More useless odds and ends. These guys in Massachusetts do touchy-feely performance art called “Zend” on skateboards inspired by stained glass. And speaking of hippies, the Seattle Times wants you to believe that longboarders have a higher calling. Ryan Sheckler gets nominated for a world wide sportmanship award in the action sports category, but loses to Shaun White. I guess there was no category for crying. An interesting note, a guy with the actual name of “Dick Pound” won the “Spirit of Sport” award for his work with the World Anti-Doping Agency. Sounds like spirit alright. According to the North County Times, Andy Macdonald is not a rebel, and he does have a cause. Do you need money? Why not fake getting hit by a car on your skateboard so your buddies can steal a purse while the driver makes sure you are OK? These kids in Vancouver, Washington did. What’s the next Xtreme!™ sport raging in Orange County? Racing Dodge Chargers on electric skateboards. The article “Not Just Any Old Token” does not refer to Dave Chappelle’s race, even if he is the only non-honky in the photo. Some skateboarders in Queens, New York found some humane remains and called 911, further laying to rest the teenage satanic skateboard worshipers theory. Some people don’t need to read a study to know that hurting yourself skateboarding can cost a lot of money, but some do.

There. I’ve wasted enough of my time, so go waste some of yours.

[Assorted tips – Mark Ward, Mike Estes, Poor Richard]

Proving that you can geek out on skateboards in an entirely different way, Clint Rutka is documenting his process of building another one of those one wheeled skateboard Segways, or Nerdway, as we like to call them here. I don’t want anyone to think I’m not picking on the guy, he’ll admit it himself. His Blog is a little difficult to follow the progress on as there is no distinct category for the project, but it seems to be a subset of his skateboard category. Geez, I think he programmed his own blog software too. Here are some, uh highlights:

Video – Source code for the controller – board design – building the frame – Gyroscope problems – more building

I still say he’s cooler than this guy.

Who says vert ramps don’t occur naturally in the “street?” (I smell an idea for one of MC’s skatepark terrain comics.) This must be one of those elliptical transitions that were all the rage for about a month in the late 80’s. Actually, back in the 80’s these support structures for the upper level at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (or ORD) were totally skateable, or at least I was never busted there. Unfortunately, I don’t have any actual skate photos of this spot, as I only rode here while waiting to be picked up. I never made a “skate specific” trip to the airport. These pictures are from when I was traveling back to Chicago in 2000, at which point some sort of skate stopper devices had been added, for how long I don’t know. I remember these being as fast as regular U-shaped slides. Do you have any action shots from this spot? Send ’em in!

They offered to send me some pictures from the vert event in China, and I said Sure, I’d check them out, and see how they went over on the site. They were kind of stingy. Pierre-Luc Gagnon won the vert event (2nd – Andy Macdonald, 3rd- Adam Taylor) and Sandro Dias’ 900 won the best trick. I don’t know if there was a street event, all they sent was vert info. You can read the canned press and see the pics after the jump. Who knows, maybe you are curious about what Zhou Qiang, President of Xingyi New Media Investment Company has to say.

There are large corporate type skateboard summer camps that everyone knows about, but if you want to stay closer to home (Unless you live in Poland) or closer to your (parent’s) hard earned cash, there are usually local options available. The Department (of Skateboarding) has been doing these for a while, and Windells too. Raise you hand if you’ve ever been hit with the buzkill of having a busload of kids show up at your favorite skatepark. I’ve got mixed emotions about pay-to-skate facilities bussing kids around to neighborhood parks. But what about your local Parks and Recreation district? Well they operate the parks (in most cases) so it makes perfect sense. Portland Parks and Recreation has a series of skate camps and learn to skate events going on this summer. You can get details here It’s a PDF link, and you have to sift through it to get all the relevant info, but one interesting thing is that there’s an event planned at Burnside, of all places. Some might find that inappropriate, while others might recognize this as an important step in maintaining relations with the city and a skatepark that is technically still existing on a trial basis. Ok, two more interesting bits, there’s a beginner’s session and an all girls skate jam too.

I originally saw this gal in a 2006 Time Magazine photo essay on skateboarding titled Hot Wheels. The caption said “Groovy: Singer Joyce Blair strikes a pose with her board in Hyde Park, London, in 1965.” I guess Joyce was a singer, dancer and actress. She even appeared on the Benny Hill Show. I couldn’t find any information about this publicity shoot, although I did find two images on a site that shows you images that are for looking at but not using, which is the vague way they are trying to get around the fact that these are from the Getty Images collection. So, yeah, that’s my reasoning too. Look at these images but don’t actually use them. For some reason they changed the location (and name) on the watermark. I just happened to have the old ones saved so I was able to piece together a clean one without the photoshop clone stamp.

That’s right, we’ve got a 20+ year old beef and we’re calling out Jeff Kendall. Sure, he’s probably got a life and has moved on, but we haven’t, obviously. I would say we’re tryng to embarass him with these old pictures, but there isn’t really anything embarrassing about them, considering he was 14 years old when these were taken by friend Bob Pribble Swamp:

Kendall is 14 years old in those pictures. The year is 1981 and he’s riding my old Losi Variflex deck on some ACS trucks and Kanoa Rollout wheels. Why do I remember all this useless information? The Roxbury Ramp was located at Chip Jones house in Indianapolis, IN.

Check them out after the jump.

At first glance this looks like your run of the mill, cheap plastic skateboard, but in fact the Skuda is a fiberglass composite that was probably priced out of range of your typical youngster. I’ll admit that I know nothing about the Skuda. A Google image search turned up nothing, but we have another variation called the “Supa Skuda” catalogued on SnA somewhere. Remember Captain Radical? These old boards have super clean lines. They remind me of old Corvette Stingrays. Everyone should have one in their garage for taking a spin on every other odd weekend. This one belongs to Graeme Wicks. He bought it off eBay a few years back so he could actually ride it.

What does Dreamland concrete look like in the UK? The same as it does here, except really grainy and in black and white apparently. I’ve heard about the gray weather there, but come on. Check out this clip that looks like it’s from the UK’s Sidewalk Mag:

Check out this Kevin Parrott crafted clip from May Bank Holiday Weekend at Saffron Walden and Cantelowes, with Div Adam, Benson, Awadh, Aaron Sweeny, Kev the Plasterer and Mark Nicholson, with a cameo by sir Alex of Irvine.

These names don’t mean anything to me, but there is some ripping in the clip. Stick around until the end for a big warm fuzzy.

– Thanks to Nicky for the tip.

There a lot of things people have sent in that I need to get posted. I get tips and reminders now and then when I haven’t followed through. I appreciate the contributions and even the reminders. Keep them coming, they will eventually end up online. But before I get to them, I need to show you these two paintings from Derek Erdman’s Skateboarding Gibbons series.