In the spirit of today’s zine post, I’ve also added 14 stickers to the sticker archives, courtesy of Gerd from Bailgun Magazine. This brings the G&S total to 27 and the overall total to 310! If you feel uneasy trusting us or the Post Office to return your original stickers, and I don’t blame you on either count, we do accept scans. All I ask is that you send in a large scan (not photos, please) and let me do the resizing and retouching. Here are the submission guidelines. Check out the latest addition to the SnA Sticker Archives – G&S.

Unbelievably, someone sent me a small box of zines from the 80’s to scan (and return) for the 80’s Skate Zine Archives. I’d just like to say… SUCKER!!!!! Ha ha. That someone is John Drummond, and in order to convince him that they aren’t just collecting mold in my basement, I’ve gone ahead and posted the shortest one he sent, which is Rage’N Nor Cal Local #1. There are a couple of gems that he sent, including a couple issues of Steve Cabalero’s Skate Punk and Steve Douglas’ Go For It! I’ve been playing with the document feeder on the scanner at work with mixed results, so it may go faster. (Mac – Yes, I still have your negatives. Please pretend not to notice that.)

Apparently there was a phantastamagical Roll Rampant and Free skate art ramp installation as part of the 2005 Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh, and only one person seems to have documented it, artist Maya Hayuk. Not True. I just found some more. Artist Ali Calis did, and so did the curator, the Harry Krishna Groupe. Every city needs one of these. – Thanks to Sarib Singh Khalsa for the tip.

Remember the pasty faced Dutch kid with the vaguely effeminate first name that set a new consecutive kickflip record? Yeah, me either. There’s a new kickflip champion in town. He’s 13 year old Zach Kral, and he hails from Waterford, Wisconsin. Like James Brown, he hit it and quit it at 1200. On Saturday, 4-5-08, Zach Kral, 13 of Waterford, Wi, did 1200 consecutive kickflips to win the Fuze Kickflip Challenge at 4Seasons Skatepark in Milwaukee, WI. It took 1 hr and 42 minutes to complete. He said he started to get tired at around 1160, so he decided to stop when he got to 1200. He started from the first one on his first try attempt and went straight through to 1200, while staying in constant motion. Mike Gonzalez of Kragon Action Sports sent in the tip, I think because Zach must be on his team. There’s a Fuze Kickflip Challenge event page and a Flickr stream if you are interested. Somewhere in Holland, Laurens Groenveld is crying over his puny 566 consecutive kickflips. I hope I don’t get targeted by hackers in Amsterdam again. Did I mention I like Heineken?

Apparently this Choco Milk is actually made with bits of real panther. At least that’s what the packaging would have me believe. John Aguilar hipped me to this, but fortunately I didn’t have to go to Mexico to get it since they had an ample supply in the “Ethnic” section of my local grocery store.

Welsh Pete via Sleestak found this video of some Arab skateboarding action that complements some of the stuff we’ve posted lately. Rather than reinterpret, I’ll poach use his own words: So between the ages of 10 and 17 I lived in Bahrain. The only kids that really skated were us Brits and Yanks. Not many Bahrainis skated. So its good to see them getting into it. One of my friend’s was just out there and he sent me this vid of the locs trying to kill themselves…. Thats right you can have all these preconceived ideas about Muslims and Arabs but some like skateboarding, fucking about and heavy metal just like you…. Well, I don’t like heavy metal, (except Dethklok and the Darkness) but I like skateboarding. This is the kind of thing Pete should be posting on Skate and Annoy instead of making be poach it from him.

It’s looking good out here. Where’s the session? Kevin Porterfield from Dokument skate shop in Salem, OR sent in some photos from a week or so ago before the trees were starting to bud. Check them out after the jump.

Earlier there was some discussion about whether or not anything good ever comes from the X Games. I brought up the fact that they sometimes leave their ramps behind, and John Aguilar pointed out that such is the case in Mexico City. Mexican skate rag ReSkate reports that last year’s X Games vert and street ramps are being set up as a public skatepark in a few weeks. I can’t read Spanish, so I’ll have to take his word for that. And speaking of countries battling US skateboard manufacturers and extreme sports, the AST Dew Tour is opening in China this month as well. I guess there’s already a lot of skateboards there, so why not? Along with the usual contenders, Chinese athletes will be allowed to compete as well. How Extreme!™ is China? This 2005 article in the Christian Science Monitor (!?) talks about how Chinese officials promote certain cultural imports from Western countries, but most fade from popularity after the propaganda stops. That was three years ago, so maybe it’s not a fad in China. It probably helps that so many American companies are having skateboards made in China. I wonder if the top Chinese skaters ride skateboards…

The City of Vancouver, Washington/Clark County Parks (Yeah, I’m confused too) has set up a web page for finding all their (sanctioned) skate spots and parks. It’s got links to pages with specific information about each spot, such as operating hours, directions and individual contact information for concerns an information. A lot of park districts have web sites with information about skateparks, but usually they aren’t centrally collected and you have to know the name of the park to find it. So, hats off to Vancouver-Clark Parks and Recreation, even if the supervisor didn’t want to use one of my photos in a newsletter with a credit to Skate and Annoy because he thought we promoted cursing and drinking alcohol. True story. In a moment of weakness I agreed to let them use it and credit it to me personally, all for free of course. What was I thinking? They ought to thank Parks Communications Specialist Jilayne Jordan for presenting a more human and less robot-with-stick-in-orifice face to the public. Just so we’re straight here, Jordan lobbied for using the picture, and she’s been helpful to the Pacific Community Skatepark (obviously) and to Skate and Annoy as well in providing…

Well, March was maybe the best month I’ve seen since I’ve started doing this column. I feature 43 items, of which 13 went for over $1,000. That’s got to be a record, but I’m not going back and looking through all of the old columns to validate. And two decks went for over $3,000. By the way, thanks to everybody who writes in with kind words about the column. I appreciate all of your kind words. The fact that we get so many hits and so much feedback from all over the world is amazing, and it’s what keeps me doing it month after month. Just for Randy, this month’s Baywatch is fueled by Hornsby cider and the rocking punk rock sound of The Carbonas. Have you been missing the Briefs recently? Then give the Carbonas a try. They’ll fix you right up. Their new album is available on iTunes, if you are interested. So let’s get to the meat..