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 time and making the effort. Geez, Mason, couldn’t you have gotten another crappy summer job after you got back from Sweden?

Read Colin Sharp’s Bacon Goes To Sweden.

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.

Colin went to Sweden and all I got was this picture of a bunch of smelly dudes in a car instead of their famous bikini team I keep hearing about. That’s the Swedish Bikini team, not the Bacon Bikini team. (Shudder!)

But seriously folks… I’m going to beat that joke like a dead horse. He actually did take pictures. The occasion for the road plane trip was the Bowl Rider’s Cup in Malmo. He said something about “epic,” so give him some time to assemble his thoughts and do some typing.

Yeah it’s a tired Clash reference, but at least I didn’t title it London Calling. Our Czech ex-pat Marek Litinski went back to the fatherland (motherland?) for a week and got stuck in London for an extra week becasue his “papers weren’t in order,” or so he claims to his wife… While he was there he happened on the Quiksilver Bowlriders contest in Cantelowes, a Dreamland park that we posted about earlier. Some of the eurpean skate sites have video from that contest up. Now Marek supposedly finished 4th, but must have done somehting to piss off the locals because every time he comes on camera the cut to a different guy. I begged Marek to bring a camera with him so we could get a little European skate coverage that wasn’t hand me down, and he obliged. When I spoke to him on his return, he said the thing that made the biggest impression on him was the fact that adults were allowed to openly drink beer in the presence of minors without the Aumsville Police U.K. equivalent of the National Guard being called out. Ironically, he was also present when Lodoners had near riot conditions during an all nigh binge drinking protest in the tubes. It seems the mayor banned drinking on subway trains and the drunks people got upset. So what did Marek bring me? A bunch of “lifestyle” shots. Ah, those Europeans. You can take the drunk out of Czechoslovakia, but you can’t take the Czech out of the, errr… what? Pics and video after the jump.

– Thanks to Jeremy Donaldson for the tip.

Dean Tyrell writes:

A friend of mine who was patricpating in a Skate contest here in Palma (Spain) last weekend, broke a finger in practice. He went to hospital, got it fixed up in a plaster cast and came back halfway through his heat, (loaded on painkillers hence carefree expression in the foto) and still competed, probabaly with a semi-wet cast. Nice air too. Andres Moral. A very hot skater around these parts.  

the foto says it all; the cast, the smile and the air… skateboarding.

See the whole shot after the jump. Update: Photo by Albert Crespi

Well, I guess not. Here are two recent submissions from opposite ends of the earth and age spectrum. The youngster on the left (Jay Holmstrom) hails from Sweden, while the oldster on the right (Wrex Cook) was shot in Arizona by Old Man Army.

This broken skateboard belt buckle comes from a Polish website called Jazgot which looks like it’s aimed at the Polish Hot Topic crowd, or in their own words, “Punk Rock Rockabilly Emo shop”

[Source: SKATEpunk.pl]

Again, from the collection of John Drummond. This time it’s the premier issue of Germany’s Death Zone, dating back to June of 1985. It cost 1,50 dm, however much that was. Interesting to note the address inside the cover, it said Gütersloh West Germany. I never really thought about about skateboarding in a divided Germany. Sure, we all knew about Claus Grabke (…and speaking of) but seeing the word “West” made me sit back and take notice.

The minor crisis in journalistic integrity is over. The person who sent me the photos had not meant to imply that they were his own, which was why he couldn’t provide any additional information. I did find the original source, which was a link on NCDSA.com from a Swede named Toby:

It’s an old timber trench/ditch that isn’t used today. All you need is a broom to clean it out in the spring and you’re good to go. It’s about 450 yards long and made out of metal. If you ever are in Umeå, Sweden, mail me and we’ll take you there!

Toby has two photos and videos of the ditch/pipe mixed in amongst three pages in an incredibly slow gallery. They are more atmosphere shots than gnarly skateboard action. Same goes for the video. Looks like a really fun spot.

Photos 1 – Photos 2 – Videos.

A skate buddy of mine from a different life (Bob Mechtly) sent me these pictures of this old metal timber pipe/ditch in Sweden that isn’t being used today. He said it’s about 450 yards long. What he didn’t say, was how it rode and what he was doing there. Dang. Looks like Michigan. Was this a timber waterslide? Good luck wading through the internet trying to find that information. It seems like a track would have made more sense than pumping water, unless they were able to divert a natural water source. But then the downstream… oh right. This is a skateboarding web site and not the Bureau of Land Management. Looks like a lot of fun. Rarely do we see something skateable that is so long… Enlargements after the jump.

UPDATE: There was a little bit of a mix up. These Aren’t Bob’s photos, I’m tracking down the originals.