No, this isn’t the start of a recurring feature, just a reference to the fact that we had a similar post last friday. Adult film stars are kind of like pro wrestlers sometimes, they need to have a gimmick to distinguish themselves from the rest of the competitors. Keeani Lei lists skateboarding and surfing among her other uhm, talents. I first got, err, turned on to her via a Sleestak post, but they got it from the NSFW Slap Magazine forums. Come to think of it, Slap sounds like some sort of a fetish magazine. In any case, Keeani does indeed skate and appears to enjoy it. She’s into flyouts, women, Jason Jesse re-issues and you know… other things. I like the shot where she’s pretending to drink OJ’s out of a juice pitcher, a visual pun that would be lost on anyone who didn’t skate. Reminds me of some of the 80’s skateboard advertising. She’s really going for the niche market. There’s safe for work video after the jump.

The Old Man Army crew decided to take off for a weekend to go down to San Diego to see what all of the hoopla was about at the ASR show. They wanted to meet in person a few of the people in the industry that they have dealings with. The only other thing on their agenda was to get a couple of pictures of the kooky skateboard gadgets for the Skate and Annoy.

Check out: 2007 ASR with OMA

K.D. Waltner was rolling some old-school custom quad rollerskates with wide trucks and sliding rails at Pier Park. He said he’d been out of it for ten years, but it seemed to come back pretty quickly. Must be like riding a bike. I think K.D. Waltner is German he’s working for one of the local shoemakers. You’ll probably see him around, he’s enjoying being back into it.

Funny how rolling quads is okay when inline is not. The guy took his blades to Burnside and got heckled but went back with his roller skates and it was fine.

Photo: Rich Burton

Transworld Skateboarding reports (See how I gave you guys credit there? It doesn’t even hurt.) that skateboarding will likely not make it into the 2012 Olympics. The got it from a subscription only web site about the business of the Olympics called Around the Rings.

Plans to bring skateboarding to the program for the 2012 Olympics are headed for a crash landing, sources tell Around the Rings…

…As part of a play to make maximum use of the BMX half pipe track, UCI was also willing to consider bringing skateboarding into the federation for a double-barreled shot at attracting younger sports fans for the Olympics.

UCI sports director Olivier Queguiner, who met recently with IOC officials to discuss the situation, now tells Around the Rings that the “no decision about skateboard” will take place during the UCI Congress in Stuttgart later this month. A vote of the UCI Congress is a must to bring a new discipline into the sport of cycling. Failure to act this year effectively kills the chance of adding skateboarding to London.

Around the Rings also claims that most pro skateboarders would rather have street skating in the Olympics instead of a vert event, I’m guessing because there are about 100 times more street skating pros in the first place. Regardless of your stance on having skateboarding in the Olympics, or your skateboarding terrain of choice, it’s kind of obvious that a halfpipe event will fit in better in terms of the whole Olympic style spectacle and judging. There are no events where competitors can use completely different terrain and be judged on the difficulty and style of their maneuvers. Street skating would be too hard for the uninitiated viewer to comprehend, unless they turned it into a gymnastics like exercise where there was one single runway and an obstacle at the end for every competitor to hit, as in the case with the vault in gymnastics. I’m pretty sure nobody wants to see or partake in that, although it’s a pretty funny idea for a video. “And here comes the dismount from the 15 step rail… Oooooh! It looks like he broke his ankle. He didn’t fall completely off his board, but “rolling up the windows” is certainly going to subtract some points. Ryan Sheckler has left the arena crying again, what a brave competitor.”

Look for the furor to start up again for the 2016 Olympics. Yes, this is one of the lamest intro graphics I’ve done. There’s a host of links to now, mostly moot articles on skateboarding in the Olympics after the jump.

The BBC has an article a Brit who has set an as yet unverified world record for speed (112mph) on a jet powered street luge. I don’t know if there is a separate category for non jet powered luge or what. They have video as well, but for good pictures you have to go to Gizmodo’s exclusive interview with Joel King. I don’t know how a gadget site scooped us on this, aside from the fact that we don’t pay any attention to street luge. At least we scooped them on the World’s Biggest Skateboard. Joel King bills himself as the Gravity King, which makes me the Duke of Sketch. [Photos: Top and Bottom Right – Richard Eaton. Bottom left and center from the BBC video]

Earth Patrol Media shows us what happens when second (and third) string skateboard company moguls get in to the Dew Tour. Unfortunately, they were unable to abscond with the effigy of Ryan Sheckler, or burn it. Can you believe they want to sell you Dew Tour skateboards for $80? These are not completes mind you, just the deck. It’s ironic that the graphic on the deck is a bunch of robots. Maybe they’ll make one with lemmings next time. Check it out.

…and the Skate and Annoy servers are being braced for an onslaught of teenage girls posting “why all the hating? UR just jealous!” comments. Ryan Sheckler has a show on MTV called Life of Ryan. And now, my life is complete. The programming geniuses nay, wizards at MTV are really on a roll here, recycling yet another another skateboarder reality show, this time even managing to rip off Monty Python in the process. Head on over to the web site for lots of Tiger Beat style pinup photos of Ryan and his cast of friends and family, which apparently involve 55 gallon drums of hair product. How can we say he has an out of control ego?

[Source: Skate Daily via Skateboarding Sucks]

So this was going to start as a post about a New York Times article titled Out From the Cold, Snowboarder Tries to Duplicate Success that was basically about how Shaun may be a superstar on the snow, but he’s been a failure on the ramp, at least in terms of his struggle to win the X-Games vert event and be taken seriously as a skateboarder. [Source] That’s a bit of an overstatement really. Does not winning the X-Games makes you a failure? Not in my book, but apparently you’re not even a real skateboarder until you win the X-Games. In ‘Flying Tomato’ now a champ for all seasons, the Boston Herald Quotes Shaun after finally winning one this weekend:

“This means the world to me,” choking back tears after his run. “I’ve always wanted to be a skateboarder. I’m finally doing my thing.”

Uh yeah. I guess it was emotional for him. We can cut him some slack since he’s doesn’t appear to be nearly as big of a douche bag as the Sheckler, and he’s already paying a penance by not having any control over being constantly referred to as the Flying Tomato.

Links to a couple more articles about Shaun’s vert title win and a video of Sheckler getting the world’s most ego-centric tattoo after the jump. [Photos: Left – AP / Ryan Pearson from The Denver Post. Right – Buzz Photo from Perez Hilton Hey Perez, it’s Shaun, not Shawn. This is the second time I’ve swiped a photo from Perez.]

Haw haw! The Vancouver Skateboard Coalition received funding from ES shoes to build a parade float consisting of a miniramp on a trailer “that will be in all of the local parades.” And they do mean all of them. Their latest appearance was in the Gay Pride Parade in Vancouver over the weekend. If you’ve never been to one, gay or not, these parades (besides being kind of gay… ) usually have a party atmosphere (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and are a lot of fun for people watching. We had some fun skating in front of Portland’s City Hall, but I can only imagine it would have been a lot more fun if there had been a posse of people in their underwear and bondage gear in the stands. Hats off to the Vancouver Skateboarding Coalition for not being homophobic. This post is rated Extreme!™ for extremely gay. [Update: Video footage added]

I don’t watch the X-Games, even if I come across them by accident. I know, it’s hard to believe. When I came into work this morning a coworker in his 40’s who doesn’t skate had already emailed me about Jake Browns’s slam to flat on the mega ramp. It’s every vert rider’s worse nightmare, multiplied by 10. That’s right, he fell almost to flat from 15 feet above the coping. How tall are those mega ramps? 20, 30ft? Unofficial word is that he fell about 45-50 ft. It’s sickening to watch, but he actually walked off under his own power 20 minutes later. Jake Brown is the luckiest skateboarder alive on this day. Cringe through the vid after the jump.

[Update: Added an alternate, extra gnarly camera angle.]
[Update: That was fast! The New York Times has article about Jake’s slam and the inherent dangers of the Mega Ramp. Requires free registration – or read it here]