Pierre Andre Senizergues. I didn’t even know his last name wasn’t “Andre.” After playing third fiddle in the freestyle world in the 80’s he founded Etnies, among other things, and now he’s part of the great Freestyle Conspiracy Theory. The Los Angeles Times has a photo spread of his beach house in Newport Beach, California. Some parts of it are no different than any other rich guy’s nice house, but some aren’t. For instance, it looks like he’s working on acquiring every single bit of skate furniture out there, which was kind of a surprise. I figured maybe he’d be burnt out on that. There’s some interesting details lurking in these pictures. Check it out. – Thanks to Paul Fujita for the tip.

Many professional athletes have intense cross-training, strict diets, and other extreme measures to promote their athletic prowess.  Skateboarders, however, seem to ignore such conventions and consume massive amounts of beer.  A new game has arisen out of this demand for quantifying one’s drinking abilities: Wizard Sticks. The rules are simple… when you finish a beer, you duct tape the empty can to the bottom of your next one.  When the stack is higher than you, the distinction as a “wizard” is made. This game has been gaining increased popularity in skate circles, with coverage in places such as Jackassworld.com.

Spohnranch has a new street plaza opening in the Inglewood neighborhood of Wilmington California. It’s replacing some prefab ramps with prefab concrete. They actually placed the whole park on the existing slab, traced it, and then cut out the concrete and laid the new pieces in place. They predict a lot of communities will be replacing metal and wood prefab parks this way as it allows them to avoid the expense of re-pouring all the flat. Seems like it would work fine for a street plaza. This one was co-designed by Paul Rodriguez Jr. and features replicas of LA spots including the DWP granite benches, Fairfield ledges and LA High banks. They have a Flickr stream of the installation and a short video that you can watch after the jump. Not much to it really. The park is located at 325 Neptune Ave, Wilmington, CA 90744. Opening ceremony is September 27

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OK, I haven’t been out since Day 15. That’s not exactly true, I skated for about an hour last Saturday morning, but had to leave just as I was getting warmed up. Seriously. It takes me that long to warm up when it’s a morning session. We hit Glenhaven today for about an hour and some change, but what a difference an afternoon session can make. I felt like I was regressing after Newberg, but even so I was glad to land a few.

Drove by this house today on the way to the skatepark for a quick session. I know I’ve driven by it more than a handful of times, but this is the first time I noticed it. It looks more fun in person than it does in the pictures. I blurred the house out because I don’t want to give the owners a headache if they don’t already have one, plus the guy came home as I was standing in the street with my camera, blocking his driveway. I will say that it’s near Glenhaven skatepark in Portland.

Salt Lake City Utah essentially bans skateboard ramps on private property, except for the rich. Hey, it’s just like 1984 again! Here’s the link to all the new regulations, #21 – Community Noise Pollution Control Regulation is the one you want. 4.5.21. Sporting Ramps. No person shall build or use nor shall any person cause, allow, or permit anyone to build or allow anyone to use any skateboard, roller blade, bicycle, or snowboard ramp or half-pipe or similar configuration within 800 feet of a dwelling, except within facilities that have been designated for such use by a government entity. Actually, it’s the Salt Lake Valley Health Department that is the regulating body. Local Nick Hale was one of the first to get a visit from the Mormon Machine. He started a website where he’s collecting signatures for a petition to overturn the ban over at SLCminiramp, although he might attract a wider audience demographic without the giant “Bogus! Weeeeak!” graphic. This is… so lame. I’m not going to bother preaching to the converted, but we’ll keep our ears open for future developments, help rally the troops, etc. Image above is from the SnA feature on the demo halfpipe in the…

August 2008. I’ve tried to focus on some more unusual stuff this month, tried to change things up a bit. And sorry this is late, but I’ve been studying for one of my Apple certification exams, so I haven’t had much spare time. I passed it yesterday though with a score of 98%, so I’m pretty stoked. And the funny thing about August, there were more big-ticket decks in the 70s and 90s sections than in the 80s. Unusual that. Probably a first. Check out eBay Watch: August 2008

This week’s Shot of the Week is courtesy of Dylan Davies. It’s a nice 4×5 camera shot of Grant from New Zealand at the Bonsor skatepark full pipe in British Columbia, Canada. Every time I see pictures of this park it makes me think it’s some old relic, but I guess it’s actually from this millennium. You gotta admire the skate photographer who uses a 4×5 view camera. You need to lug the camera to the location, load the film in a true dark room,none of that red light cheating, do your metering, focus on the ground glass and pop the film back onto the camera. Then you slide the slidey thing out (it’s been a while) and hit the shutter release. Then slide it back in, take the film back off and bring it to a dark room to develop, one negative at a time. That’s a lot of hassle to get a decent shot. Not something you’d want to try on a kickflip variation that might be a bust on the first 20 tries. Check out the full frame version.

This tip came labeled as “the latest in absurd use of a skateboard in a graphic,” and you’ll get no argument from me here. Looks like two pieces of canned clip art and about five minutes of work. IBM wants you to use some of their software, and in return they’ll send you a Chumby, which is actually a cool little Interwebs™ powered physical gizmo that would be fun to own as long as you didn’t have to pay for it. Chumbies (chumbi?) sell for $180, so that IBM course must be pretty expensive. See if you can get your boss to pay for it. Details online, but it’s a webmail campaign, so if it disappears you can see the ad bigger after the jump. Now that I’m looking at this, they might have actually had a guy jump out of a plane with a skateboard to pose this shot. – Thanks to Jeff Hottle for the tip.