I don’t read Thrasher with any sort of regularity anymore, sometimes I flip through it at the hippie grocery store in my neighborhood. however, I bought the last issue so I could check out an alleged Naked Raygun interview. Since I had already bought the cow instead of stealing the milk for free, (or maybe I was there to buy milk) I read the rest of it and was really surprised. A couple features caught my attention, especially a China/Vietnam tour diary by Michael Burnett. I had it in the back of my head to make a rainy day post about how I might start reading Thrasher more regularly. Cue plate of shrimp coincidence. Michael Burnett is having a book release/photo show/reading at Cal’s Pharmacy in Portland tomorrow, July 11th from 7-10 with live music by Yes Father. The book appears to be called… The Outskirts of Awesome. DISCLAIMER: I took the liberty of replacing the original photo on the official flyer with a different picture I poached from his web site. Artists really love it when you appropriate and mess with their vision. Don’t let them tell you any different. Even if they seem like they are getting irate…

Tito from Team Pain sent some pics of a wooden bowl they are building for Modern Skate & Surf in Detroit. OK, looking at the Modern web site, it looks like the closest location they have to Detroit is in a suburb called Royal Oak, so I’m guessing that’s where this is going, even though they currently have a skatepark in Grand Rapids.

Watch this brilliant video called Opus 11: A Real Fake Skateboard Video by Alexis Milant. After you watch the video, click through to read the rest of this post. Spoiler Alert! – Thanks to Eric Cherry for the tip.

Here’s two, one from the 80’s and one that would have been at home in the 80’s but just came out. On the left is a new Concrete Wave patch with Jim Phillips artwork that originally appeared on a Pocket Pistols deck, but has also recently appeared as a poster and cover of Concrete Wave magazine, not to mention a magnet as well. On the right is a patch from Monster Skateboard Magazine of Germany, from back in the late 80’s. I originally go this from a skateboarding friendof mine (Ray Johnson) who was in the Air Force who got stationed in West Germany. Yes, by all means, we are accepting scans of skate patches for a future gallery.

Preparation S #4 is a big jump from #3, which was already quite good. The main difference is that instead of packing mostly photos of his local crew, Aaaron published a bunch of submissions from people across the country who he was trading zines with. Close enough proximity to the Clown Ramp doesn’t hurt either. Preparation S#4 features a bunch of the same photos Sonny Robertson provided us of the Flux ramp – see That Time, That Place, parts one and two. Prepartion S #4 also comes from the collection of Sonny Robertson, and features pictures of the same looking like little cherub faced boy… Check out Preparation S #4 Update: Comments are closed, but you can comment directly in this gallery now.

Or at least the character he played as an actor. I’ll spill the beans after the jump.

One stop on the recent Bacon tour of Sweden was the Brotherhood Plaza (Skarpnäck?) in Stockholm. The big shot above is Tim Johnson as taken by David Krug. David has been the driving force behind the plaza for the past four years. It’s essentially a Burnside-style sanctioned D.I.Y. skatepark, except instead of being tranny-centric, it’s all street plaza. The place looks like a fertile spot for many fun sessions. This isn’t a plaza with existing obstacles being sanctioned for skating, it’s built from the ground up for skateboarding. You can’t get a good overview from the few pictures above, you really need to spend some time checking out the photos and video on the Brotherhood Plaza web site. Bonus: After the jump you’ll find three pictures from Bacon’s visit.

I lifted this from Earthwing Skateboards where they have a larger version and no information other than this is a guy named Adam Auger, who apparently rides for Rayne. That’s the Montreal Olympic Stadium. There are lots of shots eslewhwere, but this is the only shot I’ve seen of it from this angle. It almost looks as if there is a half pipe at the bottom where the roof meets the ground in the, uh, foreground. Pretty clever, actually. The snow melts and funnels into a collection pond. Previously, the only skateboarding I’ve heard about associated with this stadium is Big O. Getting back to Adam Auger, I don’t know anything about him, but there’s a video after the jump and some random Big O vids too.

I was checking out the Black Label web site (See, those promotional tours really work!) when I came across something I think I remember seeing in Transworld Business that I had meant to comment on. This is the Blackhole series of “anti-wheelbite construction” decks from Black Label, and if I’m not mistaken, those are a modern take on good old fashioned wheel wells. I don’t know about you, but I miss wheel wells. On every deck I ride I get little burn spots from wheel bite. I don’t really worry about slamming from wheel bite, I think it’s only happened to me once in the last five years. It’s more of an aesthetic thing really. I just like the way wheel wells look. This new version of wheel wells doesn’t quite do it for me though. A few longboard companies have been doing a more extreme version of this for years actually. The wells actually punch through the entire board resulting in a fully functional but goofy look. (Can’t find one the damned things online when I need it.) So actually, this post should have been titled “The return of the wheel well to contemporary skateboards.” I wonder how these…