Athleta catalog cover for summer 2010. There might be other images hiding on the Athleta web site, seeing as how they are for more or less seriously atletic women, it’s not Delias, you know. Although Delias does own CCS. Those are not appropriate skate shoes young lady.

– Thanks to John Egertson for the tip.

I haven’t seen Mark do this before. It was pleasing to see. I’m sure it was more pleasing to be the one landing this. Enlarge-o-rama.

I found out about this from a non skater, you know, a civilian. Turns out the new indoor park is next door to one of those warehouses full of inflatable bounce houses for kids. My informant was there for a kid’s birthday party. I went to go check it out on a Saturday but nobody was there. The place looks like it’s still under construction. From what I can see, it’s standard indoor street course type fare. Basically a one hit back and forth affair. From my vantage point ( standing on the roof of the SUV backed up against the roll up door) it also looks like really close quarters. There’s also what appears to be long miniramp with one end bowled in. Before actually seeing this place I thought it might ease the pain of The Department shutting down, but I’m fairly certain it’s not going to fill that gap. Ripzu is admittedly run by parents of skateboarding children looking for a sterile environment for kids to skate. Not that the Department is especially gritty. The rates seem high but this place might actually survive based on the fact that a lot of parents are already going next door with little kids on a regular basis. The Ripzu site (not sure what the name means?) has some construction shots that are a lot more clear but not as recent my spy-cam shot.

Zarosh Eggleston is busy building his own little skatopia called Cachagua Land on hill top in California. Helping to fund it along the way, hand screened Platipuss skateboards from the multitalented artist himself. I saw this DIY concrete extravaganza in a video before. I can’t recall what it was in though, maybe Strange Notes? Spend some time trolling around Platipuss (sic), there’s a lot of interesting goings on going on over there. Zarosh accepts donations for concrete.A big enough donation will net you a limited edition t-shirt or deck. Of course you can buy one one of the others outright too. Check out his screen rig up top. I’d love to pick his brain on that. That, and why he strayed from the traditional spelling of Platypus.

– Thanks to Eric Shea for the tip.

The grand opening for the Swell Art Show in New York City is today (July 1) in the Chelsea neighborhood. The exhibit takes place in four different locations, however the relevant gallery is the NYEHaus, a hard to find house turned gallery located at 358 W 20th Street (between 8th and 9th avenue). Three excellent surf/skate artists are on display there, Steve Olson, Craig Stecyk, and Michael Halsband. After the jump are some pictures from the preview last night. The show is from July 1st till August 6th.

From the Flickr photostream of Andy J Miller’s. look for it on a t-shirt somewhere.

Fred’s family has a permission pool and has always gone out of their way to accommodate the skaters that session there. Unfortunately, their house was destroyed by fire recently. The skateboarding community is trying to give a little back this Saturday with a benefit bash at the bowl. Any money raised goes directly to Fred’s family. The location is 7385 Road 6, Firebaugh, California. Check out the flyer.

A few weekends ago I got a bee in my bonnet that resulted in wasting a lot of my time trying to duplicate the artwork on this Brand-X Weirdo board. I’m pretty sure Bernie Tostenson is my favorite skateboard artist. I loved those mid 80’s Weirdo boards, as well as the late 70’s and early 80’s Sims boards he did. I decided to try and replicate the Weirdo.

Tim Laidlaw made this skateboard sundial. Too bad he lives in the Pacific Northwest, Maybe a water-clock?

Well I’m really excited about the selection this month. April was tough, but I really enjoyed mining for decks in May. There were tons of interesting decks, some that went for big $, and some that didn’t, but were interesting nonetheless. And lots of cool colorways too! This was actually one of my favorite columns to write, and a lot of it was written while I was waiting to be called up while at jury duty! At least I put the 3-hour wait to good use!