This year’s Stand up For Skateparks benefit for the Tony Hawk Foundations saw skate action from Bucky Lasek, Pierre-Luc Gagnon, Andy Macdonald, Lincoln Ueda, and Kevin Staab. Old man Hawk even landed a 900 himself. The event raised a total of 775,000 dollars to support the Tony Hawk Foundation, including $43,500 in pledges for a skatepark project in the Watts district of Los Angeles. There were many celebrities present, both skateboarding and mainstream, including Erik Estrada, who is a celebrity in both worlds. If you have a soft spot in your heart for Watts,you can donate $5 to the project by texting the word RIDE to 90999. Do it before the end of Tuesday, October 20 if you want the cash to specifically benefit the Watts Towers Skatepark project.

I can’t believe the site has been up for almost 24 continuous hours. This Skatekeyboard is courtesy of Free Art & Technology, AKA F.A.T.. What better way to welcome S&A back to the land of the online living than with a thank you to Daddy Yo for the tip!

I think I was working on Grover’s miniramp when someone in the crew go the call that there was an upside down car in Burnside. I briefly contemplated going down to check it out, but even with supposed firsthand knowledge, it still seemed highly unlikely. Well, someone on the the Jalopnik blog checked it out. Jalopnik is the automotive branch of the Gawker Media blogging empire. You might have noticed a few links to their gadget site Gizmodo on select S&A posts. What happens when a car sits upside down for a period of time? Oil and other fluids start to leak out. Fun! Someone, somewhere, will blame this on BMXers. This is not the first car I’ve seen (secondhand) in Burnside. There’s video footage of some 90’s era hijinks on the punk wall. Holy cow! This site has been up for more than an hour,without being hacked and I’m actually making an update for the first time in a week. I’m testing the waters here, and I may have just jinxed it. – Thanks to Dave Arpin for the tip.

I might be changing hosts, possibly as early as the weekend. Had hoped to wait so I could spring a redesign on you at the same time, but the recent incredibly bad customer service I’ve been experiencing during the intermittent server outages of the past week… sheesh! There are actually a couple of tech support guys at IX Webhosting that have been really cool, it’s just the people around them making the decisions that have been the bane of my existence. Who knows, maybe you won’t even be able to read this because the site is down. In the mean time, expect a scarcity of updates in the immediate future. Two great things happened though. One reader asked if I was experiencing problems that a donation might help. I am blown away and flattered that someone would even consider that, and I don’t want to embarrass anyone, but thanks for the offer Ben! However, I’m not going to pass the hat, not my style. If anyone feels like helping out, there’s always t-shirts for sale. Second thing, I saw the best video clip I’ve seen since, well, the last great movie clip, say the opening segment from Fully Flaired. There’s…

Apparently this spot showed up in the bizarro Slovenian skate vid I highlighted last week. I missed it, but 26 Feels Old spotted it. Apparently the location is infected by fixies.

Well, I opened a can of worms with religion, so I might as well tackle present another hot topic, health care reform in the United States. Part two of a series from Austin Considine called Faces of American Health Care features a sobering look at former pro skater Lee Bender. Number two in a multi-part series: From the heartland, a look at a few of the real people adversely affected by our health care system today. Part two looks at Lee Bender, a former pro skater who was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Despite comparatively good coverage he faces over $36,000 in debt for treatment over the last 18 months. According to the World Health Organization, health care in the United States ranks 37th in the world, based on quality and access, among other things. Skateboarders take a risk every time they skate. Insurance or lack of, is in the back of many of the minds of skaters who are living on their own. I’m not sure how to do it, but our health care system definitely needs reform. Health insurance is a racket and costs are out of control. – Thanks to Max Macias via Facebook for the tip.

John Doe Zine has ainterview scheduled with iconic Dogtown artist Wes Humpston today, live at 1pm Pacific. Click on the link to listen to it streaming, or call in at 347 633-9578 for a chance to ask a question yourself. I don’t know how Rich and Jim do it, but they are getting some big names and cranking these things out. The John Doe Zine interviews are pretty hit or miss, but if enough people know about them in advance, they could get consistently better.

Nothing epic here just some average skating. It is the 3rd annual Fall Road Trip this year we went to the desert. Stage #1 Irrigon Pendelton Milton-Freewater. These parks were fun and wide open as you can see from the footage they were Ghost parks. Stage #2 Bend Madras And Redmond with the Sharps and the Kilwags The footage is boring but it was a great trip maybe you can join us next year. Grover out.

Three Dreamland design concepts have been unveiled for the newest Eugene, Oregon skatepark. One looks pretty straightforward, while the other two have unusual elements either in the park design or some strange sculptural elements. I’m not sure what’s going on there with the giant duck and the prehistoric swimming dinosaur. A dino-duck? College mascot homage? The intersting thing is that most of the square footage is covered by a bridge. You can find some background information, download some pdf’s of the layouts and take a survey on the designs at Downtown Eugene KVAL. If you just want to see the designs then stick around after the jump. I’ve also doctored up some overlays that do a better job of showing you what part is covered.

Yeah, well. here it is. Honestly I didn’t listen to very much of it. I was so sick of this by the time I got to editing it. Basically, Ponch spends the episode trying to convince the kids they should get off the street and skate someplace safe. Eventually they end up taking the kids to a skatepark, in this case, SkaterCross. Happens all the time, right? The classic case of skate harassment. It looks like Estrada and the other dude (who shall perpetually be known as “the other dude”) had actually spent some time on skateboards.