Rolling out some love for new SnA sponsors. If you are paying attention, Weirdo Skateboards, a Norcal based independent skateboard company will be joining the ranks of our banner advertisers soon. Here’s a shot of the company owner Tom Augusta at the San Jose skatepark. I believe BK is the photog? (UPDATE: Yes, he is.) Bonus shot that was just “too weird” for me, after the jump.

Joesf Heffner sent in a screen grab from the 1991 Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor film Another You. I watched the trailer and I can’t figure out how the road warrior on skateboard fits in. Looks like they chopped off the front of the board and attached a cow catcher, possibly even painted some 215’s blue. That board’s been actually used for more than just a prop.

I met a guy from Minnesota who looked about the right age, so I asked him he skated P.I.S.S. back in the day, and he had. P.I.S.S. for those that don’t know, was an indoor ramp in a building. To skate it you had to pay rent, hence, Private Indoor Skate Spot. A few of us got somewhat serious about setting up a situation like that in Portland. We got as far as checking out spaces, but it all came to naught. Slap Magazine has a feature that, uh, features someone who noses around here on occasion, it’s called DIY East Coast Indoor Parks. Doc Murdock is interviewed as one of the principals in four indoor private spots on the east coast. Pics and video from each spot. Check it out.

It’s open, that’s for sure, but what remains uncertain (unless you’ve been there) is what the layout is. Every design render I’ve seen doesn’t jive with the photos I’ve seen. Fuel TV has photos of the opening, but not really much of an overview of the spot. Somebody help us out here. UPDATE: I guess that picture on the bottom is pretty much it. So the headline should read “Skate Spot Opens.”

Yeah! Bark like a dog! I’m going to post way to many pictures of this roof because it’s such a novel concept out here. Sure, we have the world’s greatest skateparks, but only a few of them are lighted, and almost none of them are covered! Hood River Oregon has really stepped up to the plate. Thanks again to Carl Warren, here are some photos of the roof going up over a portion of the new additions to the Hood River skate complex.

I don’t know what the title of The Chrome Ball Incident refers to. Calls to mind pinball for me. This site picks up exactly where I stopped paying attention to the major skate mags. Even as someone who doesn’t really feel a connection with the popular culture of skateboarding during that time period, I still find these old archives interesting, sometimes even fascinating. It’s all about the hindsight and knowing how it all shook down in the end. Through all the cat fights and temper tantrums in the industry, there was still some great skating going down. One post I enjoyed reading was an interview with Matt Hensley as he was fading out from the public eye of skateboarding. HE was working at the Chicago Sessions shop, who was actually a client of the silkscreen company I was a partner in. He came in with the Sessions dude (Scott?) and we worked up the art for a Sessions T-shirt that looked like a “tribute” to the first Specials album. I remember I vaguely knew who he was, but totally didn’t recognize him. I only mention it (becauee I want you to love me) because in the interview Matt briefly talks about kids coming into Sessions and giving him attitude, sometimes poorly feigning not to know who he was to get a reaction. Matt, if you are reading this, I really didn’t know who you were. Check out The Chrome Ball Incident for a full dose of 90’s era skateboarding. The cool thing is, the pages are uploaded a higher resolution, so you can actually read the whole thing. Thrasher should take a cue from this.

Before he started appearing in commercials, hosting lame TV shows and playing even lamer “stand up comedy” gigs, Henry Rollins was cool. He appeared on a skateboard in Thrasher for two months back to back in 1982.

The Escapist Magazine presents this No Punctuation productions review of EA’s Skate 2, and it’s pretty funny, from just about any point of view. Check it out after the jump. Make sure you close the annoying advert or it will prove to be very distracting.

– Thanks to Colin for the tip.

The economy sucks, and BMX riders and skateboarders at Burnside will be closer neighbors as a result. The Burnside Bridgehead redevelopment project is having funding issues. Instead of funding some of the planned landscape architecture, a parcel of land overlooking the new addition to the skate terrain is going to be turned into a temporary BMX dirt “pump track” filled with “rolling jumps, step-ups, and berms” according to BikePortland. You’d think the city would know that once you let anyone squat, it’s going to be hard as hell to get rid of them! That reminds me, there’s a bizarre new mural at the Department that shows a skatepark under the Fremont bridge and a buttload of bicycles going over the bridge. There’s only one or two skateboards in the whole thing. It’s strange indeed. Who commissions those things anyway? There must not be much of a screening process.

– Thanks to Fitz for the tip.

California used to be synonymous with skateboarding. If you can believe it, there once was a time in the not to distant past when California had to export skateboarding to the rest of the country, let alone the world. In some parts of the midwest, even as recent as the 80’s you might still hear the taunt “Go back to California, dude!” if you rode a skateboard. It was supposed to be a put down, much like jocks would yell “Devo!” as an insult to anyone who dressed like they didn’t listen to Journey or Zepplin. Ahh… fun times. This California key chain skateboard souvenir dates back to the 80’s according to the eBay auction. They also have another one in pink with an inscription that says “Super Boy,” but I’m willing to be that was a typo that was supposed to read “Surfer Boy.” It’s funny now, but California might not be the first thing that non-skating people think of when playing the word association game with “skateboard.”