I came across a cool t-shirt on the internet of the drawing on the left. (reacharound to Monoscope) which led me to a short piece by the artist. Oh yeah, and Huck magazine, which seems to be one of those all action sports mags from the U.K. has the shirt in their store.

Sure, we’re all about Japan here, but when are we going to cover something that often gets overlooked, like, oh, i don’t know. Say for instance, the Northwest bowl scene? Bailgun is a video put together by Steve Reeves. So this was submitted (Not by Steve) as a potential palate cleanser after watching the Overground Broadcasting clip. I’ve often wished cheap video cameras were available when I was a wild impetuous youth, but then after watching some of the scenes in Bailgun, I’m kind of glad I didn’t film all my, errr… escapades. Bailgun is not without charm, but it’s a bit long. Did you know the U.S. Army had a weapons program where gun howitzers were tested for firing nuclear bombs in artillery shells? You can see one in action, mushroom cloud included, in the opening credits of Bailgun. Awesome, and very disturbiing. Watch it after the jump. Completely unrelated Bailgun news: Bailgun Magazine #7 is now available for viewing and download. Bailgun is based in Germany, and #7 is the Swedish issue. – Thanks to Daniel Evans for the tip.

Wrapping up some longboard-centric items. First up is fashion designer Adam Kimmel’s promo film Claremont consisting of a couple of beardos screaming downhill in suits we can only assume were designed by Adam Kimmel. I’m not exactly sure how the tie in works, but it seems to be getting people talking. The right people? I can’t make that call. I thought it was a hoax at first, as far as Adam Kimmel being in the fashion industry, but it would have to be an elaborate one. The downhill action looks insanely fast. These guys even pass a car as well as passing the camera between themselves and shooting backwards. I don’t know how they do it, but my helmet is off to them. They make a certain German downhiller look like a wuss in comparison. Supposedly, German police are on the lookout for a man assumed to be “a professional stuntman” in full leathers who reached 62 MPH on a two mile stretch of the Autobahn after getting a tow in by a motorcycle. Pfffft! Talk to me when you do it in light blue polyester. Lastly, there’s the L.A. Times article titled More skaters switching to longboards, from the…

“I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.  It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” -Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849 On August 29th, Derek Anderson (Mark Conahan’s age) committed a breach of peace when he scaled a 300-foot crane located in the beer garden of the Doghouse Public House.  This act of civil disobedience was an aim to shed some light on a particular subject: the Dudhope Skatepark, pictured above courtesy of Google Maps user ihatetechnology,  in Westport, Dundee, UK.

Two countries that are alike in so many ways… at least if you are mostly going by the fact that I’ve never been to either, but that doesn’t stop me from being vaguely connected to people there through the magic of the Interwebs™. After the jump catch two videos sent to me through various global dealing of Skate and Annoy. We’re huge, you know.

We’re looking forward to more progress at Brotherhood Plaza in Stockholm Sweden. I may have had a Swedish girlfriend for about 15 minutes once in the 90’s, although I ‘m not sure she’d agree. I’d like to see something like that here. (The DIY street plaza, not my Swedish pretend ex-girlfriend. She said she was some sort of youth sailing champion. Elena, where are you? No, don’t answer that, I’m married with kids.) I did hear back from David Krug, the man behind Brotherhood. He shed a little light on the D.I.Y. street plaza project. There’s a lot of photos on the official site, but not a lot of actual information. In fact I think his short email says more than the official site, at least in English.

Here’s two, one from the 80’s and one that would have been at home in the 80’s but just came out. On the left is a new Concrete Wave patch with Jim Phillips artwork that originally appeared on a Pocket Pistols deck, but has also recently appeared as a poster and cover of Concrete Wave magazine, not to mention a magnet as well. On the right is a patch from Monster Skateboard Magazine of Germany, from back in the late 80’s. I originally go this from a skateboarding friendof mine (Ray Johnson) who was in the Air Force who got stationed in West Germany. Yes, by all means, we are accepting scans of skate patches for a future gallery.

One stop on the recent Bacon tour of Sweden was the Brotherhood Plaza (Skarpnäck?) in Stockholm. The big shot above is Tim Johnson as taken by David Krug. David has been the driving force behind the plaza for the past four years. It’s essentially a Burnside-style sanctioned D.I.Y. skatepark, except instead of being tranny-centric, it’s all street plaza. The place looks like a fertile spot for many fun sessions. This isn’t a plaza with existing obstacles being sanctioned for skating, it’s built from the ground up for skateboarding. You can’t get a good overview from the few pictures above, you really need to spend some time checking out the photos and video on the Brotherhood Plaza web site. Bonus: After the jump you’ll find three pictures from Bacon’s visit.

One of my pet peeves in the industry is when magazines devote a huge spread to (Fill in favorite skateboard team) goes on tour to (Fill in exotic or mundane location). I mean how lame is that when a magazine can’t be bothered to come up with their own ideas so they end up having five pages of product placement advertising under the guise of editorial content, not to mention a full page advert from one of the same spots in the feature. That’s why, when I heard Colin Sharp was going to join his team in Sweden for a week in the middle of their tour, I practically begged him to bring a camera and shoot some pictures. You won’t find a Bacon advertisement anywhere on Skate and Annoy, unless you count the 10% of the time they show up at the top of every page… I thought I was going to be getting some awesome Malmo contest overage… but I got this tour diary instead. I kid, but only because I love. If you think this post graphic looks disgusting, you should see the version with the blue and yellow bacon. My Thanks to Colin for taking the…

I think I found the 70’s Power blog while researching the Wham-O Wheelie Bar – because it looked like it had skateboard trucks on it. I couldn’t find a decent close up of the wheelie bar, but I did enjoy surfing 70’s Power. It’s kind of like the 4Q blog if you replace the motorcycles with old VW’s and rewrite a lot of text in French. A few items of interest clockwise: Quality Skateboard Accessories manufactured by Jupiter International out of Bellevue, Washington!, Yabassi skateboard helmets. I can’t find anything about them on the web, can anyone elaborate? Lastly, some of the vintage skateboard collection belonging to the guys who post to the blog.