I should have guessed these guys were involved. The wave ramp at the Kiasma museum was another distinctive project from the collective known as The Side Effects of Urethane. This particular exhibit is called Aalto. TSEOU has images ranging from the concept phase right on through construction (time lapse video) and finally skating. One interesting thing about the design, it looks more like a boat under construction than a traditional skate ramp. Check out Aalto on TSEOU. – Thanks to Ian for the tip.

A museum in Helsinki, Finland had an indoor installation of a styley mini ramp, but incredibly enough, there seems to be only two [ 1 – 2 ] online pictures of it anywhere. Kiasma has some sort affinity to skateboarding. They also did a major outdoor mini ramp for a while as well. I am still not sick of skate-ramps-as-art. I say, bring it on. Who has more shots of the indoor ramp? Up top, Anna Kangas photo by Satu Pulkki

Check out Ettubrute’s Flickr set of Dutch architects MVRDV’s Villa VPro. I have some really cool concept books by these guys so I was psyched to see something they had actually built. At the first view of the ouside I’m thinking that looks skateable and it just kept getting better. Hey, you could get a job with a Dutch television studio. – Thanks to Pinch for the link.

This week’s Shot of the Week comes from Chris Eggers and his web site sk8boarding4life. It’s bilingual (German and English) and features skate photos from his archives over the years. This shot is a Lance Mountain frontside invert over the channel at the Swedish skateboard summer camp in 1986. Check out this week’s Shot of the Week.

Since there’s no date on this guerilla art installation by Madrid artist SpY, we can’t say whether his ramp reinterpretation in his Urban Furniture collection was something he conceived before or after he saw Conahan’s very similar vision. Still, the soccer field painted on a miniramp is pretty clever. I just saw a graphic on the the web that showed a soccer player kicking a ball and an American football player running with a football side by side. The caption under the soccer player said “foot ball.” The caption under the Dallas Cowboy said “hand egg.” Check out SpY.

This is a temporary installation in Vienna. More at Dezeen.

So we got mentioned on the SkateDaily Top 3. This time the list is for the top three web sites dedicated to old school. It’s a mixed blessing, because the publicity is great, but I hate being pigeonholed. I’ve been trying to expand our appeal since forever. Trouble is, old guys write about what they know, I guess. Check out who submitted it though, could that really be the Lonnie Toft? Speaking of old school, does the name Buddy Carr ring a bell? It’s a name that has been pretty much synonymous with Tracker Trucks since… yes, forever. Well Buddy has decided to join up with Bennett Truks in a move that would be earthshaking if it were say, 1979. I always wanted to try some Bennet Truks, but guys seriously, this brings up one of my pet peeves in the skateboarding industry: The logo should add “with a decade or two of abstinence” next to the “Established in 1975” tagline. I’m thinking of you too, Shut Skates. Regardless, you can read the press release on Silverfish or watch a somewhat recent video interview with Buddy Carr giving a tour of the Tracker factory, made by the (old school) German…

BMX’ers and skaters don’t have a beef in Belgium. Hell, they even share their websites. Bocal Mostard (translation?) is a collective of skateboarders and BMX riders. They met together to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of a snake run in the city of Liège, Belgium. It looks like there was a mass thrash, art events and live bands. Sounds pretty good in any language. Check it out.

October of last year we published some pics of a DIY concrete project in France called La Caverne that prompted one of our smart-assed readers to comment “put some coping on that shit.” Salah Mehdi sent in some pictures of just that. I don’t know if “coping” is a masculine or feminine noun, for some reason they didn’t cover that in high school French classes.

Johan Fründ put together a video titled Best of Both Bowls Contest 2008 that covers contests in some indoor bowls in Dusseldorf, Germany. Machine gun fast cuts and some great skating. Check it out. These bowls look familiar….