As part of Portland’s 19 skatepark master plan, the Steel Bridge site was chosen for the main Regional Facility, or essentially, the destination park. The official Parks & Rec definition: Regional Skatepark: A regional facility will be a single large facility (>40,000 square feet) that will accommodate many users at once. It could be lighted and possibly serve as a venue for competitions. This type of facility will not be located in residential areas. Steel Bridge is supposed to be our Louisville, in terms of square footage and drawing power. Our landmark skatepark, not that anything could replace Burnside in the skateboarding public’s eyes. The City of Portland has started accepting proposals – the RFP is posted. You need to be a registered vendor to view the related documents. The list of registered vendors (as far as skatepark building companies is concerned) appears to only contain Dreamland, New Line and surprisingly, Wally Hollyday Design. (UPDATE: Found another – Artifex.) The rest of you need to get your paperwork in order because the bid closes on january 9th of 2009. Also confusing, there’s an item marked Estimate:$50,000.00, which isn’t going to buy much. Perhaps Mr. Miller will enlighten us. Flame on!…

This shot breaks a cardinal rule for skate photos, but the outstretched hand in combination with the butt shot makes it interesting to me. This is Omar Hassan at the Rumble in Ramona, Creature’s invite only vert ramp contest held the 17th and 18th of October. You’re seeing it here because Davoud from Concussion shot it, and he’s got more cardinal rules than I do. I thinkthis breaks three of his, Butt shot, fisheye lens and pads. Who knows, he may even be wearing a helmet. You can check out this week’s Shot of the Week or watch some video from the event after the jump, courtesy of Transworld. It’s set to auto play, so mute your speaker before you jump if you need to.

Whenever Jyme (Jymie?) George used to come in to travel with the Surf Ohio crew, he always had stacks of stickers and t-shirts to give away, printed by the guys at Graphics Lab, who were just starting out at the time. Jyme let me enter the first big amateur contest in Dayton even though I didn’t have a sponsor, under the condition that I had better not embarrass him. I actually made the first cut, but I basically blew my wad and didn’t have anything else left to show. Lacking any reserves in my bag of tricks, I decided to repeat my first run on a plastic toy skateboard. Needless to say, I didn’t advance again. I must have accumulated 5-10 different Surf Ohio shirts in a few short years. Instead of hoarding them all, I only hoarded half of them, and gave the rest away to a bunch of friends.

As part of the ongoing beautification of the waterfront and adjacent areas of Portland, the Burnside project is getting more real estate. Eventually it will butt up against some new parks facility and thus scenes like this mom chatting on her cell phone while she drops the kids off at Burnside wil lbecome more and more of a reality. I don’t know if Burnside will get any cold hard cash, but the land grab has already started. There’s a panorama of some recent tranny work after the jump.

Let me introduce my friend Eric. The reason I call him my friend is because when I asked him if he would like to be sponsored, he replied “I have skateboard. How about we just be friends?” My reply was “Cheap and easy. Lets get married.” Every time I go to Newberg, Eric is skating doing some weird ass trick I wish I could do. If my hard drive didn’t crash this video would be 3x longer and 6x better. Who the hell knew the hard drive needs a back up? Who backs up the back up? Pose off  Grover 

Clockwise from top left: Fuck Helmets, Longboard Radness, Saktepark Vermin, Kidney Bowl Boxing. Aside from the usually funny commentary shots, there’s also a lot of, you know, actual skating and skatespots the likes of which you don’t see here. Check out John Doe Zine, the web site, straight outta Wyoming. I think they still do print issues too.

The ongoing concrete work in Hood River, Oregon is looking really interesting, at least from afar. This is a shot of what looks like a bridge over a creek that has one side with a steep tranny wall, almost like a modified Jersey barrier. I assume this is connected to the rest of the new skate trail that’s being built. Actually, I should stop making assumptions and make the drive out there to check it out. Carl Warren has the picture, and you can click to enlarge.

This month, at Fifty 24 PDX Gallery, skateboarder/artist/writer Michael Sieben has his original artwork in an exhibition entitled “From the Desk of Whatserface,” along with Mel Kadel and Travis Millard.  This exhibit is located at 23 NW 5th Ave, Portland, OR 97209, and will last until November 29. Expect paintings with lots of cutesy, renegade monster things with cryptic messages.  Sieben is also a columnist/artist with Thrasher magazine, and has made many skateboards with his trademark style.  Some may remember the video he did with Adidas that SNA covered a few months back.  The above pictures were borrowed from Sieben’s web page.

Went by Ed Benedict to see the progress. They finished the quarters opposing the shots Kilwag got earlier. They seemed to be finishing up a lot of smaller sections of the park. It seems like it might be a while before it opens. Enjoy these awful cellphone shots..

He’s got blisters on his fingers, but Joesf finally finished the last pour of this bowl in his DIY backyard concrete extravaganza. Two pics after the jump.