Hey look, I’m not making this stuff up. This is a system for skateboard wheels that consists of an aluminum hub with interchangeable urethane treads. It dates back to around 2003 or so, possibly a little bit earlier. I believe they were made by Dragonetti, although I could be wrong. If not, I think it was some similar sounding name with an Italian sounding suffix. These pictures are from a used set, and I neglected to clean out the skatepark grime that accumulated on them, but you get the idea. The aluminum hub was actually a two piece fabrication. Pressure from the axle nut was supposed to compress the hub against the inner lip of the urethane wheel to keep it stable, but the reality was that normal use would cause the wheels to slip on the center hub. It seemed like a difficult but not insurmountable deficiency to overcome. This might have been a case where the product was rushed to market too soon. They don’t seem to be available anymore. In fact, this set belonged to Grover, and he was in contact with the manufacturer for a while about the performance issues. They said they had a solution figured out and were supposed to send him a replacement set under warranty but nothing ever came of it. The costs of the initial wheel and hub combo was moderately more expensive than a traditional wheel, but the replacement treads were priced to make them cheaper than buying a new set of standard wheels. There are some more pictures after the jump.

I realized I forgot to put up a Shot of the Week, so I decided to continue today’s theme of skateboarders of color. This is Ron Allen back in 1988 at an N.S.A. contest called the Bluegrass Aggression Session, held in an almost empty arena in the city of Louisville, Kentucky. (GBJ was there.) If I remember correctly, Ron was very accommodating for this photograph during a warm up session. This was a massive flatground ollie with a kick out. Most may remember Ron from his days at H-Street, but did you know he’s still skating and riding for a company called Creation Skateboards? Check out this week’s Shot of the Week.

Two of the event locations for this years Oregon Trifecta have been announced. For some reason one is still in Washington. The overall purse looks a lot bigger, and appears to include some sort of ATV. (Not that kind of ATV as seen on Wheelbite) What’s the stock photo graphic doing up there? It came from a recent iStockphoto.com promotion and signifies my surprise at finding out that the Trifecta’s official web site thinks I’m running some sort of free stock photo service. I don’t begrudge them, but a heads up and a spot on the links page would have been nice. Crap. I think I’m in Chicago for my grandmother’s 90’th birthday that weekend. – Thanks to Ryan Hass and Jeff Hottle for the tips.

Fishbone Skatepark is the name of the entity that ended up using all the donated ramps from the X Games appearance in Mexico City. It’s open, and Urbeskate Magazine has the action photos. Chica Rider off shoot Open Skull is an organization set up for teaching and promoting skateboarding for girls, which is kind of what I though Chica Rider was, but… Open Skull has already had lessons at Fishbone. I guess it’s 30 pesos or about $3 to skate there. I don’t know how that translates in the standard of living there. – Thanks to John Aguilar for the tip.

I got a publicity email from Current TV about featuring this video called “The State of Black Skate,” but I was going to feature it anyway since I found it when I had the Burnside clip on the same site. It’s a short piece on skaters of color (as long as that color is black) in NYC. It ends just as you’d think they were about to get started. It’s almost like an intro segment for a full length production. So, there’s not much meat to it, but there are some good skating sequences. See that guy in the shot above? He’s barefoot. Current ought to encourage longer, more in depth pieces, otherwise it’s just so much filler.

Skate Punk #4 is another from the collection of John Drummond, and the second one of this title. June 1982 is the date on this one, and it’s got a lot more pages than #2 which came out in January. Caballero must have been busy that year.

Check out Skate Punk #4

UPDATE: Comments have been moved to the gallery.

A web site called Old School Skateboards (This one is in the U.K.) has a bunch of NOS (New, Old Stock) Variflex skateboards from the 80’s for sale. This guy must have raided a warehouse or possibly been an old distributor or something. For about $70 you can buy a complete board with trucks, wheels, copers and a lapper. The only thing missing are the rails. Sure, these are crap skateboards, but they are 20 year old mint condition crap skateboards! The site doesn’t have the large images presented for the public, so I’ve compiled them. Some are pretty funny.

Editor’s note: We are fully aware that at one time Variflex produced high quality, professional grade skateboards. However, these boards are not from that time

The Tony Hawk Foundation is auctioning off a custom Jeep to raise money for… skateparks! this is for big spenders only. – Thanks to Sarib Singh Khalsa for the tip.

All right, lets get this taken care of. I’ve got some poll software installed and now it’s time to vote for the winner of the GVK Photo Kontest. The prize package includes a skateboard of our choice and a bunch of random stuff. I thought we’d see more entries than we got, maybe we should have made a bigger deal about the prize. I’ve learned a few things from this contest, and I’ve already got an idea for the next one. Voting ends at Midnight, Pacific time, on June 22nd.

Luciano Peixoto and Gustavo Tesch sent in some coverage of the 30th anniversary party at Swell Skate Park in Brazil. Vans sponsored an event called Old is Cool and kicked it off with a contest in the brand new bowl at the park. Check it out