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.

Hood River Oregon’s small and dedicated group of young builders has accomplished allot of work in a short time. The team was headed by Mark Goddard of Benchmark Designs, but he recently departed and left in apparent puff over the design. I applaud the remaining crew for standing up for this communities local scene, hell, they skate it everyday and have serious pride in the outcome of this project.

UPDATE: I got a call (!) from Mark who informed me this was never a Benchmark project, he was never the boss, and he was just hired on as an employee. He didn’t leave on bad terms with anyone. It was one of those “agree to disagree” situations. Our apologies to Mark Goddard. – K.ed

Yes, we’ve mentioned Google Maps Street View before, but it’s still good to make a note when various skate spots come online. Here’s a peek at perhaps the world’s most famous skatepark. Burnside never looked so clean. Thanks to Grumpy Joe for the tip.

Eastpack and Red Bull footed the bill for 6 DIY concrete spots in Austria. These aren’t full sized spots, but rather single modifications to existing spots or sometimes creating a new spot by providing an approach to a previously unskateable spot. Nothing earth shaking, but cool nonetheless. There’s a short video clip by Niki Waltl that covers 2 days, 6 spots and more than 1000 kilometres by car. A few of those spots look like left over anti-tank barriers from the war. It is Austria, you know. Download it here. It looks like these guys made it happen.

Here’s the progress (Note: Click On Pictures To See In True Form). News of the concrete being poured are the talk of the town, early next week they plan to trowel. Check out the plans, a slight change to the last post.

So I went to Burnside on Halloween dressed as Space Ghost where I skated poorly for a while before settling down to one location to take a few pictures. The session had just heated up when I had to split to go be Halloween dad with my kid. While there was a lot of good action there, I missed most of it and I made it a point to only shoot people in costume. Enjoy.

I was starting to feel disgusted that I hadn’t put out a print issue in over a year, and the last one (Volume 2, #3) barely saw any actually printed. I was broke and busy but wanted to do something, so I decided to work on a print issue that I could crank out on one double sided sheet of paper, fold it a bunch of times, make a couple of cuts and still have a lot of pages. I made mine, which I’ll post later. To make it easier for you, I’ve made a layout guide and put together some tips. Conahan was so stoked he cranked one out almost immediately. If you get stoked too, make sure you send us a couple.

Check out: How to make a micro zine.

Here’s the latest news from the windy, and very cold Columbia River Gorge skate scene. A backhoe broke ground one week ago on the new bowl. Mark and Graham are both diligently getting it done by working the landscape into submission and laying out the design.

Now for those of you that need to see it from the horses mouth you can watch a video of Graham explaining it after the jump.

Check out the big brain on Mike! Over at Northwest Skater You can find a discussion of a method for calculating the size of a transition radius using a three-foot straight edge and a short ruler.

Basically you put the three-foot stick on the transition and measure the space under it at the center. Then use math to work out the radius from there. You need a straight stick because inaccuracy in your measurement will be magnified in your calculations but that isn’t probably a huge problem, I’ve seen those guys cut their transition templates with a chainsaw.

They also provide a handy table that lists common radii for various values of h.

Somehow or other I got included on an email trail with Bruce Adams, whom I don’t know, but he replied this sequence of Terrell Schmidt going over the death hole at a spot I just saw in a magazine somewhere, but can’t remember where it is. These are just a few frames from the middle. You can see the whole thing after the jump.