Sorry about the lack of posts this week, my plane got delayed and TAM Linhas Aéreas lost my luggage. It took a while to get things sorted out, but I’m happy now, and tripping out cause I’ve never been in the southern hemisphere before. The toilets flush backwards! What???? Crazy! Anyway, I finally got the go ahead to post a couple of pics I took of Jake Brown. Holy cow, he landed the world’s first backside 720 Ollie over the gap in during the Big Air contest…

Hey, it’s Pierre Luc Gagnon at the X games in Los Angeles back in June. He won. I guess you should go buy some Monster Energy drink. Tune in next month for this month’s Street League results.

It’s almost like a franchise. Woodward Camps are popping up everywhere, like this one in Tahoe that opens on June 9th. Action Sports alone can’t pay the bills, they long been offering video and photo camps, which makes sense with all that action around, you might as well charge kids to learn how to shoot it. And there’s also… cheerleading camps? I guess it was that or one big adolescent sausage fest.

“I know it may sound absurd, but I dig the challenge.” No, not a direct quote from Bob Burnquist after his Simon Woodstock-esque stunt (turned up to a Spinal Tap 11…) Looks like a wakeboard mounted up on trucks which we’ve seen before, but not on the Megaramp in the rain for the love of Thor. Simon set his up like a regular skateboard, Bob’s setup looks a little like a longrider. Then again, Simon wasn’t dropping in on an 18″ or more of transition in the rain. Speaking of Simon, he seemed to be gearing up for getting back in the public world of skateboarding again, but then he suddenly disappeared again. Name the band I’ve sideways referenced and win a noprize, no fair using Google. [Source: Seventysixers]

So… an “unlocked spot” courtesy of the Dew Tour: We’ve unlocked a cool spot for all you Portland locals to skate next Wednesday 11am at the Pioneer Courthouse Square. There’s normally no skateboarding there, but we’re hooking it up for you guys. While I applaud the idea of lifting the ban, if only temporarily, I have to laugh at the suits at Pepsi “hooking me up.” Still, that’s a novel form of social/guerilla marketing. I wonder how much it cost to “hook us up?” ( Egads that’s awkward punctuation. Any English majors out there that can tell me what I did wrong? ) The photo on the bottom? That’s Spohn Ranch’s portable concrete bowl system being disassembled and loaded up for the trip to Portland. Grover is chomping at the bit to ride that thing. – Thanks to Craig Smith for the tip.

I’m kind of taking the week off from posting on Skate and Annoy, but I’m not being lazy. I’m actually working on the back end of S&A, cleaning up some code and CSS, preparing to dump all the old static content into the the database. It’s annoying and slow going, but also long overdue. So watch this video of wacky germans who have invented a sport that combines streetstyle and freestyle skateboarding with the art of sitting on a stool. And not just any stool, it’s got to be a stupid expensive sport stool. Anything goes as long as you land on the stool. I thought it was a well executed parody, but a search on Youtube reveals way too many Hockern enthusiasts to be a hoax. Extreme sports stool! You will feel like loose stool after watching this video. [Source: Gizmodo] – Thanks to Seth Grossman and Aaron Polansky for the tip.

Photobucket is such a POS. You can link directly to an image, but if you want to link to the album containing it, they password protect it. What’s the point? This is a detail from a Gingers infographic.

The Gatorade Free Flow Tour hits the Department this Saturday July 10th. Get some before it shuts down. The Department, not the contest series. The Alliance of Action Sports puts on this tour and the Dew Tour. I saw some of the Dew Tour on TV the other day under the program name of “Action Sports.” More interesting is the fact that they aired a commercial for their online store. I don’t know if they are carrying their own inventory and doing their own fulfillment or… hold on. I just called the 800 number, and once I got past the corporate phone tree messages, the person that answered said they were from StandardBoardShop.com.

First off, it’s better off that a skateboard competition circuit be owned and operated by skateboarders. However, this whole business of signing contracts to compete exclusively in one circuit and not another, although it may make sense from a business standpoint, reeks of, of something, well, something very stinky, like say, GVK’s knee pads. Which is appropriate because it is a “street league” to the exclusion of any sort of vert or bowl riding. (You know Grover never washes his pads. he says that would dilute the trick juice.) I’m not a big fan of the logo either. Aside from scrimping on the graphic designer’s fee, It looks vaguely like something NBA or MLB related. If skaters are going to claim skateboarding from the media for themselves, it would be smarter not to emulate the worst aspects of organized sports. Still, I wish Rob Dyrdek luck with Street League Skateboarding, despite the bad name choice. The million dollar purse would seemingly best the Maloof Money Cup (even worse name), but then again Maloof isn’t spread over three events. Why not wrestle all the skaters away from the X-Games and the like? Was it lack of interest in vert/bowl by Dyrdek,…

It’s conceivable that these trucks might work well enough for a beginner. The technology dates back to the 50’s here, and believe it or not, I think there are some dirtboard, excuse me, mountainboarding trucks out there right now that are based on the same design. Still, call me cynical, but have to believe the decision to used these wacky trucks was based purely on profit motive. Maybe at the time these were a dollar cheaper than a traditional truck. May not sound like much, but multiply by thousands and then some in projected sales… On the one hand, the X-Games provide a way for an immediate group of skateboarder to make a living off of skateboarding, and a larger group through association. On the other hand, they peddle crap like this, or at least they used to. I don’t think they make this anymore. – Thanks to Matthijs van Wijk for the tip.