I can’t get away from my wasteful lust for old-growth maple veneers. I’ve been skating for too many years and am set in my ways. But my ever aging and growing inner-nerd can’t help but be intrigued by the innovations of using alternative materials to make skateboards. Aluminum boards have been around forever, but boards like Corbus Boards are all together something new. Made to be a functional piece of industrial art, these boards are meant to be ridden claims Corbus. A runaway board could make one of these metal monsters an ankle guillotine. Images via Corbus, link thanks to Make

Boardistan is reporting that Bones Brigade understudy Ray Underhill passed away this morning after a long battle with a brain tumor. Sean Mortimor is credited as the source, but so far no official word on the Ray Underhill site, or Eastern Skate Supply, where he worked. For what it’s worth, our condolences to his family and friends. Classic Ray Underhill in the best scene from Animal Chin after the jump. This “Ska-dack” is for you! – Thanks to Enemy Combatant (!!) for the tip. UPDATE: Official word posted on the Ray Underhill site – Leave your condolences on the bulletin board.

There are shin injuries, and then there are shin injuries. That shot in the top right is Danny Way hanging his shins out to dry on the coping of the quarterpipe part of the Megaramp after catching about 20 feet of air. Catch some incredulous highlights after the jump, including Jake Brown’s return to the event. Looking at that huge contraption… I can’t believe it’s actually used in a competition. An exhibition would be crazy enough. I hope those guys are getting paid. How the hell do you practice for this? It’s not like they have them set up everywhere. So yeah, those guys are skateboarding, and it’s amazing to watch, but one of these days someone is going to die or end up crippled. Best case scenario: They’ll be like Hank Hill’s shinless father Cotton Hill.

Watch out Hollywood here comes the”Docudramedy” “THE KID” (The Joe Carson story). I may need some extras so send your credentials/credits and head shots in. This is your chance to show the world what you can do. We’re trying out Vimeo now on The Kid trailer and Howard’s May Day Skate Party. If it works well we’ll go back and upload previous GVK’s.

Cut! Grover…

Sure, we watch Nascar and downhill skateboard races for the same reason: The crashes. Here’s a video from a recent outlaw downhill event in Oregon. I guess they didn’t actually make it to the finals bracket because the event got shot down by the Sherif’s department, but they were able to determine the final standings to everyone’s approval. Looks like these guys are hauling ass. There’s some unexplained miniramp complex footage at the very end, and yes, you can watch guys pile into each other on the same turn, over and over again. – Thanks to Casey Morrow and our own Enemy Combatant(!) for the tip.

If you are a regular reader you’ve hopefully noticed a few posts lately with Eric Cherry as the author. I’m actually surprised nobody brought it up. Eric’s been a reader for some time now, he’s submitted some good tips. Independently of MC taking H.O.M.O.S. back to his sandbox, I have been considering trying to add some new voices to Skate and Annoy. It’s hard finding a match, but in the past few weeks I was already appropriating some of the commentary from his tips, so I recruited him with a soft sell. Eric seems to be a reserved in talking about himself (Don’t you wish I was?) so I was struggling for a way to introduce him. Fortunately, his mostly pinup art skateboard collection fits in nicely with Friday T&A. A man’s board collection says a lot about him. Or not. Check it out. Welcome to our little scene.

This is kind of an old item already, but for some reason the New York Times has picked up on the release of Jay Adams from prison. I had wondered whether he was officially done with his time or whether he was on some sort of probation. The Times says he’s at a halfway house serving out the remaining months of his four year sentence. I’ve often wondered how that whole prison release thing works, fortunately I don’t know the details. Looks like he’s working for Hurley maintaining their private skate facility. Check out the pic above right. Apparently Hurley is exploring a marketing image that wants to intimidate the hell out of prospective clothes buyers. You can get the full effect at the NYT article by enlarging it. I wonder if Jay knew that the prison he was serving time in was only about 15 minutes away from the world class Aumsville, Oregon skatepark? I thought I read that he took a cab to a bus station in Portland. With Hurley’s parent company Nike so close in Beaverton, Oregon you’d think someone could have picked him up. I can’t find that bit of info anymore, so I might have imagined the cab ride. I know at least one soul who would have jumped at the chance to provide the hour long lift. No, it’s not me, but I mean, if I was already on my way back from Aumsville, sure I’d stop for him. Jay’s caught a couple of breaks lately, here’s to hoping he can stay free. Although, you’ve got to bet that Hosoi wishes he had Adam’s lawyer, considering he seemingly had a harder time getting released for lessor offense and comparatively nominal criminal history. Insert derisive Steve Olson comment on skate bloggers here. – Thanks to TK, Mac and about a 20 other people for the tip.

OH yeah, I forgot to title this “Vert is dead, not dead, dead, not dead, dead….” I’m losing track of where we’re at here. Dave Swift over at the Skateboard Mag has some pictures of the new setup for the Super Park event at the X Games. If you recall, Super Park was supposed to be the replacement for the vertical event until the talent mutinied and said they would prefer to compete on the halfpipe. So now we have Vert and Super Park. Without getting into the politics, the Super Park course certainly looks more interesting than a vert ramp, and is more in step with what people who aren’t training for the X Games are riding, if not in the street. Now, to get into the politics, or at least social responsibility, carting that thing around to different venues seems like it would be a gargantuan task. We all know what happens to these ramps when they got through a season or two, they get donated. It’s one thing to fix up up a vert ramp or some pyramids that have seen some abuse, it’s relatively straight forward. What’s going to happen when they discard these massively complex bowl constructions? Sure, it’s not as wasteful as something as ludicrous as building a concrete skatepark for one time use. (Don’t get me started on that, it’s something I had planned for a rant already…) I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again, ESPN needs to give back to the sport (besides paying the salaries of the top pros) by advocating for and financially facilitating concrete skateboard facilities across the nation, if not world, in ways similar to other high profile entities that make bank from skateboarding. Right. Don’t forget to check out the Super Park. It looks fun as hell. – Thanks to JF for the tip.

I think England built a lot of public parks in the 70’s and instead of bulldozing the outdoor ones after the bust, they just left them to rot in the elements. House of Neil, can I get a confirmation? The Hackney Bumps is a 70’s era skatespot in London that is still going. There’s an event called the Hackney Olympics that takes place with some regularity. It seems like it might be a localized and smaller version of Skatopia. This year’s Olympics are on August 9th. My favorite quote from the web site:

Some people still claim that they can’t find HACKNEY BUMPS. I find this remarkable. Some people also claim that you will get killed when you go to HACKNEY BUMPS. That is not really true, though the kids that burnt the vespa and the (motor)bikes on the photos above DID have REAL guns, though they could not care less about the skateboarders…

Video and flyer after the jump. – Thanks to Tony Gunnarsson for the tip.

Friend of the site Brad the Handstandman was on The Late Show with David Letterman on July 18th. Can we call him a friend of the site? Sure, why not, after all the heckling, veiled threats and assorted rigmarole. The original Handstandman post is almost in the top five of the most commented posts. Such lively discussion is usually reserved for Airspeed, Benji Galloway and Wormhoudt in San Jose. I can’t help but feel that a true friend of the site would have given us the heads up before he was on national television. You can still watch it on Late Show highlights. Just head on over to Dave’s site and click on the video link for “”Late Show” Rewind: Week of July 14-18, 2008.” Handstandman is about halfway into the clip – after Ricky Gervais and before Rosie Perez. The video player is a little buggy, and you have to sit through a short commercial. SnA comment army, please remember, we’ve been through all the name calling already.