It’s Pride month. Enjoy Yann Horowitz answering the question “Do I really want to be the ‘gay skateboarder’?” in this video from Vans. Watch it for the story, or watch it for the skateboarding. One day, it will just be the skateboarding.

– Thanks to Pete Lewis for the tip.

The Vintage Skateboard Magazine Advert Gallery has reached 500 ads! Some of the highlights of recent additions include groovy 70’s shag carpeting thanks to Makaha skate shoes, Famous Sci-fi film “actor” Robbie the Robot appearing in Track Force ads, Motorized skateboards, Skateboarding in MVP Sports Gum, ads for “Start Your Own Skatepark” manuals that would cost almost $900 in today’s money, gratuitous sex appeal, Mattel Toys trying to get into the real skateboard market, new skateparks, goofy accessories, and more. Again, all filterable by year, product type, brand or company, magazine issue, etc….

Shout out to Eastside Roll-In, a skate shop that just opened in Troutdale, Oregon, and the same place I picked up these Wipers tribute wheels from Portland-based Jivaro. If you’re hankering for more Wipers, check out Jackpot Records (label and store) that re-released Is this Real on vinyl for the first time since it’s original 1980 issue, as well as their live album from 1984.

I’m 100% certain someone has already done this before so I’m not claiming it. This was born from the frustrations of moderating a FB group. I should point out I’m not talking about the Skate and Annoy group, which is awesome and you should join if you are reading this.

The Vintage Skate Sticker Gallery has just reached 250, and we’re about at the end of Kilwag’s collection. If you’re interested in contributing, we’re accepting high resolution bulk scans if they are 600dpi.) If you have a sizable collection contact us to make other arrangements. Send a pic before you start scanning and we can let you know what we already have waiting (about 200) to be processed.

We’ve added 73 ads to complete the April 1976 issue of Skateboarder Magazine, bringing the total in the archive to 447! There are other galleries out there, some of them are really good, but this one is ours, and it’s the only one that filterable by magazine, issue, year, decade, brand/company, product type, country, and even photographer and featured riders when present. Check out the Vintage Skateboard Magazine Ad Gallery.

Shred Skateboards makes skateboards from castor materials leftover from the surfboard manufacturing process, which is about 6 lbs per surfboard according to Shred. They are cruisers and oversized cruisers in design, and they look really nice, but the starting price ($220 fro the smaller cruisers) is a hard sell. Part of that high cost is certainly the labor intensive nature, and the rest might be due to the probably expensive nature of the alternative high-tech trucks by Alpine. At this point you can only buy complete setups.

Well, by pure luck I was able to find a 15 year old scanner so I could scan these 30 year old stickers. What am I talking about? LED backlit scanners cannot capture neon inks, and big surprise, there were a lot of neon stickers in the 80’s. Shout out to Diesel Fuel Prints for letting me borrow this compact fluorescent backlit artifact. Diesel Fuel is where Skate and Annoy get’s all their stickers printed BTW. The sticker gallery is currently at 151 stickers with about another 100 in my collection alone left to process and add, and another 200 from contributors! Until then, check out these 151 vintage skate stickers. And yes, the post title is a reference.

I heard he worked there but I did not realize that Jeff Kendall is the president and Chief Marketing Officer of NHS. I guess we can blame him for Santa Cruz’ inability to say no to any co-branding opportunity or strange accessory items. Madrid might be the only skate company out there with a lower bar. Scratch that, Vision is the worst. But I digress…. Jeff Kendall is one of the sources quoted in this article on NPR. Skateboard sales have risen dramatically during the pandemic, much like bicycles did. Kendall says he’s never seen more females involved in skateboarding in his life, and mentions something about that one International competition contributing to the perfect storm… what was that? Oh yeah, the Olympics. The most interesting thing in the article is the link to Proper Gnar, a black, female owned brand out of Ohio that is enjoying great success. The art direction is sort of a less sexualized hiphop influenced Hook Ups style but with women/girls of color and some 80’s retro thrown in.

Photo Left: Ruby Medina by Shayn Almeida on NPR. Right: Proper Gnar

I bought another issue of Skateboarding Industry News and included in the auction was an issue of something called Skate & Surf which I had never seen before, and didn’t really pay any attention to it. Glancing at it I thought it was an early 80’s mini mag or pamphlet or some sort of insert or giveaway. Turns out it was the 2nd issue of a new (at the time) trade publication dated March/April of 1978. Contrary to Skateboarding Industry News, the art direction of Skate & Surf made it look closer to something like Action Now than a stodgy industry magazine. Flipping through it you might think it was aimed at skateboarders and not skate shop owners. The huge bonus to me was finally finding a full page ad fro Skate-ball, some 14 years after I found the first one online, and here it is, freshly scanned and transcribed., starting at $25,000 in $1978, and a perfect business opportunity for the absentee owner.