San Jose’s Skate Ripper (Also called San Jose Skate Ripper) #1 comes to us from the collection of, (drumroll please…) John Drummond. There’s no physical date on it but there are some clues. Bob Denike is listed as 20 years old in his interview, and there’s a CASL contest at Del Mar where Lester, Gator (Mark Rogowski) and Tony Hawk are in the 3A division. Hawk wins it. It’s got to be be pretty damned early. Also, there’s an order form for Back issues of Thrasher magazine that doesn’t list any years, just months, so that would put it at late 1981 or early ’82. Another clue, already in publication are the zines known as Skate Fate, Skate Punk and Skate Scene (San Jose), not to be confused with Skatin’ Scene AKA Rad rat from Hazelton Iowa of all places. SJSR was put out by Craig S. Ramsay. SJSR was copied on legal size paper even though the content seems like it would have fit entirely on letter sized sheets. Consequently, there are quite large borders on the sides of the pages. The text was all typewritten an shrunk to a small size. I had to leave these scans at a larger size to make them legible.

The April 2008 cover of Seattle Metropolitan magazine features another skateboarding business dude used to illustrate the 14 hottest company to work for in Seattle. I quickly leafed through a copy at the airport, but I didn’t see anything else skateboard related in the article. Perhaps I missed it. I couldn’t bring myself to fork over $5 or $6 for this thing at the time and I forgot about it until I opened the cover image on my cluttered desktop. This issue isn’t on the newsstand anymore, so if by some odd chance anyone has a larger scan of the cover, please send it in.

This week’s Shot of the Week comes from the archives of our own Mark Conahan:

We were at a permission pool in Montebello, California. I drove. Eric (Dressen) used to hang out with us before he was discovered by Tony Alva.

Check out the full frame Shot of the Week

Talk of Jeff Kendall been in our comments lately so I thought this was a good time to spotlight this Chinese counterfeit Jeff, excuse me, Jess Kendall deck and mention that House of Neil is compiling some more counterfeits as well as working on the April eBay Watch. What’s next? Les Mountain, Bob Roskopp or Jane Lucero? You’ll have to wait and see.

Yes, we’re finally breaking out silence. I’m sure Sam will add this endorsement right next to his other high profile endorsements from The Oregonian, The Portland Mercury, The Willamette Week, The Portland Observer and Just Out. See that picture on the right? That’s Sam Adams cutting the ribbon on Portland’s Pier Park skatepark in 2006. Sam has a proven record supporting skateparks in Portland (among other things.) If you want to see Portland’s 19 park system come to fruition, your best bet is to vote Sam Adams for Portland Mayor.

What about City Council? We’re leaning towards Jim Middaugh for City Council, whom we’ve heard is receptive towards more skateparks in Portland.

OK, so the St Lucie, Florida skatepark is actually the Fort Pierce skatepark. And who needs construction photos when it’s already finished? More pictures from Team Pain. Congratulations to Tito, who is on his honeymoon. That’s Adam Calderwood from team Pain’s concrete crew in the top photo.

I made an unexpected last minute trip to Hood River on Sunday afternoon. When I go there I recognized a few people from the Portland/Vancouver area, and as I was leaving about half the locals from Pier Park showed up. Hood River is turning into a really nice little park. They keep adding onto it and have plans for more. The new small bowl setup is fun and can be linked to the rest of the park via a couple transfer spots. I hear more street features are in the works for Hood River. (While in Hood River, visit IPS for all your skateboarding needs…)

These are pics of a semi new skatepark in Harbor City, Florida called The Park of Melbourne:

12,000 sq. ft. indoor skateboard park. Features a 9 foot vert wall. Indoor bowl with mini taco and half cradle, with wall ride. Large street course with moveable elements. Full audio system with large projectors playing skate videos and cameras throughout which can be logged into to pull clips of your sessions.

That’s a new high tech twist on skateparks, cameras that record the session and then you can log in and see the pics or video. I’m not sure how well it would work as far as framing and the quality of the shots. Not-so-good is my guess, but if you’ve ever witnessed (or taken part in) a spectacular slam or collision and wish you’d had a camera on it, this system might grant that wish. Well, it would if it was working. I got the pictures late last year. Five months later and the web site seems to still be mostly under construction with the exception of a some overview shots. (Sorry no direct link)

UPDATE: I like that mural, as goofy as it looks. However, I think that the influence of surf-style on popular skateboarding has largely disappeared, aside from a brief resurgence after the Dogtown doccumentary. Anyone?

Here’s a few more pics I misplaced when posting the St. Lucie skatepark construction progress photos. As usual, they are courtesy of Tito at Team Pain. That snake pit/zone looks fun.

Update: Turns out this is close to St. Lucie County but is actually located in Fort Pierce, so it’s the Fort Pierce skatepark.

Unbeatable Banzuke is a physical obstacle course Japanese game show (Kinniku Banzuke) that airs in reruns on the G4 network in the US. Apparently the original show was cancelled in 2002 after two contestants suffered serious spinal cord (OK, cervical vertebrae) injuries. The “Skeboarder” episode features a skateboard obstacle course that looks like Grover’s wet dream. An enterprising individual has captured some of it in the time honored fashion of pointing a video camera at the TV. Check it out after the jump. G4’s site has some footage but they don’t do anything to make it easy for you to find out when a particular episode will be on. “TV that’s plugged in?” Hardly. The course looks really fun, actually. One of the contestants has his occupation listed as “Skateboard Salesman.” I wonder if he goes door to door. – Thanks to Rich for the tip.