the skatepark to drop a case of Red Bull on the hard working crew. I had to ask (Designers and Builders Graham and Mark) when the expected finish date was, they said they have stayed well within the budget, with no plans of stopping and took me on a walk around the skatepark.