Plastic army man kickflip, as seen on Threadless.

A phlebotomist is someone who draws blood. Grover is a phlebotomist, but he’s not in the Lifeblood video. He might be thanked in the credits though. Watch the Lifeblood video We Must Bleed after the jump. It’s 33 minutes, so grab your snacks and hold your calls.

[Source: Skatedaily.]

A while back I was periodically updating the archive of periodicals, aka the 80’s Skate Zine Gallery. I’ve been lagging and sorely sagging. meanwhile, there’s Local Chaos out of Ann Arbor, Michigan whose print issues span 1984 to the present day, with a short period of abstinence. LC has more zines scanned in their archives (from all over) than I probably have in my whole collection. Time to get back on the horse.

It’s a little early to be constantly bitching about the crappy weather this time of year, but here’s a nice warm fuzzy video montage to remind you drier/warmer days, shot in and around Portland. It’s not a Chicago winter, but it still gets us down.

This week’s Shot of the Week is David Tucker in Orem, Utah as shot by Gage Thompson. That’s some serious tweakage!

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.