Insert Van Halen reference here.

Skater: Mirlo
Trick: Rock to fakie on a street barrier
Where: Panama, Central America.
Photo: Jerzick Oliveros

Thanks to Milorad Vardic for sending it in. You can see the full frame shot plus a bonus street sequence after the jump.

I found this Mexican comic book, Los Super Juniors over at Weirdo Toys. And speaking of Mexican skateboarding, check out this video from Steven Bailey found at the Mercava Skateboards. It’s got spots from different states in Mexico, including the one where tipster John Aguilar learned to skate tranny when he was a Super Junior. It’s a super rough looking the banked ditch/half pipe thing in Mexico city behind the Corona beer brewery. Look for it at about 2:38 into the vid.

2023 Update: Follow me down a rabbit hole while I try to track down Mexican comic books.

From the sketchy translation I got, this was at some mega ramp event that ended a week long celebration the history of skateboarding in Brazil, or not. For our purposes, it’s Bob Burnquist and Jake Brown (back turned) dancing with some socially and culturally acceptable scantily clad Carnaval-type gals on the mega ramp in Brazil, thanks to the web site
Skatecultura.

Somehow or other we reported on a prefab concrete and metal skatepark being built at Guantanamo Bay by Spohn Ranch, and nobody made any torture jokes. For some reason, Mimi Knoop (with Zach Miller, Adam Taylor and Cara-Beth Burnside) recently travelled there to session the old park remnants as well as some of the new stuff. Photog Athena Lonsdale shot a tour diary, and Spohn Ranch has a set of the concrete shots from Guantanamo Bay on Flickr. – Thanks to Keith Hamm for the tip.

[Source: Fuel TV]

SKATECULTURA is from Brazil, and it documents vintage skateboarding through multiple decades, from a Brazilian perspective. There’s also a little of the current scene sprinkled in there, with an emphasis on Brasil’s most famous skateboarding export, Bob Burnquist. It looks like there was a slew Brazilian skate magazines at one time, some of them looked pretty sophisticated. Clockwise from the top left: A special Tony Hawk poster edition of Overall. Revista Yeah #1, Overall#15, Yeah Skarte #1, and Overall #13. There other magazines like Tribo with adverts for skate shoes you’ve never heard of like Qix, and skateboard companies like Torlay.

We’ve covered marginally skateable architecture, so now we travel to Punta del Este, Uruguay for this apartment complex surrounded by waves of bricked banks.

This corner is a JAWBREAKER, since the first time I passed by this corner during the 80’s I felt in love with the arquitecture. Good that It was free to ride this “wave”… The “skate abuse” of the place during early 90’s made skateboarding prohibited. Nowadays there’s a security guard 24/7 and they don’t even like people who go there to take pictures. If u come with a skateboard you’ll have a not so nice welcome.

Check out the pictures and the video on Yerbah. – Thanks to Luciano for the tip.

This week’s Shot of the Week comes from Brazil via reader Nathaa Nobile. It’s a Rodrigo Vianna photo of “Sujo” at a spot in Praça Roosevelt (or Roosevelt Garden) in São Paulo, Brazil. You can check out the Flickr streams from Wheels on fire and Daigo Oliva for more action from this crew. I chose this one because I really like the angles, composition and the way the perspective on the building makes it a bit surreal, almost like a photo collage. Check out the full frame Shot of the Week.

If they are going to build skateparks in Iran, have outreaches in Afghanistan, what’s next, Guantanamo Bay? YES! I don’t know if the presidential shaka is responsible or not, but Sphon Ranch is going to build a bowl and a wedge bank (like the one seen above) in Guantanamo Bay. The “Morale Office” is bringing in some pro skaters for a demo, and they want them to have concrete to skate on. Spohn has been given exactly one week to get the whole thing finished, so there’s really no other way to do it. Pre-fab concrete can’t be beat in a situation like this. No word on who the pro team is, but let’s hope they bring some extra boards for the Subvert Cuba project. While we’re talking about Spohn Ranch, let’s revisit the LA Street Plaza and check out a new Brownsville, Tx skatepark that just opened. I have to warn you, there’s a video after the jump that may start playing automatically. I’m warning you because it’s NSFA, or “Not safe for agnostics,” as in it’s from an organization called SkateBible and as such features some bad Christian folk music and a little gratuitous use of the G-word. Also, after reloading the page a couple times, an advert started playing as well, without allowing me to turn down the volume. Come on Transworld, get your Netiquette act together.

In Brazil, Danny Way broke his back on the Megaramp. He will recover, of course, because all Megaramp competitors are actually time traveling cyborgs built by Skynet. Watch the video after the jump. It’s not in English, but really, it’s more entertaining this way. Speaking of entertainment. Rob Thomson now holds the world record for Longest Journey by Skateboard, clocking in at 12,159km, or about 7,500 miles. It’s confusing though, because the “journey” took place in different non-adjacent locales and had periods of weeks in between legs. Sounds more like a record for the biggest lapse of judgement by Guinness officials. Maybe they cut him some slack due to the unsual circumstances reported by One India:

The strangest food he tried was horse-penis salami in Kyrgyzstan, which he said tasted “like the smell of a sweaty, old, dirty horse.

Uh yeah. Go figure. You can read all about it in his forthcoming book about the experience.

As far as architectural criticism goes, I don’t know much about architecture, but I know what I like. Cool Hunting blows out a spot under construction in Santiago, Chile. Peter Eisenman: City of Culture.