Yeah, yeah, old guys still skate. We get it already. Here’s a quite lengthy article from the Columbia News Service about old guys that are still skating in different parts of the country. Somehow or other they missed out on interviewing Mark Conahan, who must have been booked on one of his many media appearances that day. They did interview full-faced helmeted Northwest icon Dan Hughes. The picture on the (top) right is from his web site. Who’s that funny looking old guy on the left? It’s Tommy Guerrero from a short interview in the San Francisco Chronicle, published earlier this year. UPDATE: Here’s another link to a story called “Chairmen of the Boards” (Guffaw! Never heard that one before!) from an Australian publication called The Age. It’s three more pages about old (Australian) guys skating, specifically a crew of guys at Frankston skatepark who routinely bring their own lights to make time to skate in their busy schedules. They have a base of about 60 people who regularly fill out these sessions with 20-30 skaters. Sounds kind of annoying, actually. I hope that’s a big park. That’s a lot of people and the guys in the picture (bottom right)…

Another one from the collection of John Drummond, this is Go For It! – the Swindle Issue. It’s a pretty good one. Lots of decent photos and a nice glossy printed cover. The Swindle refers to the fact that the outside is glossy but the inside is photocopied. It’s printed on an odd size of paper, not any derivative of A4 or anything, The insides are all a bit smaller than the cover. It must have been custom trimmed. It’s 90% UK vert scene. A lot of names that are vaguely familiar to the colonists. Phill Burgoyne’s interview is amusing, as is the one with Gregor Rankine. I didn’t remember that he was from New Zealand. This is Steve Douglas’s zine. Some of you might remember him as a pro rider for Schmitt Stix. He was one of the founders of New Deal and Giant Distribution. Right now I believe he’s a big wig at Dwindle. UPDATE: Comments closed, but you can comment directly in this gallery now.

They postponed the show until the 22nd. KPTVs Mark Ross tells me It turned out great. Sorry about jumping the gun I know how hard it is to program that Tivo. First my Juice interview, now this.

First off, GABRIEL PARK IS CLOSED. Stephanie from Airspeed wanted to make sure everyone knows that. It won’t open until sometime in July, and the first citation for trespassing has already been issued. That being said, she did give me the go ahead to post the rest of the pictures from the test session last weekend. Afterwards a certain Dr. Brad made a the excellent comment “That was awesome. Wait… This is the place that everyone was bitching about?”

The Seattle Post Intelligencer used this photo to illustrate an article about evidence storage by the Seattle Police. They hold on to evidence for 80 years, so get your grandchildren to schedule the police auction on their calendars if they want to make a killing on eBay.

Not exactly. The Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience is being designed by the by the firm that developed Disneyland. Err.. wouldn’t that be Walt Disney? Sort of. Exporting American style amusement parks like Euro Disney have been about as successful as the Iraq War, and these are in countries we didn’t invade. From the Times Online: A $1 million skateboard park, the first phase of the development, will open in July. Parts for 200,000 skateboards and materials to build ramps will be shipped from America to Iraq for assembly at state-owned factories and distributed free to Iraqi children along with helmets and knee pads. Shipping materials to build ramps? Is this going to be a $1 million prefab park? Do they want to make Iraq’s youth hate the U.S. even more? Does Haliburton own a piece of SkateWave? We don’t want to actually help the people of Iraq, we just want to make them love America. (Warning: Crackpot alert on that previous link.) This is not going to be a state owned Iraqi public park. The company developing the park is leasing the land for 50 years, so they’ll need to charge money. Are they going to give away skateboards…

I love eBay Watch, but I typically don’t try to by things on eBay unless there is one specific thing I need for a practical purpose. Sometimes during research I find myself on eBay, and there’s split second where I have to make a decision on whether or not to look at something else that catches my eye. If I do, it’s all over. I end up making a bunch of retarded bids. Half of them I know I have no chance of winning and the other half of my bids are influenced by irrational emotional attachment. Sometimes, after I come down, I find that I have won one or more useless items that I paid too much for. I call this phenomenon the “eBay Hangover.” I’ve had a nagging desire to own one of these 70’s era Techni-Ski skateboard ski simulators since I saw my first one in a magazine that was probably 20 years old. Now, unfortunately, I do own one. I’m not going to say how much it cost unless Neil picks it up in his column. More details to follow. I know you are all glued to your monitors…

This is a test of the DIY Skatepark Advocacy System. If this were an actual Marginal Way benefit you would be… Oh wait, it is! Art Show Benefit for Marginal Way Skatepark! Mission in West Seattle Thursday June 12th 8pm 21+ Raffle/DJs/Videos Silent auction featuring: Tait, Paul Fujita, Q. Quigg, Bruno, LJ, Jesse Edwards, Aaron Filion, Chris Adams, Ego, Roy Wonder, Bobcat, Manbeast, Curtis Alton Jr., Romero Taylor, Eric Holt, Caveman, Leon, Jay Meer, and Lafferty Brothers. DJs: VerseOmega, Treva, Hightower. Videos, Footage and Slide Show featuring Jay Meer’s Archive. Raffle: All the goods! 100% of proceeds goes to Marginal Way Skatepark! Where: Mission 2325 California Ave. SW Seattle, WA 98116 8pm 21 and over

Man, we are killing it with the lifestyle shots. There’s this thing called the Zumiez Couch Tour that came through town about a week ago. There was a contest for the locals and a pro demo. I contemplated checking it out. I figured I might get a couple good photos of some pros at our humble skatepark. But then it was raining on and off, overcast, and Zumiez, after all, so I blew it off. I actually went and skated that crappy covered pool that everyone thinks is lame. Grover was going to check it out for GVK fodder. I told him there’s no way they’d do it in the rain. He reminded me that the marketing power (and wallets) of Zumiez was behind it, and it would go off rain or shine. I said I could see the autographs happening but not much else. Well I guess the contest and demo did go off. I heard locals were sliding out all over the place. Right, and there were live bands playing too. As a side note, I heard there was some sort of ramp demo put on by Capri Sun last weekend at the Rose Festival.

Yeah it’s a tired Clash reference, but at least I didn’t title it London Calling. Our Czech ex-pat Marek Litinski went back to the fatherland (motherland?) for a week and got stuck in London for an extra week becasue his “papers weren’t in order,” or so he claims to his wife… While he was there he happened on the Quiksilver Bowlriders contest in Cantelowes, a Dreamland park that we posted about earlier. Some of the eurpean skate sites have video from that contest up. Now Marek supposedly finished 4th, but must have done somehting to piss off the locals because every time he comes on camera the cut to a different guy. I begged Marek to bring a camera with him so we could get a little European skate coverage that wasn’t hand me down, and he obliged. When I spoke to him on his return, he said the thing that made the biggest impression on him was the fact that adults were allowed to openly drink beer in the presence of minors without the Aumsville Police U.K. equivalent of the National Guard being called out. Ironically, he was also present when Lodoners had near riot conditions during an all…