What are the Poles up to? About the same thing as skaters everywhere. As part of our ongoing cultural exchange we bring you a link to Poland’s System Skateboard Magazine. I wish it had a more Polish sounding name. It’s got some high quality skate photography but in some areas it’s not quite as slick as the majors. For example, there are surely some talented skaters featured, but drawing from more limited pool means there is the occasional shot that seems out of place in such glossy production. There are plenty of American companies tainting advertising, which might seem odd were it not for the fact that the parent company of System is the sole Polish distributor of some of those brands. I tried to get them to bite on Cold War since there is one graphic that combines elements lifted straight from the Polish Air Force, as well as Solidarity party. The suggestion was politely ignored, but hey, it’s hard for me to turn down a fellow Pole. When I was in Warsaw in 1991 or ’92 I didn’t see a single skateboard there, but I found a flyer for what I think was a Polish skate rock band. Of course I took it home. One day I’ll go down to the pit in my basement and dig it up for scanning.
I had my wallet and about $500 stolen in Warsaw, and yet I don’t hold it against them, and I continue to give.

The anonymous cell phone picture poster at Sleestak picked up some a transmission of the completed snake run at Lincoln City. If you can’t get in to Sleestak see them, EPM has reposted a selection as well. The top shot is not at all what I expected it to look like, although I’m sure it will be different in person.

Hooray!

SeattleSkateparks.org posted some recent pictures of the much maligned Lower Woodland skatepark under construction in Washington. I wonder if that roll in qualifies as one of those super-features I’ve been hearing about…. Sahli powers activate! UPDATE: Latest set – Earlier set – Layout (Apparently not final)

– Thanks to Tony D. for the tip.

It’s a Boston morning here on SnA. The St Charles River skatepark that was designed by Wormhoudt, Inc. will be built by Grindline. That’s an interesting combination to say the least. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. This separate design and build contractor has me stymied though. I realize it’s due to state laws, but just think of the extra concrete you could afford by hiring the same firm to design and build. It’s $40,000 square feet, and no, those funnels aren’t some sort of ill conceived public arts expenditure. They are the support pillars for the highway overhead. Here in Portland we have some expensive river front property under Interstate 5 that would be well suited for a massive skatepark. Right now it seems to only be used for hosting the Cirque Du Soleil once a year. Yeah, this is old news from December.

– Thanks to Tom Miller for the tip.

Published in 1988, Limozine #3 comes to us from the Boston area. There are two mailing addresses, one in East Boston and one in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was put out by the three man team of Jamie Cumming, Sebastian Nichols and Matt Cumming, as listed in the masthead. It’s a fat 24 half letter sized pages. The photos are legible but the toner saturation (Sheesh – listen to this a-hole) is really low. My physical copy is really faint. It actually looks a lot better after being scanned and manipulated slightly. The layout consists of mostly large photos with typewritten captions. Very nice actually. Simple and clean. I featured a Limozine related link back in November of last year. SnA is thanked on the liner notes and I still have the letter I got from the Limozine staff, unsigned so I don’t know who I was corresponding with. I probably got the address from a zine listing in Contort.

Featured Skaters (In order of appearance) Dan Estabrook, Dexter, Pete Verdoe, Bill, Jamie Ferguson, Sebastian Nichols, Bill Bennet, Andy Smith, Chris Robinson’s friend, Aaron. Unanmed locals.

Spots: Devotion Banks, Upland, Cambridge pool, Z.T. ramp

Honorable Mentions: Thanked on the contents: Skate and Annoy, Skate & Mate, Rip the Lip, Andre, fisheyes, Pro Designed.

Check out Limozine #3

UPDATE: Comments closed here, but you can comment directly in this gallery now.

What the heck is going on here? Mike from Old Man Army sent in a couple pics thoughtfully (and sensitively) titled Rainbows in the desert. It makes a lot more sense when you see them full frame.

When he was alive, my father worked for a blood sucking chemical corporation. His job essentially was to sell the little plastic pellets that other blood sucking companies use to make all kinds of things from TV shells to styrofoam cups. The last time anyone gave a crap about the planet was back in the 70’s. Remember the big green “E?” It was about that time that my father began to be involved in learning about recycling plastics. I think it all started when one of his clients got scared by the hippies. For many years they had been packaging their corporate death burgers in styrofoam containers, and it was my Dad’s job to manage that sales relationship, because he ultimately sold the plastic pellets. When the fast food joint went to paper packaging due to public pressure from environmentalists, the writing was on the wall. The Blood sucking chemical corporation decided to investigate and push recycling technologies to combat a potential loss of business.

Fascinating huh? But what does this have to do with green skateboards? Every time plastic is recycled it becomes less and less usable in practical applications. It’s basically only a couple iterations away from ending up as a brown lunch tray in a school cafeteria or correctional facility. And really, how many of those do we need? Green skateboard technologies applied to longboards are nice but not particularly effective in terms of environmental impact unless they can be used to produce a respectable short board for the kids that are going through a deck every three weeks. That’s the reason skateboards have reportedly become the worlds top consumer of hard maple. The market segment for longboards is dramatically smaller than short boards, and once sold, a longboard tends to remain in use over a much longer time period. In fact a year or more isn’t unusual at all.

That being said, the latest entry into alternative green skateboard construction is a Brazillian joint effort between a Let’s EVO and materials developer Fibra Sustainable Design. And it looks like a leaf!

[Source: Treehugger.com] – Thanks to Denny Renshaw for the tip.

This is not my beautiful web site. This is not commentary on the art of Mark Gonzales. This is not a love song. Darn it all if I did’t already include recycling in the title the first time I posted something about the Gonz’ performance art fencing getup. This time is was going to be in reference to the fact that I’m doing a lot of housecleaning on the old hard drives of Skate and Annoy, and as a result you’ll be seeing a lot of less than fresh news. Yes, these items will likely have appeared elsewhere first. For instance, I just had a URL for the image of this Mark Gonzales action figure from Caught in the Crossfire, forwarded to me from MC. Caught in the Crossfire has no search feature so I couldn’t get the info. Eventually I tracked it to this undated post. It looks like they originally got it from Skate Daily (big surprise) and they have no search feature either. This is a disturbing trend. So in keeping with the post-modernist theory that it didn’t happen unless it is archived on Skate and Annoy, I bring you this Mike Leavitt hand carved Mark Gonzales action figure, limited to an edition of 10, from way back in 2006. I don’t care if you’ve seen it before, becasue you’ve never seen it in conjunction with a link to the original performance art that inspired it. An now I can move one more thing to the “finished” folder. If I had waited another year, the original event that inspired this action figure would be 10 years old. This is for the 20 year old skaters who obsess over the Gonz.

Checking back on the Lake Delton, Wisconsin skatepark we mentioned last fall, and it looks like Dreamland finished ahead of schedule due to a span of unseasonable good weather. Good news for locals right? Not so much. Dreamland finished work on October 30th, but shortly thereafter Wisconsin got back on track with a deep frost, and local contractors are unable to finish the parking lot and walkways. As is often the case in these situations, the park is officially closed until the work can be finished in Spring of this year. I have to have to believe it is being barged though. (It is. The police are handing out criminal tresspassing violations.) It’s in the 30’s this week in Lake Delton, and when I lived in the Midwest, that was prime winter skating weather. Although now that seems insane to me. Dreamland’s site isn’t updated with the final plan or pictures, but the semi official web site for the skatepark has info on the park (No bikes or scooters, directions, etc..) as well as gallery of pictures. Breaking news, looks like they are still fishing for donations to finish the surrounding area. Lake Delton is asking for gravel, fencing and concrete among other items. There’s a few videos of Dreamland crew finishing and riding the park after the jump.

I’m gradually amping up for an upcoming trip to Florida. You might say over-amping, considering the Florida links around here in the past few days. Or maybe just working on cultivating our niche-niche markets. Here’s a Morris Eaddy shot of Todd Morrow taken at the Dunedin Skatepark, Florida, back in October of ’07. Click to enlarge.