The Biemme Red Star is a board of Italian manufacture. There’s a company called Biemme that started in 1978, but they seem to be focused on bicycles. Maybe they had a brief foray into skateboard like a few of the other bicycle-centric companies of the era did. A search fro “Red star skateboard” turns up a bunch of unrelated boards. Currently, including “Biemme” in that search returns exactly 2 instances of this skateboard, both auctions cling this is an 80’s era board. It’s got trucks that fit into the bottom of the board instead of having a separate baseplate. That’s not a big deal, we’ve seen that in American boards and Italian boards. The thing that makes this board interesting is the bizarre molded double kicktail, on. appointed nose no, less.

I love some good prepackaged skateboard parts from the 70’s. It’s rare (for me at least) to see them come from France. Punch appears to be the brand name. I tried to translate “Couvat Oyonnax” but it it came up blank. Nearest I can tell is they are regions in France. Thanks to Dimitri Jourdan for the picture.

I love a good, weird and crappy skateboard, especially when it’s from a foreign country. To look at these you would think they came from the Eastern Bloc. But no, they came from an Italy and a man named Icaro Olivieri. He was apparently quite an innovator in hockey, and a manufacturer of all kinds of sporting goods under the brand name of GIOCA, which translates to “Play.” I stumbled across one of these while looking for Tres Assi boards. It looks like Gioca might have made real skateboards at some point, but I couldn’t find any picutres outside of the advert in the bottom right corner.

Check out this refurbished tennis court in Sokolov, Czech Republic, built by Bonidee Skateparks. These guys have some good looking sites in their portfolio, mostly street plaza oriented but with the occasional very light sprinkle of transition. Stuff that looks fun even to an old zine editor…. This park is a little confusing to look at in pictures, almost like bad AI, but not as jarring as this tennis court from 2008. SOURCE: Blunt Magazine. (Hey web-scrapers, see how easy that was to do?)

The rabbit holes I fall into… A reader sent in a picture inquiring about a 70’s skateboard he found that had a “Jordy” logo screen printed on the bottom. I felt pretty cocksure that I’d be able to track down an old advert or something. It seemed to me to be an English brand, or otherwise European, but boy did I strike out. Well maybe instead I hit a foul ball over the back fence? I did discover a lot of pictures related to an Italian TV show called Striscia la Notizia that is a satirical TV news program. A quick google image search revealed that it’s like the Daily Show with cleavage, and lots of it. I spent hours on this post. Hours… Dive into obscure Jordy-related Italian skateboard history with me, it’s slightly more interesting than you think!

Les Bidasses en Vadrouille is French movie made in 1979, and was the first of several starring the French band band Martin Circus. The title translates to “The Soldiers on the Move,”and it looks like they were “soldiers” in at least three titles. Here’s a translation of the plot synopsis: After the big maneuvers, four young soldiers, René, Sylvain, Gérard and Alain, arrive at the end of their military service and take a two hundred kilometer ride with a latest model AM17 assault tank nicknamed “the Invincible” in order to reach their base. Forced to clean the machine, the soldiers will cause panic in a market and involuntarily commit a hold-up. Part of this zany journey involves an extended skateboard (planche de skate) sequence. – Thanks to Doc Skaterock for the tip

The Volcano ( or Le Volcan as it is named in France, where it resides) was originally designed by Oscar Niemeyer and opened in 1982. These pictures are from Atelier Cambium, a firm involved in an extensive remodeling project that looks like it involved digging up everything underneath and around it in order to reimagine the space. At first glance it looks like a fun skate spot, although you’ll need big soft wheels to navigate some of the bricked areas. However, If you look closer you can see they have applied a short railing in certain areas to keep people off the walls. Why they want people off the walls? Some will likely say insurance and liability reasons, although I don’t know how big of a problem that is in the EU. I suspect it’s in order to keep the space from being used in more creative ways that tend to annoy the stuffed shirts. Source: Atelier Cambium

Hats off to Blast Skates out of Berlin the U.K. for My First Skateboard, an 80’s inspired kids setup that comes in a box with everything you need to assemble, including kid-friendly instructions. The Blast product lineup appears to be a little high end, with their decks going for an equivalent of about $87 USD. This setup for little kids is about $154 USD. Sure, you could find completes for kids at a considerably cheaper price, at least in the US, but what you’re getting here is a fully realized concept that is well executed. It’s an experience that is more than the sum of the parts. Granted, it’s not clear whether a child will enjoy it nearly as much as the adult who gifts it. I love the spot on the top of the deck for writing your name on the board. I’d rock an adult sized deck with that top graphic. EDIT: Turns out Blast is in the UK but uses Berlin for shipping to EU due to Brexit making it expensive to ship to the EU. – Thanks to Matthijs for the tip.

Another obscure note in skateboarding history. This is the Gary Horeskowsky pro model, dating back to 1987. You may point out that you’ve never heard of this fellow, and that could be because he may never have actually existed, and if he did, he resided in Finland, home of Statum Skates. According to Mikko Antero (thanks for the pics) it’s a local brand from an era when American pro models were still hard to come by. In the end of the eighties this changed and Statum went dormant, only make a come back in 2012. Statum is indeed a thing again! You can buy decks online. They have a history page online but it’s very short and very light on the details, even if you view the translated page.

I had planned on adding a few pics of a slight color variation to the last Tres Assi post I made, which was a follow up to a 9 year journey, but in the process I stumbled on a third color variation that I had never seen. And so here we are at a 3rd post, this time adding a less translucent yellow model, some alternate pics of another red board, as well as the new-to-me black variation.