A day in Battle Ground with Merde Sakteboards: Jesse McDowell with some local BG skaters: Austin, Chris, and Old School Ken. Didn’t catch Austin’s buddie’s name, and I don’t know if people call Ken “Old School Ken”, but it seemed like he needed a nickname. Who doesn’t. I always wanted a cool nickname like “Skeeter”, or “Tony Bologna”, even though my name isn’t Tony. Either way, nice day in late October, so HAVE to take advantage of that, and BG is just that fun. Catch it after the jump.

This week’s Shot of the Week is an Andrew Adams kickflip taken at Burnside by Elias Parise. It’s also the image used in the flyer for his show currently on display at FOCO Gallery in Portland. – Thanks to Ted Schwallie for the tip. He’s got photos of the opening on Facebook.

It’s funny that in this day and age of conformity to the popsicle stick there are more vanity shaped boards available than there ever were in the money bumps era. I don’t think there ever were any “goof” shapes in the 80’s with the possible exception of those Mutant shapes that were skewed, and I think those were supposed to somehow be for the sake of performance. I think Epic Skates also made weird skewed shapes too. Anyone? NHS is the uncontested King of the gimmick boards. They’re back again via Creature with a Neil Heddings wrench cruiser, which despite the odd shape is apparently fully functional. Video after the jump. Neil Heddings: Great skater. Great actor? Not so much. Product placement video after the jump. – Thanks to Seth Grossman for the tip.

Sure, his boards have been reissued in life size and on fingerboards, and they are always very active on eBay, but you don’t hear about Rob Roskopp the person anymore. I had heard that he was heading up the mountain bike division of Santa Cruz, but had never actually read anything confirming it. Leave it to a mountain bike site inexplicably named Pinkbike.com to tie it all together. Find out which old pros are hitting him up for mountain bikes, what exactly is the connection between the companies, and exactly how much crack Rob was on when he chose his graphics – that’s an actual question from the interview. Biggest shock? Roskopp used to look like the epitome what the rest of the world thought California surfers looked like. He’s still fit, but those golden locks have moved on. What about the body jars? Check it out. Interesting aside, I’m fairly confident one of the images used in the post is from an old eBay Watch, and yes I realize we lifted it from eBay…

No pads? Rad Dad: Dispatches from the frontiers of fatherhood is a book by Tom Moniz, published by Microcosm Publishing. It’s excerpts of his zine of the same name and another called Daddy Dialectic “two kindred publications that have explored parenting as political territory.” Yowza. Sounds a lot heavier than the other alternadad literature like Punk Rock Dad, which is a good read by Pennywise front man Jim Lindberg. There’s a lot of that going around lately. It seems adults these days are staying young until they die. It’s come up on NPR I believe, 80’s punks and 90’s Gen X-ers are having kids, raising them and refusing to be stuffy about it. Jim’s book was published in 2007. I read it around the same time I had my first kid, and enjoyed it. Right about now The Other F-Word is slowly opening around the US. It’s a documentary based on the same subject matter as the book. Skateboard connection too. According to NPR, Tony Hawk is one of the subjects. – Thanks to the original Punk Rock dad MC for the tip.

I think it’s German for “rad street plaza.” Probably not. I swear I had this on S&A already but cant’s find it via search, and it’s not tagged so my apologies if this is a repeat. Free t-shirt to whoever finds it elsewhere on this site. There you go, a contest. Innsbruck, Austria is the location, the former site of some Nazi era government buildings and French occupiers (after the war) who erected some sort of monument to Austrian freedom. If that sounds awkward, it’s more than likely because I gleaned it from a less than smooth machine translation of a German language article in Die Presse. One thing that didn’t need much translation: And the Liberation Monument? It did not take much longer than the lattice doors open and slide the waves gently on his concrete steps to make it to the foreign body as an integral part of public space. At night it is, as the parade ground in front of the cottage, dimly lit. As part of the space to city residents, especially the younger ones, who have discovered a skater’s paradise. Are conflicts among users, it hardly because all feel that something was given to them…

Cold War Skateboards welcomes Gabe Stolz to their team, and thanks Adam Perez for the video. Check it out after the jump.

This week’s Shot of the Week is from Carl Warren, on his home truf in Bingen, Washington. Say hello to Rayburn Edwards. It’s Fall, at least in our hemisphere. The only thing missing is a pumpkin. Thanks Carl!

Lifeblood Skateboards premier for the video We Must Bleed is this Saturday, November 5th at Commonwealth in Portland, at 8:PM (Demo / free skate for an hour before. No word on couples skating.) In the mean time check out three video episodes of the recent Lifeblood tour of the Midwest after the jump.

The Wunseidelramp (not to be confused with rampenbed) is soon to be 55ft (looks bigger than that) of miniramp fun in Kirchenlamitz, in north of Bavaria, Germany. The opening party is tentatively set at November 5th, 2011. Photos and semi-unrelated Bavarian miniramp video after the jump. – Thanks Martin for the photos.