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.

No matter how much you think your town sucks to skate in, someone somewhere has it worse. Like… Afghanistan. Time magazine has a video featuring of all things skateboarding Afghans, who are skating the burliest pool I’ve ever seen ridden. Image courtesy of Time

Update: Skateistan’s website has more photos and information. 

Came across this in the Concrete Disciples forums where a heated discussion was underway about silkscreened skateboard graphics vs. heat transfers. Some member calling himself 5CU111 ALX posted the link. Zazzle’s website offers to put your custom graphics on a skate deck. I didn’t see any dimensions but they do offer three sizes.

There’s still time to bid on some art boards over at the Ism SK8OLOGY charity auction. Most boards are still at pre-ridiculous eBay levels, so if you want to class up your apartment for a hot date, or you know, buy some art and help a good cause, get on over there.

I missed this on Skate Daily, but it looks like John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin is a fervent skateboard harasser. She supported penalties for using skateboards on public or private property as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

“ — after the expected opening of the $233,000 Wasilla Skate Park — skaters will be breaking the law if they use their skateboards, in-line skates, bicycles, scooters (or any other recreational, non-motorized wheeled device) on public or private property where signs are posted forbidding their use.”

OK, fines for skating on public property where a sign is posted seems like something that falls within the realm of the law, whether you agree with the inherent justness of the law or not. Penalties start with a written warning and escalate to fines and eventual permanent confiscation. However, skateboard specific fines and the permanent forfeiture of your property for skateboarding on private property where a sign forbids it seems like an entirely different matter. I wonder if she’d support forfeiture of personal firearms in cases of trespassing that didn’t involve assault or some other violent crime. It’s doubtful.

In any case, it’s a great excuse to post the SNL video with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hilary Clinton. It’s pretty funny, no matter what side of the political spectrum you are on.

– Thanks to FUEL.TV for the tip. [Source: Politico]

I haven’t made any invert attempts since Saturday, but this video trick tip from Bacon’s Tim Johnson makes me think that eggplants shouldn’t be too hard. Yeah, right. Everyone except Conahan can check it out after the jump.

Actiga is a company with it’s finger on the pulse of… No. let’s see… Carpal Tunnel syndrome was never this Extreme!™ Oh never mind. These guys have a couple of products aimed at enhancing your sports gaming experience. First up is Big Vert, a skateboard that you stand on an use as a controller to play skateboarding video games, kind of like the Wii Balance Board, huh? They also appear to have a series of games with little controllers that look like the sport you are supposed to be playing.

[Source: Gizmodo. – Thanks to Dave Arpin for the tip.]

The Illuminati were a secret society of “enlightened” individuals whose cryptic ongoings were often assumed to aim at world domination through government and corporate manipulation.  The conspiracy theories behind this group often suggest a creepy group that worked outside the realms of common people with the goal of a New World Order.  Their meetings were held in utmost secrecy for fear of religious and legal persecution.

Skateboarders, also, are an “enlightened” class of people through their vision and practice.  Essentially, a commoner may see a place to walk up or down a set of stairs while grasping a handrail to arrive at a destination of higher or lower altitude, while a skateboarder sees a unique challenge representative of his/her specific styles and abilities.

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 tired from trudging around on the beach. You can see some park overview shots after the jump.

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 a few (below coping of course), surprising myself and maybe even the onlookers. When you land them they feel really nice and effortless. When you don’t… Well, I experienced the dreaded over-rotation, which definitely has more impact associated with it the higher up you are. I also landed on my ass hard enough to need a colon transplant. Good times! Inverts are a different animal once you approach vert. We had a discussion about “inverts” vs. “handplants” and determined there is no real distinction. The shot above is probably the highest I ever got. Looks like my board is still maxing out about one boards’ width below the coping. My goal is to have my hand on or near the coping by 30 days. I’ve made pretty good progress considering I’ve really only had four sessions, and one of them was on the curb in front of my house. However, I think I’m gong to need to step up the frequency of sessions to make it.