Cannon Beach is a sleepy little beach town that is just about 10 minutes south of Seaside, Oregon. Cannon Beach’s new park opened in May of 2008. Placed to Ride built a new concrete park on the site of the old one which was essentially just a steep “E” shaped asphalt banks on a flat spot. It was the kind of spot that would be fun if it occurred “naturally,” but was pretty disappointing as something purpose built for skateboarding. (Sam, don’t take down those old pictures!) The new park is very small in both square footage and height, but it’s packed full of skateable terrain including pool coping, ledges and bank variations. I don’t know if money was the object or what, but it there sure is a lot of adjacent space that looks like it could have been used. In any case, it’s has the potential for a lot of fun. If I had to say something critical it would be that I thought I noticed a spot or two where the transition was a little wonky, which is highly unusual for PTR. I really didn’t ride it much. My body was wrecked from the day before and…

I’ve reached the halfway mark here. It’s day 15 and the last day I worked on them was day 13. That’s bit of a gap from the previous day, which was five. I’m only getting about one session in a week and I need to step it up. The most common advice I got after day 5 was essentially get off the mini ramp as soon as possible. I had planned on politely ignoring that advice, but I just wasn’t able to get a mini ramp session to work out. I ended up at Newberg on Saturday, and what do you know, there’s some vert there. That didn’t stop me from knocking the wind out of myself during warmups on the smaller stuff. I moved it to vert with some encouragement heckling from MC. Joining in the fun were Rich, Mac, and Conahan, who decided to work on eggplants while we were tackling garden variety inverts. Grover put a sticker on the tranny to provide a spot to focus on. We shut down that section of the park, which I’m sure was annoying to the rest of the people there, but hey, it’s all about ME anyway, right? I made…

Some skaters may look down their noses at snowboarders, but what about skiers? I couldn’t think of a joke to make that somehow referenced the old “Stop the Violence” hip hop campaigns. What we have here (besides a considerable expense) is video footage of some European skateboarders launching of a modified summertime practice ski jump facility. I believe they cover the slopes with a series of green mats made out of a synthetic material that when hosed down with water provides enough lack of friction to practice skiing on. I hear the mats are abrasive as hell on human skin. For the purposes of skateboarding, they’ve added a launch ramp with a bit of wood to take off and land on before bailing to a mandatory knee slide on every attempt. It hurts just to think about. Who would dream up such a spectacle? If not Mountain Dew, then Red Bull: I (Roman Astleitner) had the idea to skate a ski jump some months ago. Red Bull decided to invite some riders for an “Access all Areas” event to make this reality. Check out the first video clip of the session at the ski jump in Wörgl / Tyrol (Austria).…

This is Gou Miyagi’s part in something called “Overground Broadcasting,” a film by The Far East Skate Network. FESN apears to be based out of Japan, but the video has a lot of European and US footage as well. I was hooked on this video in the first 50 seconds. Watching Gou Miyagi immediately brought to mind Natas as well Patrick Melcher and Richie Jackson. Call me shallow, but that’s who I thought of. Although that may be because that list exhausts every street skater that I can claim any knowledge of having a particular style. I especially dug the shove it Natas spin. I suppose if I don’t say “Mark Gonzales,” someone will rant at me in the comments. There’s a lot of show stoppers in the vid, but I don’t want to spoil them. Just watch it, you won’t be disappointed. Great skating, good editing and presentation as well. I need to track down this video. – Thanks to Casey Morrow for the tip.

Rumor has it that the vert ramp at the Hood River skatepark is for sale. 5K is the asking price for this highly modified ramp that rests on the chassis of one of those old Firestone touring ramps consisting of a metal frame with a plexiglass surface. I think you can still actually see the plexiglass underneath. Those old Firestone ramps didn’t have any flat bottom either. These things have turned up at skateparks before, always resurfaced. I guess the plexiglass goes bad, although you would think it wouldn’t. I think this ramp was resurfaced last year? Supposedly it’s being offered for sale to public entities only, but if there are no takers after a set time period they will offer it up for all interested parties. Why is the ramp for sale? They’ve got plans for concrete in that spot. There’s no information on the offcial parks web site, but one thing is for sure, if it ever becomes available for private purchase, interested buyers will have to wrestle Steve Grover (right) for the rights to make the first offer. [Photo left: Hood River Valley Parks and Recreation]

Team Pain is about halfway done in Colorado Springs. Catch three pictures of the bowls after the jump. What’s next? The street area, of course. Thanks to Tito for the pics. How are those inverts coming?

This week’s Shot of the Week is from Carl Warren, and it’s a shot of Tom “Wally” Inouye with his wheels at the edge of the coping on the hip of the bowl in Donald, Oregon. Check out the full frame version.

Globe has teamed up with the band that brought you the first ever music video featuring skateboarding. Of course I’m talking about Devo’s Freedom of Choice. Prove me wrong if you can. Skater Dater doesn’t count, it’s a short film meant to showcase skating, not to provide visual accompaniment for an existing song. You might recall that Globe had the limited edition Clash shoe collaboration that I had a hard time wrapping my head around. It certainly makes more sense in the case of Devo, a band that always had a marketing and merchandising strategy. You used to be able to order the yellow hazmat suits and red energy domes from the inserts in the albums. What the heck does this have to do with skateboards? Globe’s collaboration goes beyond shoes to include, among everything else, a complete skateboard with a Devo branded wheel. Devo had an allegedly unlicensed skateboard before courtesy of the now defunct (?) Punk Rock Skateboards. Although that was Gerald talking, and perhaps it was a case of the right hand of Devo not communicating to the other right hand of Devo.

After the very high rent Getty Images bought the very proletariat iStockPhoto they started sending out a weekly email called Hot Shots that highlights eight pictures from each service. Usually the iStock photos rival and sometimes even best the Getty choices, but not this week. Included in the iStock top eight is this shot of a guy who looks like he’s going to bail on his massive living room ollie over a couch. That’s one short takeoff. I’m not exactly sure what the point of this one is. I’m not an advertising genius, but the shot isn’t even well executed. Get some.

I’m not here to make Frank Lavallee the butt of a joke, but I stumbled across this photo of him giving a freestyle demo at the Vans Warped Tour. According to his sponsor Khiro’s web site: …he is doing about 60 demo’s every summer including Van’s Warped tour, Monster Truck Shows, Schools, Shops and where ever it’s happening! The only thing they left out is professional wrestling matches. The thought of a freestyle demo in front of a rock concert or monster truck show really amuses me. Nothing gets me more stoked at a punk rock show than (watching) a few caspers. Sorry Frank, nothing personal. Feel free to mock me at your leisure.