Thor was good enough to brave the wrath of John Dalton to give us a photo essay progress report on Battle Ground Washington’s skate park. Looks like it’s getting close. This looks like it will be a great park for riders of different disciplines to mix. Street brethren, bowl bros, we can all get along. Check it out.

And it was. Celebrating a Matt’s birthday out in the St Johns neighborhood of Portland with food, beer (with permit!) and friends. Indian summer was in full effect and people are still amazed by the park. Matt Moffet got his brand new skateboard stolen but another kid (supposedly) coughed it up later in the day. I took some pictures, so check it out. I went back today without the camera and it was more of the same, with the exception that some dork spray painted “Pink taco” in the pipe and another kid had a bad fall from a 10:00 spill, frontside in the pipe. Paramedics were on the scene but I didn’t bother to get the low down because I didn’t want to spoil another perfect day. Update: I forgot to tweak the levels before I uploaded them. PC users should b able to see something besides a dark blob now.

As I was putting these together I got a report from field agent Wes Cording that he had a fun session there today but it got rained out. Apparently there are several parked cars full of skaters waiting for the rain to stop again. Until then, here are some more pics of the opening day of Pier Park. Does anyone know what happened to the Nike SB team? There are links to more pictures from other sources as well. None of my shots are very good, but that’s OK. The Park isn’t going anywhere, and you’ll soon be sick of seeing it here on this site. Ready? On to Pier Park Skatepark Opening Day.

That’s right. We jump from Newcastle England straight to locals only contests in Albany Oregon. We don’t care. We’re crazy! Top: Albany local Rex Pearson. Photo and story by Danimal. Check it out.

Now this is what we need. More contribtors like Matt Sefton. Originally intended as one of our scene reports It was just too long and too well done. So I made it a feature. Long time readers already know we have a U.K. connection in ex-pat House of Neil, so we’re glad to continue the tradition. Read the Newcastle feature.

August 2006 eBay Watch is up. Recognize those eyebrows? Anyone wanna buy some shoes for $1844? Anyone? Check it out.

OK. Finally it looks like things might be picking up over there. I’ve posted some more progress pictures. Looks like the permit problems have been resolved and the only thing holding them back is a work crew that is scattered to four corners of the Northwest. Opening date is supposed to be Oct 14. Check out the progress.

Finally getting these pics posted. Aside from my usuall offereings there are a couple of extra pics contributed by MC and David Vierra. Didn’t know if this thing was going to be torn down before we could get it drained. Not the greatest pool, but it sure was fun stalking and staking it out. Ridnig it was fun too, of course. Top: Zaac. Left: Mark Conahan Right: Marek Litinsky Check out the feature.

I cleaned up the formatting and some errors on a bunch of the old posts, took care of some Explorer CSS bugs, and even found a missing post from May 2003. How embarrassing.

Hey kids! You remember the Oregon Trifecta right? Well here’s the final installment of coverage if anyone still cares. Three days of this can kill a man, but we do it all for the kids, right? That’s Glen Charnoski up above.Coverage continues here.