I was excited to get an invitation to join Wally Inouye, Chris Strople, and Bryce Kanights on a four day trip to the Treasure State. Wally and Strople were childhood heroes of mine and I have been meaning to get up to check out the Montana skateparks for the last several years. Read the story at Antigravity Press

Let me start off by thanking all those who sent in links to auctions that finished in August. Like I said last month, I missed 2 weeks of auctions because I was out of the country, and consequently I didn’t have very many decks to highlight. Well you all came though and sent in tons of links, so thanks for that. Thanks to you, this month features about the same amount of decks as usual! And to think, I was looking forward to doing a shorter one this month! Now, unfortunately I lost all of the links to the featured auctions this month. I normally keep the auction link in the Spotlight Comments field of the file, but I ran some maintenance utilities on my MacBook Pro a few days ago, and it appears to have cleaned out all of the metadata in the files. So I have no original auction info to check back on for things like trucks and wheels on completes etc. If some details seem scarce this month, that’s why. Check out eBay Watch: August 2009 EDITOR’S NOTE: We seem to get a constant trickle of emails from people asking Neil to appraise a skateboards that…

Form the pages of the Oriental trading Company, courtesy of Larry Pescatore’s scanner. More on the way.

Team Pain recently broke ground on a new concrete skatepark in Steamboat Springs. They are moving fast, and they have to because they could see snow in October, even at lower elevations. I lived in Steamboat for a couple years in early 90’s. One of my fondest memories was arriving there on Halloween, just in time for a party out in the country somewhere, probably Stagecoach or something. At the party there was a barn with a miniramp. One of the guys skating had shaved his entire body (eyebrows too) and was wearing full bondage gear with a codpiece. Suicide Mike was his name, but that’s a different story. When I lived there the city had a crappy little skatepark consisting of a couple of small mediocre ramps and some crappy street obstacles on a slab of concrete. It was smaller and crappier even than their current setup at Howlesen Hill. Howelsen had a ski jump that some Olympic hopefuls used to practice on. I used to see that thing and ponder hitting it on a snowboard. Of course I had no idea people would skateboard these things one day. Before I get back on track here, Team Pain’s own…

This is a shot of a Salem local named Billy who was visiting the Redmond, Oregon skatepark at the same time we were there over the weekend. Enlarge-o-rama.

This here is Bacon Skateboards rider Eisei Sugimoto from his recent visit from Japan. Enlarge-o-Rama. Oh yeah, there’s some sort of weird thing called the Portland Baconfest on October 3rd. It has to do with a radio show or something called the Meat Show. In any case, there will be some sort of crappy miniramp with the Bacon team doing a demo. I think it’s a 21+ event involving alcohol. I’m sure it will all become clearer as the event draws closer. check out another visiting Japanese teenager after the jump.

I can’t remember which one I saw first, the Trendependent t-shirt (I don’t skate, I’m just a kook.) or the Conscience Sakteboards parody of the World Industries Rocco/ Winnie the Pooh board. Wish I could find a picture of that now. It may not seem like much now, but at the time it was pretty topical. Think back to the beginnings of the industry shift to Chinese manufacturing facilities. I almost bought one of those boards. I came close to pulling the trigger on one of those Trendependent shirts too, but never followed through when they actually became available. I think it was one of those things on Concrete Disciples where he took vague pre-orders. “Hey, who wants one of these when I print them up?” And when they were available I was broke. Both of these parodies were the brainchild of Jesse Geboy. I guess Jesse eventually ran afoul of Independent’s lawyers. Check out a profile of Jesse done by Dave Carnie over at King Shit. Hey Jesse, how’s it going? I thnk it’s been about five years since we conversed. Midwest Uber Alles! – Thanks to Luke Leonard for the tip.

Hewn from a solid chunk of wood, as seen at Axhead Wood Carving, where you can also find hefty boards carved out of old table leafs, weighing in at 11lbs. Oh right, and also spoons. Ryan carves spoons too, usually out of wood that has fallen off of trees on his property.

My friend is going to burst a gasket if I don’t post about this Caustic Defiance/Negative Element split CD release. It seems a Japanese label called Akashic Records has decided to release his 80’s hardcore band’s demo tapes. It happens to everyone doesn’t it? House of Neil and I are still waiting for a very polite call… Caustic Defiance rings a bell, you say? That’s because their promo shot was featured as a Shot of the Week here back in 07. Why Dr. Brad is “up in my grill” about mentioning it here is a bit of a mystery. It’s not like he needs the buzz to get laid or anything. I mean he’s a grown man with a wife and responsible job. Maybe it’s because 80’s skate legends have recently been spotted chatting up his old lady. The CD of C.D. is getting good reviews on PunkNews.org, PunkVinyl.com. You can pick it up at Interpunk.com or preview some tracks on MySpace. Can a Caustic Defiance model on Backstage Skateboards be far behind?

Man, that kid looks stoked. This is called the GX Skate. I stared at these things in the store for about ten minutes trying to figure out how they worked and what they would do. Then I saw the video and all made sense, until it didn’t make sense after all. Turns out these things are an offshoot of automobile-based toy. Someone thought to themselves, “Hey, skateboards are hot with the kids, lets turn those car toys into skateboards.” The movement is fun to watch, but it doesn’t really corollate physically to a skateboard. – Thanks to Hung Chang for the tip.