Take a piece of plywood, a 2×4 and the trucks from some dimestore skateboards and you’ve got a trolley for ditch surfing. It’s not much different from the plans I’ve seen in various places online for making a camera dolly. Listen, I’m flying home all day today, and I needed something quick. Drainage ditch luge instructions online at Instructables.

The best thing about this 1985 commercial for Mountain Dew is the overlay that says “NOT FOR AIR.” A coincidence, of course, but still funny. That means this was probably digitized from an ad agency reference tape. I don’t recall ever seeing this on TV, but perhaps it did. I see Tony Hawk in there, as well as a Madrid freestyler.. Bob Schmelzer? Who is doingthe sliding and wearing the cowboy hat? I leave it to you to fill in the blanks. I know the first thing I think of when I hear the word “country” is a bunch of good old boys street skating down the gravel roads. Yee haw!

[Source: Heavyset]

Since there’s no date on this guerilla art installation by Madrid artist SpY, we can’t say whether his ramp reinterpretation in his Urban Furniture collection was something he conceived before or after he saw Conahan’s very similar vision. Still, the soccer field painted on a miniramp is pretty clever. I just saw a graphic on the the web that showed a soccer player kicking a ball and an American football player running with a football side by side. The caption under the soccer player said “foot ball.” The caption under the Dallas Cowboy said “hand egg.” Check out SpY.

Yesterday’s park overview was part one. Part two features the local fauna (no flora) as they inhabit the J.M. Berlin skatepark in Englewood, Florida. Check out the action after the jump.

January 2009. The economy might be in the toilet, but you wouldn’t know it on eBay. There were some BIG auctions that went off this month, and a lot of cash thrown around. Maybe it was early tax refunds; maybe it was just a case of right place, right time, but whatever the case, it was an exciting month.

Let me just say something though, something that is really starting to bug me. Sellers, please do a modicum of research before you set your prices. I’m really getting tired of seeing the same decks up, month in month out with the same ridiculous prices. Hello, McFly, your Lance Mountain “family” deck is not going to sell for $200, it doesn’t matter how many times you keep putting it up there. If you did 5 minutes of research you’d see that about 5 family decks went off in the last 2 weeks, all selling in the $50 range. So why you think people are going to pony up 4 times what it’s worth is a freaking mystery. Also, if I see that red Chris Miller “dog” at $500 again I’ll scream. It’s been up for like 3 months. Nobody is going to pay that! To keep putting it up month after month at the same price is plain silly. And another thing while I’m ranting. Can the guy that’s cutting up old magazines and auctioning them off, 1 page at a time kindly stop? Nobody is interested in your piece of crap $9 auctions. We could buy the magazines for that. Just stop. And enough with the deck shaped stickers too. Just stop that shit already.

Here is part one of Trifecta (08), Rando got to see the rough version and could barley sit through it because of the music. At that moment I knew I had done something Good. “In your Face” So If I missed you name let me Know so I can add it in. The best Trifecta ever. I am watching kids grow up and become great skaters. Someday I will walk into a skate shop with my son and say we watched that guy at the Trifcta Now he is bigger than Ryan Schekler but not as lame. – Pose Grover out?

I checked out the Team Pain park in Engelwood Florida over the weekend. It’s a lot smaller than it seemed from the construction shots we posted. I’m staying in Sarasota, which has a much larger park, but I actually prefer Englewood. Sarasota is separated into two main areas, bowl and street. The whole of the Englewood park probably fits inside the bowl footprint of Sarasota. Part one of the coverage is just some overviews of the park. Part two (coming tomorrow) will be pictures of the locals.

A Milton Florida park monitor called the police because a guy dropped in on one of the park obstacles. It was essentially a quarterpipe with some vert. The monitor took issue because the guy climbed up and dropped in. It’s ok to ride it, but not to climb up on it in order to do so. Samuel Atchison was suspended for 30 days for skating in a skatepark. It sounds ridiculous, but he did absolutely nothing wrong. You have to see it to believe it.

– Thanks to Concretins for the tip.

I’m here in Sarasota, FLorida for a little while. SRQ is the airport ID, just as PDX = Portland. Last time I was here at this skatepark there was supposed to be an old man night on Fridays. Well those guys either all died or they moved it to a different night. They’ve added a big fancy building to the park since I’ve last visited. As near as I can tell, it’s only purpose besides giving you a place to pee, is to come up with a reason to justify paying $8 to skate. The park closes at 8:00pm and isn’t open during school hours. It’s weird having to plan out when I can go skate. It’s basically a five hour window every day until summer time, when it’s an eight hour window. I don’t now how the heck Oregon manages to keep it’s 80+ skateparks open and free for every hour of sunlight. We must be freakin’ geniuses or wizards. There wasn’t much happening there this particular Friday night, although to be fair, I was only there for the last hour. That’s the lifeguard or safety monitor or whatever that job is called in the shot at the top right. There were a couple kids I skated with and took a few pics. My son enjoyed the park too. Man, rollerblades everywhere. I don’t know how that scene is staying alive in 2009. The kids are trying to look cool and/or tuff and everything. It’s quite comical.

This park rules. The locals and City Hall gave it a bad name for a while, and while the powers that be may still be predatory, it’s been a good session every time I’ve been there in the past year or two. Also, it’s never been crowded. Pics after the jump.