You don’t have to be Robin Gibb to recognize that one man’s tragedy is another man’s golden opportunity. It times of natural disaster it is customary wait an undisclosed but appropriately respectful period of time before skating the spoils. But what about financial disaster? Billy Runaway is taking advantage of that housing mortgage crisis that’s all over news lately. Pools are in abundance in certain areas. He suggests going out and getting your own. Did you know there is a heavy metal Bee Gee’s tribute band called Tragedy?

The weather was iffy all weekend. I ventured over to Glenhaven. MC called me as I was leaving and told me to bring a squeegee as it had just hailed and some spots needed drying out. Half an hour later it was mostly dry, but every 10 minutes or so it would start sprinkling for a minute or so. Everyone was hitting it while they could, there were some great personal motifs going between guys that looked like anarcho pirates, kids in pajama bottoms and one guy with a mustache so big and bushy we could have used it to sweep out the bowl. I was just about to start snapping the local wildlife when another dainty but steady barrage of hail closed out the session for good, or at least another half hour or so., but I left. I should have used the time to read the manual on my flash, cause I kept blowing out the exposures instead of getting a little extra contrast on a gray day like I had hoped.

Some parents buy kits to assemble swing sets and sandboxes for their kids. Things in Oregon are a little different. I was at a BBQ this weekend where the dad had built a small mini ramp and a rock climbing wall on the outside of his wife’s studio almost entirely made from salvage lumber. This was a “Welcome Spring” BBQ in Oregon, so of course it rained, but dad had the possibility of bad weather covered. Alternate picture after the jump.

If you’ve ever said to yourself “I wonder what Steve Caballero is up to,” wonder no more. Just go check out his blog Have you seen him? The “him” isn’t capitalized, so I assume it’s a reference to Animal Chin and not the Him. The first real skateboard I ever had was a Steve Caballero dragon on the bearing pig. I also saw The Faction play a show in a garage in suburban Illinois. There was a small half pipe in an adjacent field. Most people were there for the punk rock, but there were some skaters as well. Caballero was very accommodating and encouraging to those who weren’t in his league. It was amazing seeing him at a crappy little ramp in the Midwest. I don’t remember much from that day and I think he only took a handful of runs, but I have a recollection of looking up at him on the deck and thinking what a nice guy he was. He was one of the biggest names in skateboarding at that time, and he showed up with no attitude or sense of entitlement whatsoever. It was like anyone else dropping by for a session, except, well, he was massively better. Have you seen him?

– Thanks to Bryce for the tip.

I heard the President of my country on the radio lying this morning. He must have been lying because he was talking. Anyway, mentioned something about the recent escalation in violence in Iraq, which is a great excuse to post this retread of a retread story about skateboarding during the time of operation Desert Storm. The story has resurfaced on a sketchy website called Skateboarding Magazine. I say sketchy because it is brand new and is mostly populated with generic articles that seem like they are more designed to drive traffic for Google Ad Words than they are to actually express a point of view about something. Kind of like what you might hire a room full of monkeys for. Originally this story was associated with a web property called sk8shop.com, and was circulated in an email from Louie Bar. I got two of them back in ’03 and ’04. Right now sk8shop.com is dedicated to selling you photos of pro skaters taken at different public events. It’s Louie Baur’s story, so maybe he’s behind the Skateboarding Magazine. It’s titled “Skateboarding in Desert Storm” but that’s actually a little misleading since all the skateboarding action takes place in Turkey, well away from the front lines. In any case, it’s still interesting to anyone who remembers skating with guys in the military at that time. In central Illinois there was an Air Force base in Rantoul that was about a half hour away from where I was dropping out of school. We always got a few mostly cool skaters that would be session with us when they were able to get off the base. I was in touch with a guy who was skating in Iraq a few years ago. He was going to send some pictures in but never did. Maybe he didn’t like our political leanings. Then again, maybe he fell victim to an I.E.D.. Don’t forget to vote!

Sometimes when digging starts on a construction project, assorted archeological artifacts are uncovered that demand shutting down the site while experts in academia and tribal leaders argue it out to determine the historical significance and rightful “owners” of human remains. Archeologists in Oregon recently puzzled over a ceremonial structure uncovered while expanding community services at a city with a rich variety of taxonomy in skatepark terrain. At issue is what sort of tribe would find it necessary to erect a parallel ritualistic structures when existing structures were already culturally advanced. There are some, however, that hypothesize this as a burial place for the last website editor who blew out a spot. Scientists at the EPM Institute have documented the excavation.

After a period of inactivity, followed by a period of me failing to check in, it looks like the official archive of RAD Magazine (see our stickers) is very much alive. I reference Britain’s defunct Read and Destroy every so often here, and for those who have no idea what I’m talking about, or for those that do, you should investigate When We Was Rad. Aside from the colloquial coverage of the UK scene, there’s always a bit of U.S. based interference as well. You know how fond we are of sending advisors and spreading democracy… Above left is Steve Caballero skating South Bank on the cover of the September 1988 issue. On the right is a page featuring Winstan Whitter in 1991. Winstan later direct the U.K.’s answer to the Dogtown documentary, Rollin Through the Decades (reviewed here) which was in many ways superior.

Tim Leighton-Boyce was the editor of RAD, and is naturally the person behind When We Was Rad as well. He’s putting up one page scans at a time, accompanied by any related recollections he had, and sometimes transcripts of the text. RAD existed from 1987 to 1993, so he’s go t his work cut out for him. Do a little encouraging by visiting When We Was Rad.

This week’s Shot of the Week is from Michael Goetz at The Skateboard Archives. It features Andy Adams, a Toast rider, on the Burnside bridge in Portland Oregon. You’ve heard of Burnside, right? This concludes our street coverage for 2008. Just kidding. In the full size version I swear you can see Ziggy Stardust hanging out in front of the building in the background.

Check out: Shot of the Week 3-24-08

A VH1 blog for the show Best Week Ever has a list of the top 10 professions that are one death away from extinction. Meaning if the most famous guy dies, nobody will take his place. Coming in at number one, Skateboarding and Tony Hawk. They are actually aware of other pro skaters, but their rationale is that… who cares. But, maybe they are on to something. Perhaps the almost dead profession should have been Vert Skater since I keep getting tips relating to vert skating and BMX being dropped from the X games. Also being dropped? the VH1 show Best Week Ever, unless they get picked up by ESPN.

The rumors are flying, and the official word is that “changes are coming.” I doubt the loss of vert in the X-Games mean much of anything to skateboarders, besides the ones competing. It might have more of an impact on Madison Avenue than anywhere else. Commercials and cartoons will have lost their point of reference for portraying skateboarding.

– Thanks to Concretins for the first tip.

Among this weeks iStockPhoto’s “Hot Shots” is a photo imaginatively titled “Skateboarder flying through the air,” available here.