So many titles to chose from. There’s For Life, or For Now, and Fall On You Own Sword, or Victimized Again? What am I talking about? it only took six months for Mike V. to bail on By the Sword, the skateboard company he started after ditching Element. By the Sword heavily used the slogan “DIY or Die” in marketing and products. So what beats doing it yourself? Vallely has signed with Powell Peralta again, a company he complained bitterly about on several occasions. It seems every skateboard entity is intent on making Mike a “pawn” and exploiting his hard work and reputation, but I guess time and money heals all wounds. One can’t help but feel bad for all the shops and distributors that fully got behind Mike V. It’s almost like he used them like… pawns in his game. I realize this is a scene from Sid & Nancy. Somehow a reenactment of Sid Vicious singing “My Way” is more appropriate than the actual footage embedded on the official By the Sword web site, with no offense meant towards Gary Oldman.

Welcome Skateboards has a long time relationship with the Sorcery 118 crew. In fact they even released a Sorcery deck. If you haven’t watched any of the Sorcery videos, you should. Most of their vids are street and parks, but here’s some rare vert ramp action in honor of Grover’s return from Michigan. Sorcery crew is a prolific, you could spend hours there.

…will resume on Tuesday. I’m not sure what’s up with MC’s comic malfunction, but I’ve got nothing for Monday. More accurately, pulling it together for the Above Coping benefit show almost killed me, and I spent Sunday printing inane shirts for local college football fans. Instead of writing posts for S&A, I’m going to catch up on episodes of The Walking Dead.

Here’s 1986 video for Hold It Now, Hit It that I’ve actually never seen before. Ad Rock is rocking what looks like an Uncle Wiggly board, unless Neil can correct me before this goes live. Please note, we’ve covered the existence of a later era Beastie Boys skateboard, although I could use a better picture. For the record, if that’s not an Uncle Wiggly, my second choice is Schmitt Stix. I am too lazy to go don in my basement and look through my copy of Disposable. UPDATE: I remembered the graphic, but not the name. Ah, senility. It looks like a Duane Peters. – Thanks to Eric Shea for the tip.

Bones Brigade reunion? Apparently there was some sort of meeting recently. This is an Atiba photo of the gang as seen on Steve Caballero’s facebook page. Man, these guys sure left a mark on skateboarding. Mullen looks like he escaped.

MC’s comic about the Gray Slide prompted me to dig through some old Skate and Annoy correspondence that I have. Yes. I’ve kept at least 90% of it. Way back in August of 1988 he sent us a letter and some money for another issue. He specifically mentioned a karmic threat if we didn’t follow through. Funny thing is (sad, actually) I don’t think we ever followed through. So much so that when we did reconnect some time early in the new millennium I made a point of sending him something. Jim is good guy. Always nice to see or hear from him. So for those of you who care, here’s 22 year old Skate and Annoy zine mail.

Benji Galloway has been busy in his backyard. He’s built something Grover has been threatening to do for ages, a skate track in his backyard. Photos and video after the jump, courtesy of Bacon Skateboards.

I’m sad to have to report that Toxic Skate in Vancouver has closed it’s doors. I feel bad in part because I didn’t make it out there as often as I would have liked. That bowl was fun though, the big facing wall was a unique feature. Parts of it are destined to live on though. I hear the coping and masonite are already spoken for. Support your local shops while you still can! Thanks for giving it good run Mike.

Tony Hawk made an appearance on an early episode of Yo Gabba Gabba, and he just made an appearance on the wall at the Yo Gabba Gabba facebook page.